DeLonge ignored it, and talked about video blogging: “Do you want to do normal blogs—or do you want to do it in the dark and have lasers going and make it look like you’re from space? And not call it a blog, call it a space cam?” He asked, “What have you guys been doing for a Web site?”
“Three out of four of us are on Twitter,” Batmanglij said.
DeLonge shook his head. “I don’t want to be freaking on the money part,” he said. “But you guys know and I know that you’re trying to live in an industry that’s dying. And so Modlife is trying to give you the chance to survive.” Then he screened a trailer for a movie that his new band, Angels & Airwaves, had produced, called “Love”— images of an astronaut in a space station over swelling music.
Batmanglij started giggling, and DeLonge turned and looked at him.
“Uh, I just thought of something fun that we could do with our band,” he said.
“That’s rad,” DeLonge said evenly. “Cool.”
The Vampire Weekend members got up to leave. DeLonge shook their hands and said, “Consider this stuff.” Then he asked, “Why are you guys so mellow?”
They drove out of the office park and past some strip malls. Green Day was playing on the radio. The band members seemed rattled.
“I started thinking about all kinds of things while he was talking,” Batmanglij said. “Like what it means to be in a band. Tom DeLonge is not that old. He’s thirty-three. Seven years older than me—that’s crazy.”
Tomson said, “You gotta hustle.” No one spoke for a while.
