February 18th, 2009
The Roots Are Cranking Out Some Tasty Late Night Music
I was wondering why Roots drummer ?uestlove has been Twittering so much lately about writing new material — I know the band is always working on new stuff, but I figured they were more preoccupied these days with their upcoming high-profile gig as the house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which premieres on NBC on March 2nd. Turns out NBC is no longer paying for published music, so the Roots “have to write 200 new songs, which will probably last about a year,” ?uest tells Rolling Stone. “We’ve written about 55 so far.” He also has an interesting take on that music, which will be heard as the broadcast goes into and comes out of commercial breaks: “Some people call them beds or bumpers. I call them sandwiches. If the song sounds like the Meters, then we call it a po boy sandwich. If it’s pop, i call it the Subway sandwich. Disco or Philly soul, we call it a cheese steak. When we’re referencing some UK rock shit, that’s the Marmite sandwich. If it has a didgeridoo, then it’s a Vegemite sandwich.”
