As the World Interns

Giving Flavor Flav the time of day and David Bowie the shirt off your back.

Everybody knows it’s tough to make it in the music industry. But if you don’t mind working long hours on demeaning tasks, all for little or no money, there may be a job waiting for you:

Rock and roll intern.

Music internships do have plenty of cool perks: handfuls of free CDs, the occasional brush with fame and, of course, all the "real world" experience you can absorb.

First, though, you’ve got to get the job.

Carlo Espinas, a 21-year-old journalism student from Fremont, CA, found that getting an internship at Spin.com (Spin magazine’s online version) wasn’t all that difficult. All it required was persistence — more or less harassing an editor once a week for months.

"I just called them every week and said, ‘Do I have a job? Do I have a job? Do I have a job?’" he explains. "I think he just got tired of it."

Though Carlo learned lots (he wrote interviews and reviews for the website), none of it compares with the chance he got to meet rap legends Public Enemy. "I was reviewing the Public Enemy show at Tramps. I was up front taking pictures and Flavor Flav’s clock came off its chain and landed in my lap. No one else saw it, so I threw it in my bag. I was like, ‘Oh My God, Flavor Flav’s clock.’ I just started freakin’."

After settling down, Carlo realized he had to do the right thing, as it were, and return the large clock to its owner. Backstage after the show, he approached P.E.’s frenetic jester.

"I said, ‘Hey, Flav, I’ve got a present for you," Carlo recalls. "I pulled the clock out of my bag and he got this big smile."

The former Ziggy Stardust took one look at Gregg’s $2 thrift store find and flipped his alien lid. "He stops right in front of me and starts turning me around…"

Smaller companies have smaller stars. Not that it mattered to Voorhees, NJ student Chris Johnson, 21. Over two consecutive summers interning at indie stalwart Matador Records, Chris rubbed elbows with many of the artists in his record collection. He had brief, confusing encounters with Thurston Moore in the hallway, played PlayStation with Yo La Tengo, took calls from Jon Spencer and even had a treasured lunch date with Cat Power’s Chan Marshall. But for freewheeling wackiness, no one beat Pavement’s resident wild man and race horse aficionado Bob Nastanovich.

Chris met the notorious percussionist in the elevator.

"He stepped in and was like, ‘Hey I’m Bob,’" remembers Chris. "I’d been reading a book about horse racing so I talked to him about that for a while. He was waiting for someone, so I just hung out with him. Every time a call would come in for someone [at the reception desk], he would answer it and say something like, ‘No, he’s not here. I’m not sure if he’ll be in today. He’s pretty lazy.’"

Daniel Black, 21, had a much tamer internship experience at the Recording Industry Association of America. He spent his days on clerical tasks, and no rock stars wandered past his back-corner desk. Aside from the free office supply of sodas and junk food, his only other "excitement" was of the X-Files variety "I actually can’t talk about anything that happened there," says Daniel, a Baton Rouge, LA native who’s studying audio technology. "I filled out a bunch of forms that swore me to secrecy, I guess because [the company] was government-related and working on yet-to-be released technologies. My supervisors would make sure that when I was doing research, I didn’t show anyone the stuff I was working on."

Meanwhile, Gregg Lewis was busy playing Mulder to Daniel’s Scully. During his short term at Virgin Records, the 21-year-old Voorhees student encountered a real space oddity.

"David Bowie was at the office doing an interview and I came to work with my ‘Song of Norway’ T-shirt on." The former Ziggy Stardust took one look at Gregg’s $2 thrift store find and flipped his alien lid.

"I see David walking toward me, then he stops right in front of me and starts turning me around," recalls Gregg, still amazed. "He tells me he just did an interview where he mentioned a woman he used to date 30 years ago who worked on a film called Song of Norway. He told me he would love it if I gave him the shirt in exchange for something of his."

The next day Bowie got his T-shirt and Gregg got six signed records. Though the job was technically non-paying, it turned out to be worth more than he could have imagined.

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