Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The idea of the gay experience, it feels like a relic. I felt like in the '90s when we were watching the gay characters on 'The Real World,' there was definitely a gay experience that was distinct from a straight experience. If you talk to high schoolers in 2017, I don't know that is as much a part of how they experience a social dynamic.
Throughout college I was getting better and better at making recordings, producing songs, making different kinds of beats. I was starting to learn the signifiers of production from the '60s, the '80s. We never re-recorded anything. All the record companies that wanted to sign us - except for one - were excited about the recordings that we had done ourselves.
I was lucky to have a guitar teacher who asked me what I wanted to learn. I brought in "High & Dry" by Radiohead and "Mr. Jones" by Counting Crows and he was like, "Alright, I'm gonna teach you these, but you're also gonna learn some stuff that I want you to learn." He taught me Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, so I was getting the technical stuff and the fun stuff.
I feel connected to every song on this record [ 'Modern Vampires Of The City' ], but yeah I think there's something special about 'Young Lion'. It's pretty different from any song that we've had before because the vocals are kind of between two different very simple instrumental piano melodies and it's almost like something that we call a vignette, it's sort of like a miniature.
I guess I have some kind of a visceral connection with drums. I'm looking to create music that people can react to viscerally, and people will respond to viscerally. I think that you can listen to music, to a song you've never heard before and not really like it, but also feel like you're responding to it physically whether you like it or not. I think that's a powerful aspect about music, and I think that's something that draws me to drums.
My parents left Iran in 1979 and moved to France and then moved to the U.S. My brother was born in France and I was born in New York. I think my parents left France because they felt their kids would never be accepted by French culture. Here they thought we could feel American - that we could feel safe in that way - which was important to them, given what their experiences were in Iran. They used to joke about how I could be president because I was the only one born in America.