Edwin Farnham Butler III Quotes
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Years ago, in order to stay sane, I had to really make an effort not to think about how people view us. There's just so much noise, positive and negative, and not much good comes out of thinking about it.
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I studied scriptural interpretation, which is more about how people get meaning out of texts, looking at stuff in the Old Testament - Muslims, Christians, Jews, different interpretations of the same texts.
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A lot of stuff is dark in a way, but unless you're really looking at a situation for what it actually is, it's hard to be hopeful - or meaningless to be hopeful about it unless it's actually based in a real possibility.
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Major labels just lost their way. It's like the housing bubble. They lost a sense of the fundamentals.
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I think filmmakers all secretly wanna be musicians and all musicians secretly wanna be filmmakers.
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It would get really alienating, to have my face be the face of a cause. So much just comes down to the songs. I just want to give us the opportunity to write great songs. Even our work in Haiti is limited by how good our songs are. We just need to get rid of as much of the bullshit as possible, so we can have a life, so we have something to write about.
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What I miss [about church] is being forced to be in community with people that aren't the same as me.
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I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.
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If I was a cabinetmaker or a commercial fisherman, it would be the same question - how to connect to my world. The job we do affords us the opportunity to have people listen to what we say. But a lot of people have a similar situation: They're trying to find a way to do some good.
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There's this idea, particularly in pop music and a lot of these pop father/manager types, that you're selling the person instead of the song. You basically want to create something that the fans relate to because it's exactly like them. So there's a lot of art that's made to be in the image of the audience, but then the audience is imitating this version of themselves. It's a really weird cultural feedback loop, and it's kind of strange to watch. It's a new thing since I was a kid, really a different thing.
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I try not get too self-aware when writing lyrics.
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I think you have to want to be really famous. It's a lot easier to sabotage your career than to have a career to sabotage.
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There's the idea that you have to know how to solve the world's problems in order to feel that something is morally wrong. I'm always back and forth between optimism and depression about the situation.
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I find myself a lot more open to bands if I just hear their song. It gives you an opportunity to engage with the thing itself and not be overwhelmed by everything else that surrounds it.
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While there are so many beautiful Baroque churches and it's a beautiful artistic tradition, it almost gets hideous and grotesque if you push it further. You can take something beautiful and overdo it.
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Songwriting is reliant on inspiration, which ideally you don't have that much control over. Songs kind of half make themselves, and then you have to finish them.
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Music is made by individuals. Some artists will be very politically overt in their songs, some will be more subtle. You have to be true to yourself, true to your nature.
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A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career.
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Once I got to know what's been happening historically, it's pretty impossible to un-know it. Like right now, there's the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, and people see that as a news headline, but I know there's half a billion dollars of aid that one senator is putting a hold on, that the Red Cross has raised half a billion dollars but has only spent $200 million.
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I don't think the emotional quality is the defining quality of the music but it's definitely something that people have picked up on a lot
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There's an obligation to let people know where their money is going, so the tour has an educational aspect, mostly as a way to thank people. But the most practical use is to raise money and do the research to figure out the proper ways to spend it. You want to make sure that the money doesn't just go somewhere where it does more harm than good.
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I think when you've been in a band for a really long time, sometimes you don't appreciate what's good about yourself. It's easy to play something and get too focused on some small detail. It's helpful to have somebody around who can say, "No, that was good." Just so you don't get too lost or forget what you do. You need somebody you really trust who has great taste.
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I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well.
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I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.