Ezra Furman Quotes
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I wanted to get a guitar when I was 13 so I could play punk songs because kid taught me power chords at summer camp. He was like, "You could play all punk songs if you just learn this chord and just move it around on the guitar".
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Far from being a showbiz gimmick, for me dressing as I please has signalled the end of a lifelong performance of straightforward masculinity.
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I think of myself as someone who's trying to be a great songwriter and a great performer. And I mean really great.
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Listening to songs is like eating and writing songs is like vomiting. You're putting a ton of stuff in, it combines in unpredictable ways, and comes back out in a big mess.
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It's a good feeling to not tell people what's going on.
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You have to make a character of yourself if you're going to be known to strangers.
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I wrote 'My Teeth Hurt' in April 2018 when my teeth hurt and I didn't have dental insurance.
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I was rather obsessed with angels.
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I'm interested in God. I'm not interested in religion for religion's sake.
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Learning that someone is gay, queer, trans, doesn't tell you much by itself. They could be any kind of person aside from that particular slice of identity.
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A lot of bands break through with their third record: the White Stripes, the Clash, the Replacements.
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Jews like to write and sing. In America, a lot of us have been eager to show that we're part of American culture. But it all goes back to King David writing Psalms.
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Ezra Furman And The Boy-Friends was a band with a specific mission - to be a really good rock'n'roll band. And we achieved it.
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It's always about staying competitive with myself... Popularity is something that may happen from time to time, and I don't trust it and I don't think it means too much. I'm going for greatness.
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I don't like the notion that artists have a responsibility to be political.
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I'm trying to be an activist, and I think of that as separate from my work as an artist. But it isn't.
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I love it when people write rapturously about music they love.
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If you're trying to deal with being a marginalized person and trying to confront a larger population that isn't the same as you, you can be friendly about it, and invite everybody in, or you can be angry about it and be hostile and attack the systems that you want to destabilize.
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I could write a joke song really easily, but I think something that might be true for my generation is that there's a certain irony or detachedness expected of us, even though we really feel sincere. So the only way to sincerity is through a joke.
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I wear what I want to wear and appear on stage as myself.
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Once you admit how bad it feels to live in a broken society, you can start to resist it, and imagine a better one.
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I thought as a kid, "Maybe I don't want to start a punk band necessarily. I just want to learn to be a great songwriter," and got really into trying to figure out how that could be possible.
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I want to make the greatest record ever made. It's the only thing I can think about.
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I think I'm gradually becoming a more politically aware person.