When you're working on a record, I find it's better not to share details during that process. Because, until it's done, it can change.
I like being barefoot in my apartment. The comfiest shoe is the human foot, I think. There's all sorts of articles that say wearing a shoe is actually bad for the human foot. I love to go barefoot whenever I can.
I remember being like, 12 years old, and this was in the days before cell phones, or at least, having a cell phone. Some girls, I can't even remember who they said they were, called and said they had a crush on me. But it turned out to be a prank, and I thought that was just straight up nasty, you know what I'm saying? You're just sort of developing. You're insecure, your bones are growing... you have trouble sleeping. And all of a sudden, someone's pranking you on top of that? It's tough growing up.
I've been getting really into mixing, and there's kinda like an art to it I think. I feel like I still have a lot of ways to grow. But you can just watch the way that other people blend songs together, and it can be a pretty mind-blowing thing. And you can hear music in a very different way, depending on the way a DJ presents it.
I'm not really much of a prankster, but I've definitely been pranked. I never really liked being pranked, so I generally try not to prank people.
Sometimes if I go to a show, someone will recognize me. But the neighborhood I live in, there's so many people who are in successful bands that it's really not a big deal. And I like that. I like the energy of going to lunch with a friend, seeing the three dudes from Yeasayer walking in, and saying hi to them. I think that's neat.
Now, I'm mostly a beer man. When I drink hard liquor, it usually doesn't end the best, so I keep it chill with beer.
I could go play some songs for two hours every week - play whatever I wanted to - and then also spend that time putting more music on my computer and getting into more things. It definitely informs the way that I think about music and I think in general, made me a more open-minded consumer of music.
It was more just about serving the song, which is sort of the way that we work in general. We wanna do the best that we can with it and make it the most interesting to our ears. And putting auto-tune on 'California English', was just one reflection of that.
It was very controversial actually, because basically, Lion In The Grass was also a course that you were receiving college credit for. So it was like he was taking a class, but then the class which also has a teacher and everything, was competing with bands that weren't in classes.
I didn't get any college credit for playing in Vampire Weekend, you know. So it was definitely an early hurdle to get over with C.T. winning and us losing to C.T.. But I think sorta since then, in the four years since, we've managed to pave everything over.
I found in general, I got involved in that station toward the end of my freshmen year, and I just loved how there's this incredible library of music that I'd never heard of from all over the world and different genres.
There's still people that do it poorly... and people that do it very, very well. I think there's still an incredible spectrum. I guess there's something that's appealing in it, in that everyone on some level is a DJ. But people still go to clubs, and there's still... it is interesting - with everyone having an iPod now - when music is so personalised and things like Pandora and making your own playlists, there's something really powerful about a room full of people all dancing to the same song.
I'm not the type to generalise about an entire generation. I think the most general thing I can say, is that things are way more dispersed, and way more de-centralised than they were twenty years ago. I don't really feel like people talk about my generation the way people would talk about Generation X in their early 90's when Nirvana blew up. I feel like there was an easier, more coherent narrative to find, than you can now.
I think you can realise that a lot of people in bands - well - I guess you kinda wanna... There's a lot less mystique in playing in a rock band today, than in the 60's or 70's. I don't think there's any bands that I can think of, that have this rock god myth that like Led Zeppelin had.
Maybe it's just a humanising thing to realise that a ton of people in bands that make really exciting music, are just big nerds. And you know, maybe the Internet's done a lot in just exposing that long-held secret.
I had accepted a job being a math teacher for Teach For America. So, that's what I would have done at least in the two years after I graduated.
I did it a little bit in college, but now I've been doing it more. But yeah, it's not, I think you can definitely have a sense of humour about it. Like a lot of the time I'll finish my set with 'Sandstorm' by Darude - do you know that song? That's a funny song. People also go apeshit when you play it. But at the same time, it's not like the whole thing is a joke.
We'd be recording and I'd go down to Greenpoint where Rostam was living and track stuff... It was a busy time. I felt like in general, I was just super psyched with the prospect of getting to be a musician, that it became a thing that I would think about more than I would think about my studies and stuff like that. I still did fine, but it was an interesting time in my life.
I think Justin Bieber played a couple of songs up the block from it - and they said that some-one in his camp came and got him a burger. We had been talking about him a lot. Especially actually, last time we came to Australia, C.T. was on a real big Justin Bieber kick. I just thought it was really interesting to finally cross paths with him in New Zealand. And like really - the TV, everyone's just talking about it on the radio - it's a big deal that he was here. I think he just left.
There were people I knew that came to college and had never drank before, and never partied, and maybe got a little bit too carried away with it when they did finally get out of the house... I feel like I got that stuff out of my system when I was sixteen and knew to balance things - but at the same time - it's not like I was out getting my medical degree. Playing in a band, you can still have plenty of fun!
I think in general, it's just an interesting age to be at, after college. You spend so much of your life, being on this academic trajectory - and then when it's done - all of a sudden the whole world is maybe open to you. But you're the one that's really in charge of your path. And that can be a really scary thing, I think.
I definitely have friends who - they've gone to multiple jobs, they've had trouble finding jobs, some have gone back to school - it's a very transitional period in anyone's life. I think definitely people have, even like my girlfriend for example, she works her job - and just the fact that she has a job - she just feels super lucky in this economy. But it can really shape, I think, the way you view the world.
I sent a lot of the e-mails out to venues and tried to get shows and tried to get people interested in it. It can be a tough thing, because you know these people at venues are getting e-mails like that every day, but I think just my experience in working in running a radio station.
When you're a music director, you have people constantly sending you music and trying to get - I mean, I'm sure you have the exact same thing when you do a magazine - that you have people constantly wanting to get your attention. And I think I learnt a lot from being on that end of things, when I was trying to book the tour, the first tour we did.
