A Quote by Ed Robertson
As much as being in a rock band can be really glamorous and exciting - and it can be a lot of things that people imagine it to be - if you just live that lifestyle, you're gonna burn out really quickly.
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Joining another big time rock band was the last thing I was looking for, but as the tour went on, I really dug playing to a lot of people, the band sounded great, and just being out there again, got me over my depression and so I decided to hop on board.
When I'm representing my music live I think of it very much in a rock band sense. When I first started doing festivals in the 90s there really weren't other DJs playing the stages I was playing. So I felt I was being afforded an opportunity to kind of make a statement about what DJ music can be live. In the 90s, if you were a DJ you were in the dance tent, and you were playing house music and techno music. There was no such thing as a DJ - a solo DJ - on a stage, after a rock band and before another rock band: that just didn't happen.
I've never put a lot into being a celebrity, that just flies over my head because that's not really who I am. But as you can imagine, you get exposed to a lot of different things because of what you do and I lived a pretty excessive lifestyle.
You know, being in a rock band, you can't overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That's not rock. Rock's about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.
It's interesting, once I have convinced people that, yes, I have a sister with a mental disability, the retard jokes really dry up, so I'm not sure how much retard humor is really going on out there, but I imagine there's a lot because it's a pretty safe group to make fun of. It's not like the Retards of America are gonna rise up and organize a protest. They're not gonna write letters. They only just recently got the Supreme Court to stop executing them.
I'm in a funny position: I've been in one band in my life and that was with my brother. As incredible as that has been, I feel like I'm missing out a little bit on being in a real rock band - or how I imagine being in a real rock band to be. It's like being in a street gang: you all wear the same leather jacket or whatever.
I certainly didn't predict people who spent years actively disliking the band to all of a sudden like the band. That's pretty funny to me, and it makes playing live kind of interesting, 'cos we're doing lots of things that don't really have a lot to do with that record, and even presenting the songs off that record in a way that's a little more muscular and without as much of the sheen, which is what I think part of what people really liked [about Kaputt].
A lot of people think technology is a solution, but it's really just a canvas for your work. It can make good things amazing and bad things terrible. Facebook allows you to have access to mass audience really quickly if you do creative really well.
All those experiences were a chance to learn more about music. Playing with the Valley band is like such a "live" band. I mean, really, in many ways Bright Eyes is really a studio project. We form bands to tour, but it really is - you know, we take the songs and we figure out how to decorate them and it's all in the studio, we build the songs that way. Whereas Mystic Valley Band was the exact opposite, where everybody knows what they are gonna be playing on the song and there's sort of a general stylistic approach, and then it's just plug in and play.
I think I would be much more enthusiastic about a band that covered more than just one particular album of mine. I don't ever really intend to record or to do shows with a live band. I don't really have a problem with it, but it doesn't really affect me either way.
Even though I could sing, I didn't really mix anything and I wasn't really into rock. But after my experience of being around what it's like live and on-stage, it was just crazy. And when you grow in music, things just change.
Being in a band was so fun and exciting, but I was just kind of focusing more on performance and wasn't really writing the songs - I didn't really think I had a voice.
The whole idea of rock and roll lifestyle is a cartoon. It's a caricature. And at times, it's made up of people emulating others; a few who actually live that lifestyle and many who claim to live that lifestyle.
My life is not that glamorous. I actually live a pretty simple life, really. I just work. I don't have time to do all these glamorous things. I just do my thing, just work.
I believe I live in a black and white. I think things are like either black or white. I don't really believe that much in the gray. I think that there's gray for a lot of people, but I don't live in the gray. I realize whatever action I have or take, it's going to have a consequence -- either good or bad. So I live my life in a way where I don't have bad consequences. I just notice there's a lot people around me just live in the gray. I don't know, for me, I'm just really straightforward.
What I'm trying to do is paint a picture of an atypical human being going through all of the existential struggles, but all the while realizing the carnality and small things, because I like minutiae a lot. All the while knowing that it's a forest - knowing that none of it means anything. I think if more people understood that, they would just go ahead and kill themselves like they're gonna do anyway, but do it quickly as opposed to hanging out and using up resources. Don't just sit around criticizing other people and wasting time. I do that, but I'm not really skilled in any other way.
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