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I wanted to challenge myself and move into something new. I felt that using the name Swans and the sonic attitude that that engenders was what I needed to move forward musically, and it's led to lots of new things.

Michael Gira

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Michael Gira
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: February 19
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Poet
Record Producer
Singer
Singer-Songwriter
Writer
LA
California
Michael Rolfe Gira
Name
Lots
Names
Using
Moving
Challenge
Felt
Forward
Wanted
Move
Engenders
Something
Needed
Sonic
Things
Attitude
Swans
Challenges
Musically

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Maybe in the future I'll put out someone's one-off project, but generally I don't have time.
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At a certain age, children are total Id - they're anything but beautiful little flowers. That always interests me. The place where the ego and the superego start, and where guilt and socialization and morality takes place, the true root of it.
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I don't throw my body down on the stage at all anymore because I'm sure I'd snap like a twig.
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I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.
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Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do.
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As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.
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The goal is ecstasy, but I don't want to make some sort of saccharine pop music. I want to make something that's completely uncompromising: the best possible music ever made.
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The sexuality of children - there's a lot friction there. That tension interests me a lot.
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I went to art school and never thought I'd be a musician, but then punk rock came along in the late 70s and kind of ruined my life. So I quit art school to get involved in music and I've been doing it ever since.
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I'm more interested in pulling out strands of joy from both myself and the audience. I'm not saying the music or songs are light, just that when they're performed with the correct commitment it's a source of real pleasure, for me anyway.
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I like loud electric guitars because I like how you can just lose your entire being in the sound.
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I'm the band leader. That's not to say that the other people are my minions - they all put in a tremendous amount of personality, and push the music in ways I would never expect.
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Many of the songs were written as a way of paying tribute to specific people, but in the end the songs took on a life of their own and I didn't worry about accuracy or biographical truth, so it's not a problem.
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You make your work and you can't ask for approval when you're doing it. Otherwise, it's going to be untruthful in some way.
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I really wanted to get to the animal core of rock music and eliminate anything that wasn't necessary.
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When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.
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Nina Simone was an entertainer. Bob Dylan was an entertainer. Anyone that can occupy a piece of music and make the air catch on fire at that moment is a true entertainer. That's how I view it. That's what I was meant to do. I love doing it. That's why I'm on earth.
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I used to routinely break my ribs doing stupid things onstage, but I have a healthy fear of breaking my bones now.
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The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.
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Making those CDs, signing them, numbering them, packing them. It takes hundreds of hours, but it's worth it because I'm able to do the thing I love.
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