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When I walk around New York now, there are so many ghosts. I find it very uncomfortable. There were many hard years, and I never really achieved any kind of comfortable financial success, so I just associate it with struggle. When I had a chance to get out, I was elated.

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
Kind
Walks
Associates
Years
Struggle
Achieved
Really
Chance
Ghost
Never
Success
Uncomfortable
Around
Financial
Find
York
Elated
Many
Comfortable
Associate
Hard
Walk
Ghosts

More quotes by Michael Gira

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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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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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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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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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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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I'm pretty confident that people are going to come along for the ride. If they don't, tough.
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I have my own record company. I have to answer to God, basically. I'm not young, so I want to make the best possible work I can before I exit.
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It's good that people come to the shows because there's nothing fashionable about Swans. Never has been, really. We've never been part of a scene. So the people that come are really there for the music. Fortunately, there's a lot of young people and a burgeoning female contingent, which is good as well.
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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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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.
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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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Swans are majestic, beautiful looking creatures. With really ugly temperaments.
Michael Gira
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I never wrote poetry, just prose. I don't really consider songwriting a form of poetry either. The words are important, of course, but they're dependent on the music.
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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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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 could never release something on the label I didn't personally love. The label's really an extension of my own musical career, and I'm intensely involved with every aspect personally, so it'd be a betrayal to myself if I released something simply because I thought it would make money.
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I'm a producer in the old-school way - not just some slacker working on Pro Tools.
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I got involved, for the most part, in the actual song construction, lyrics even. I didn't want to write the lyrics, but if there was a howler in there, I definitely pointed it out. Just trying to bring it up to a higher level. Of course, after a couple records, people get fed up with that. That's fine.
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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.
Michael Gira
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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.
Michael Gira