Sometimes people will ask a real "Why are you beating your wife?" question where there's some assumption built … - John Flansburgh

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I like hiding somewhere, like, say on a bus street in a doorway, and taking pictures without people knowing - which sounds really creepy. . . . You get some of the most interesting pictures because people are walking past not realising you're there.

John Flansburgh

Sometimes people will ask a real "Why are you beating your wife?" question where there's some assumption built into it, and all you're trying to do is kind of re-contextualize it with some element of truth, and it comes across as incredibly defensive, or just really weird.

Defensive, Incredibly, People, Real, Truth, Wife

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In Germany there's something about rock music much more political than it really is - like everything you were doing was an indictment of the American culture. I read an interview with one of the members of Sebadoh. He was saying he had just got back from touring Germany for the first time in five years or whatever, and one of the interviewers asked him, "Why aren't you still relevant?"

Culture, Music, Political, Relevant, Rock Music, Sebadoh

That really sums up the strange bluntness that a really prime German interview can have. They're really interested in your cultural velocity in this way that I don't think people in the United States even necessarily think about alternative-rock bands. So it's not like we're against regular rock. We're not like a battling army shaking our weapons against The Rolling Stones.

Army, Cultural, Like, People, Shaking, Thinking

Being in a band, a lot of times people think of what you're doing in terms of a competition. They talk about where you are professionally in your career, and all this other stuff. And if you're a lifer, you know it's going to be ups and downs. It's not like anybody is always just steady on.

Band, Competition, People, Steady, Thinking, Times

Sometimes you have to wonder if there isn't an ejector seat built into having a popular-music career. We were lucky when we started. We were already old when we started - you could have described our first album as "aging Brooklyn guys. " We were in our late 20s. We weren't octogenarians, but a lot of bands were already younger than us. Fortunately, we've held on to our manly good looks.

Aging, Bands, Brooklyn, Guy, Lucky, Seat

There have been times I wanted to cry on interview, but it hasn't been because that's what they're trying to conjure. No. I think you have to graduate to some higher level of TV IQ for people to actually want to see you cry.

Graduate, Higher, People, See, Thinking, Trying