Chris Baio

Professions :

Musician

Born :

October 29, 1984

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.

done share

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.

apartment thinking

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.

chill beer men

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.

successful people thinking

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.

trying people

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.

crush growing-up girl

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.

college class teacher

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.

california reflection song

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.

running people thinking

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.

play song thinking

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.

library different years

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.

powerful song thinking

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.

college song thinking

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.

math teacher jobs

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.

people years thinking

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.

rocks people thinking

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.

secret long people

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.

song art thinking

I guess in general, because it's such a popular trend in mainstream American pop, that there's been some kind of negative reaction to it. But at the same time, it's a really interesting effect and really interesting texture, and a lot of credit goes to Rostam for producing our music, and all the work that he puts into it, and just trying different things. Ezra did a vocal take, Rostam threw auto-tune on it, and we all liked the way it sounded.

auto-tune trying-different-things interesting

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.

track interesting thinking

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