Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig has been talking about his musical influences to Hot Press – and, no, they don’t include Paul Simon’s Graceland!
“The first genre that I became obsessed with as a kid was ska,” he enthuses, “Desmond Dekker and The Specials. When I first started listening to late ‘70s punk stuff, I immediately became most interested in records that were coming out in ’79 and ’80. The Clash and The Slits certainly couldn’t be pigeonholed as western guitar music, but it was also incredibly natural in the way that it came about. The Tom Tom Club and all those early rap singles… I found it inspiring to think about how at that time period things weren’t as segregated.”
Read the whole interview in the new Hot Press – the one with a smoldering Paolo Nutini on the cover! – out on Thursday January 28.