On The Verge

Diehard

Brooklyn, N.Y.
‘90s Revival with a Vengeance
www.diehardnyc.wordpress.com

“My favorite scene in the movie is when Hans is screaming, ‘Shoot the glass!’ to the German henchman who doesn’t even speak English but somehow manages to understand him,” chuckles Ezra Selove in reference to the 1988 action classic Die Hard that he named his band after. The handle stems from an inside joke between himself and co-songwriter/ guitarist Liz Schroeter Courtney following the frontman’s comical misinterpretation of a verse that she had written for “Christine,” a tune featured on the Brooklyn quartet’s fulllength debut The Times We Didn’t Have Fun. “One of the first times I heard her sing the lyrics, I thought she said, ‘Hey John McClane, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ What she actually said was ‘jellybean,’” he remembers. “So I suggested we call ourselves Diehard for a laugh—only she liked it and became quite adamant that we keep it.” However, Selove also fancies the name as a fitting testament to the group’s sound, which faithfully draws from underground icons of their youth such as Superchunk, Bluetip and Centro-matic. “Those bands are in my bloodstream,” Selove proclaims. “We’re total diehards for ‘90s indie rock, which is something I don’t think is gonna change anytime soon.”