Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song smoke a pack of whiskey and it'll all take care of itself.
There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.
Something just happens when you're making a record, where certain things start to come out. It's just something in the air.
The only way I was allowed to play was by convincing bands to let me do a few songs while they set up. That went on for years.
I've never been able to relate to apathy. I've always been doing stuff, been in action, making music or working just to get by.
There are certain records that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production.
I never had any expectations of winning a Grammy. It wasn't something I was set on, that I was hoping and praying and starving for.
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child, in whom we trace the features of the mother's face, her aspect and her attitude.
With modern recording techniques, and living in the Pro Tools era, the process gets really drawn-out, and it can become painstaking.
There's more things that I'd like to do. You know, each song is a little bit of a puzzle. I see most of them as just failed attempts.
When I was a kid and putting out my first records, there was a lot made out of the fact that the '50s/'60s generation was so dominant.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder what makes music or culture or taste go in certain directions. Who knows what the forces are behind it.
You just want to go back to those 70s albums. Even a lot of the 90s indie records were still done on tape, and you hear the difference.
You can't meditate on walking or certain human habits. You concentrate too much on the way you walk, and you'll start walking pretty weird.
I enjoy recording live better, but I think by the nature of it you are going to end up with something that's a little bit more traditional.
Especially in music, you wonder, Okay, should I still be doing this? Like, are you overstaying your welcome at the party? But I don't know.
I'm always looking for older equipment and ways of recording, but you can't escape the fact that it's all going to be digitized and reduced.
Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don't really see such stark lines between genres nowadays.
I'm sure the music is going to come out. I'm not sure if I'm going to put out 12"s or put the songs on my website. I just have to get them done.
When you use some of the more modern recording devices and Pro Tools, when you get into the technology, you are aching to get into some territory.
Sea Change was so specific. From the beginning it was set what it was going to be. All the other ideas that I had at the time I had to put to the side.
I have heard some stuff that might be influenced by my records, but it's usually pretty wacky and off-the-wall, which is kind of annoying, to be frank.
I hear a lot of bad TV commercials that try to sound like Where It's At. That pretty much turned me off from using the electric piano for a lot of years.
I didn't want to be on a major label. I wanted all the attention and the noise to go away because I wanted to be something a little bit more substantial.
If someone is making a judgment when they don't have firsthand experience, it's intolerant. How can you make a judgment on something you don't know about?
Being able to take musical ideas through every iteration is attractive to me. Granted, not everyone's going to want to listen to that, but it should exist.
When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You're hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines.
Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.
There are a lot of technical studio things I've learned or figured out, and I feel like I could use those things to help other people with what they're doing.
If we look at the fact that record covers are essentially advertisements for the music, we acknowledge a function and purpose to draw in the prospective buyer.
Eventually, if you're experimenting with a sound that's unfamiliar, it gets absorbed, and somebody comes and does it better, and it becomes part of a vocabulary.
In the past it seemed like I was making fun of rap a little bit. But it was more me making fun of myself, since I'm not technically a rapper, whatever that means.
I don't remember half of the new bands, though - and I think that's kind of where we're going. It's turning into just a big derby of songs. May the best song win.
I feel like I've spent the majority of my time touring and traveling, so if I reduced the actual time making music, it's probably four and a half years at the most.
When you say 'state' you mean 'national.' National Socialism. That is what Mussolini and Hitler did. National Socialism. State Capitalism. They've changed the name.
In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs.
What Spotify pays me is not even enough to pay the musicians playing with me or the people working on the discs. It's not working. Something is going to have to give.
There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released.
To me, 'rock star' conjures up something like a mystic: someone who sees himself as above other people, someone who has the key to the secret that people want to know.
We play a hip-hop song and suddenly 25 people on the left jump up and put their hands in the air; then you play Lost Cause and they're like, I don't know about this one.
There's more well-known artists who aren't making as good songs as people who are just coming out of nowhere. That seems to be more typical in the last few years than ever.
The years keep going by and you realize, Wow. Doing these records is such a process: going on tour for a year and a half, then you get home and you want to do other things.
I sat out a few years because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do next. So many things were changing in music and in culture, so it seemed like a good time to step back.
I hadn't done much rapping in a while. I really wasn't sure I was going to do that any more. For a couple years I thought I was done with that. It wasn't really required of me.
Whether you're aware of it or not, any kind of collage idea becomes a part of how you see the world once you incorporate media and internet and video games and all these things.
There are people who've prepared their whole lives for real heavy success and bask in it. They're so good at it and they obviously love it. I'm just happy to be making a record.
I've been arguing with people for 10 years about tape versus digital, and I believe tape is absolutely essential in getting the sound that's conducive to the enjoyment of music.
There's some quality you get when you're not totally comfortable. When you're not doing what you're used to, you could completely fall on your face. You could completely blow it.
Tonight the city is full of morgues, and all the toilets are overflowing. There's shopping malls coming out of the walls, as we walk out among the manure. That's why I pay no mind.
Originally, the lyrics to "Girl" were really upbeat, and then it didn't work for me somehow. You need the dichotomy. If you're doing something happy and light, you need the shadows.