Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think that Phish has been a band, we've all had- I've had a great life growing up and everybody in my band's had a really good life, none of us have got anything to complain about at all.
You're not there to spread any particular- if you're Bob Marley you're there to spread a message, but very few people can do that effectively without shoving opinions down someone's throat.
At the end of the day, they're happy if you do the obvious songs towards the end of the set and you've got to try and make yourself happy by doing certain songs at the front end of the set.
In the very beginning we were a real tight family but now it's different. You know, toward the end, we had separate limos, stuff like that. It's hard to get six giant egos in the same place.
I'm doing it with a rock format and the words are about people living in harmony with Mother Earth. It's very important to me - and I feel it should be for every living human on this planet.
I will always desire to play with Bruce Springsteen. He's the most inspirational, most dedicated, most committed and most focused artist I've ever seen. I like to be around people like that.
In any case, fighting will not settle whether the claims were just or unjust. It will only settle which nation can mobilize and handle its fighting forces and its economic forces the better.
I think at one time every drummer wanted to play like Krupa or wanted to win a Gene Krupa drum contest. This is the big inspiration for drummers and naturally it has to be the same way for me.
I would love to have some sort of 'Back To The Future' Delorean time machine travel device so I could go back to 1981 to see that very first Jackson 5 concert I went to, back when I was a kid.
It's something that - jazz is one of the few things that you can go and listen to, I don't care where you're from, what you are, what background you come from - there's something there for you.
I think we filmed a lot of the recording and it would be nice to do something with it but you know, videos are tricky because we know how to make albums but I'm not very good at video editing .
My life's goal is to find a happy medium for sampling to be not only legal but for the right parties to benefit from it. There have to be sampling laws. The survival of hiphop is based on that.
I hear a lot of cries of socialism and certainly real disguises of "Why should I share my money with these people?" We have to get back to "we." It's important to get back to "we" not just "I."
I've been married to music my entire life. I've been dedicated to it. I know what it takes to do it. And ever since my brother has been taken from me, I feel like I have to live for both of us.
It was very necessary I think 'cause you know, when the band's over, or at least in our heads, for a year it makes you really realize how lucky you are to be doing this and why piss in the well?
Everything has a beginning and an end. Life is just a cycle of starts and stops. There are ends we don't desire, but they're inevitable, we have to face them. It's what being human is all about.
My brother was always in bands and on the road when I was a kid and he was my inspiration. He never made it with a big band, in fact he never made a record. Here he is fifty-something years old.
People are always spewing this horseshit about how age doesn't matter. Well, it does matter! I'm thirty-five, and I'm happy to be thirty-five. I can't pretend I'm still a snot-nosed 21-year-old.
Stick choice should be every drummers first decision. Sticks are the liaison between you and your creative expression on the drums. Getting there the smoothest way is the reason I'm using Vater.
In the Woodstock movie, you see Justin, my son, who is now a filmmaker, being carried off by my wife at the time to the helicopter. He's just this little bundle of joy in her arms. And it's 1969.
I have been steadily exchanging a rock audience who were nervous about what they had just bought for a jazz audience who not only were happy with their purchase, but are increasingly coming again.
Today's consumer is less interested in possessing things and more in experiencing them. That's something the music industry needs to get its head around. Do we even need record companies any more?
I have reached zero tolerance for the cruelty against our animal brothers. If we are to nuture our culture, let's begin with the animals who have been nothing but our beasts of burden for so long.
Nirvana was like that- Nirvana was like the only band to come out of that- it was like the same thing, Seattle was like this whole scene and it was like this big scene that was thrust upon America.
But it's funny that now I'm in such a happy situation, I look more objectively at my own past and see what others have seen for a long time and I'm just so glad I've been able to get to this point.
I went to work with a guy named Matt Fuller, who was a Mothers fan, and low and behold, Arthur was working for him also. We worked together for about six months and decided to strike out on our own.
The lyrics came out of necessity. When we started writing the record, we started in a more fusion environment and that got boring really quick and that wasn't what we were about on an organic level.
There's the drums, the music, the melodies, the lyrics, the production, the artwork: there are so many elements to making an album, and the drumming is just a very small fraction of what I focus on.
I don't really have that much control over where I play. I put out parameters and I accept what I can. If it's really low, or I had a bad experience at a place then I usually don't play there again.
I also played with Jimi Hendrix. Jimi would come down and sit in with Retaliation and we would have a ball. He offered me the gig with him at 20 pounds a week, which at that point, was like 60 bucks.
At first it was a bit daunting, but once I started to do it, the more I got into it, the more I started enjoying it and being able to say things lyrically that I would normally have to say musically.
I guess I did make my name out of my drumming, and I have the big drum sets, and I'm doing all these crazy, odd-time signatures, so, yeah, I guess drumming was very important to what made me popular.
I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.
I mean, I think I liked every band I ever played in because each band was different, each band had a different concept, and each band leader was different... different personalities and musical tastes.
I'm amazed at how adventurous and how dangerous the music was, and still is. I haven't heard anything like it since. I'm quite surprised, because a lot of the music on there we never heard at the time.
The band that I was I auditioning for, they were just all like, dreads and stuff, so I did look kind of out of place. But I had learned the material and it sounded cool as f**k when we were rehearsing.
For us the Dresden Dolls were porcelain dolls that were made in that city at the time, that is what they were to us, and also a reference in Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, and in a song by The Fall.
I'm quite sure that all true professional artists, of every description, in all walks of life, whether their craft is painting, music, sculpture, medicine or anything have one primary concern - mankind.
I have to give my family credit for putting up with the racket, because as some of you may know, its not the easiest thing in the world to live with a kid who's trying to become a rock and roll drummer.
A lot of bands, they'll try to jump on the bandwagon or the fad or the fashion, and they'll skyrocket, have this quick overnight fame. But as soon as that fad or fashion changes, they'll go out with it.
I first met Jelly Roll in Chicago. He was livin' high then. You know, Jelly was a travelin' cat, sharp and good lookin' and always about he wrote this and that and the other thing - in fact, everything!
I saw Al Foster with Miles Davis the other week. It was beautiful. But, the whole thing was, Al Foster played as well as everybody else, but all of them were quite brilliant under Miles Davis' direction.
I'm quite sure that all true professional artists, of every description, in all walks of life, whether their craft is painting, music, sculpture, medicine or anything, have one primary concern - mankind.
I don't know how Frank presented the old Mothers, since I never read the book. There might be some opinions on what he said, but I - or anyone else - could not make any corrections to anything Frank did.
I really do care what people think, and I revolved my whole career and all the twenty five years with Dream Theater... I ran that band and made decisions based on caring what the fans thought and wanted.
I always wanted to play music, and always loved it. I saw a band come to school, when I was in elementary school, and wanted to play drums. I started playing drums at 11, and that's where it all started.
With the exception of Megadeth, I can't imagine any band we were hesitant about touring with. I mean we liked the original Megadeth, but I can't think of any band we toured with we weren't psyched about.
At the moment I have my family coming out with me on the road. We have our own vehicle and its more like a family vacation. I just stop, do some gigs, and take off. Its a lot more fun now with the family.
I'm not a haiku artist, but I wanted to use the phrase 5, 7, 5 in the melody that flows over time. So the string melody, the first one is five notes, the next one is seven, and then the third one is five.
We always work at least a month to six weeks before we go on the road, usually for something like eight to 12 hours a night. It took six weeks to do it this time. We just play virtually everything we know.