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Along with its enchanting and exquisite melodies, West Side Story has attitude and a tremendous amount of frenetic energy. It's emotional, theatrical and technical. It's everything.
In my experience as a record producer, the people who most get involved are the people from independent labels who feel they have more to do with it; it's their "baby" kind of thing.
There's an interesting thing I've seen with Australian bands: when you put them side-by-side with bands from other parts of the world, they're just more musical. They're just better.
I can write the stuff and play it myself and have something in my head, but the best feeling is when somebody else plays it and they're hearing something other than what I'm hearing.
I love Chicago. It was an awesome place to grow up. It's a big city but it doesn't feel like one. I can't imagine that if I had kids I would raise them anywhere else besides Chicago.
One of my realizations is that if you revel over joy, you're going to ache over pain and get killed over hurt. Your span of feelings are going to go just as far one way as the other.
I wanted to be in a band that gave bang for the buck. I wanted to be in the band who didn't look like a bunch of guys who, you know, should be in a library studying for their finals.
Nobody does just one thing. But the real difference between being an entrepreneur and everyone else in the world is the ability to monetize. I am an entrepreneur in the classic mold.
We've gotten involved in cat rescue - we take them in and find homes for them. I've always loved cats. I saw how homeless cats were living out there. We take them in, put out flyers.
Rhythm and sex go together and that's where I come from as far as the music goes. Rag Doll and Love In An Elevator are such sexual songs that you put them on & the strippers go NUTS!
Even if my songs are a bit low-spirited, they make me happy. I become happy when I hear sad songs. When you sing about sad things in a beautiful way, the atmosphere turns upside down
You just never know when somebody's gonna die. It could happen at any moment so you've got to really treat everybody that way. Just really let everybody know how you feel about them.
When I was younger, and Iron Maiden and Def Leppard and all that stuff was coming out, I was learning all those songs and trying to play guitar and develop my chops. I was a big fan.
People see my current success but don't realize I've worked hard to get where I am. I used to clean garbage off the Philadelphia docks and put a lot of time into developing my music.
I feel like I've matured more musically than I have personally. But I totally embrace what becoming older has to offer. I find the wisdom that comes with each passing year is a trip.
The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.
I look in music magazines now and see things on Luther Allison, and my name's getting out there more, thanks to all the good people at Alligator Records and at my management company.
We got a little waylaid along the way. The whole problem started about 10 years ago with management and legal battles, then still trying to make albums while I was doing all of that.
I'm all for sharing music, but when people can download a whole record and pay nothing for it and then they share it with 100,000 other people, it's breaking down the whole business.
... you watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can't even begin to imagine where he came from
Still to this day, I am deeply satisfied when watching a guitar player who is connected with their art and instrument. GuitarTV helps you tap into that connection, and to each other.
It's hard to go out in front of people with an acoustic guitar and improvise for 30 or 40 minutes, but I had a compulsion to do it. I just had to in a way that I can't really explain.
I was working at eBay, so I would just troll the vintage categories, find old amps and what have you. I was buying a fair amount of stuff and playing with it and then selling it back.
Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.
Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering "who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?"
I don't live with the 'right' people. I don't want to. I don't want to live with the rich in Beverly Hills or walk the streets of Hollywood. I want to go to K-mart and get good deals.
I live like in the days of Daniel Boone, hauling water by hand. I used to have two Rolls-Royces. Now I got one. It's got four flat tires; the trunk is open, and a rat lives inside it.
After 9/11, people all of a sudden became patriotic and showed the colors. Why did it take something bad to happen? It means something. People have died for it, and continue to do so.
If your songs connect with the fans and they pump their fists in the air and go "Yeah!!" that's when a song really works. That's the electric church of it. The glory hallelujah of it.
That's why I'm a big supporter of the death penalty. I want to be the hangman. I would put many more people to death like the kids who want to kill other people, I'd put 'em to death.
Personally I support 14,000 kids in Zambia - I feed and clothe them - but I don't hold press conferences about it. I don't do it so you'll think what a nice person I am; it's private.
People spend their careers trying to figure out what makes a hit single. But I learned a long time ago that you can't anticipate what people want, because it's always going to change.
I've always felt you are only as good as your next album or next show. What you've done is done. When you get a gold record, you hang it on the wall, and then it's like, 'Yeah, next?'
In our relationship, we don't have that situation. I don't require what he needs, and he doesn't require what I need. I know what I do; I have an amazing life that nobody knows about.
Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it - 'St. Anger' being the fire and 'Death Magnetic' being the phoenix.
We are doing what Prince did. Everyone that comes to a show billed as An Evening with Journey will get our new CD. We figured that is our best store because they are our biggest fans.
I'm a big fan of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French photographer who had that whole "decisive moment" approach to taking pictures, of having multiple elements line up within the frame.
Obviously the biggest change is that it's me by myself. When you don't have another band interpreting your songs or playing them the way that they have, it's bound to sound different.
When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them.
I started out as a drummer, and when I was 9, my drum teacher had an album out. He was the rudiment king! He signed it for me, 'Rudimentally yours, Frank Arsenault.' How cool is that?
Standing and playing next to Tony Williams was pretty amazing. One of the things I learned about being a band leader from Tony was that he would never, ever tell me what to play or do.
We recorded that trio and it's out on the Knitting Factory label. I've got another record in the can with that group and Marc, which I'll hopefully finish some time before next summer.
It takes a lot of devotion and work, or maybe I should say play, because if you love it, that's what it amounts to I haven't found any shortcuts, and I've been looking for a long time.
My top lady advice is to make eye contact early on - before introductions, even - and just never break it, no matter what she does. Keep that dead-eyed lock on her. Works like a charm.
The school was prone to dishing out punishments for anything creative that didn't fit with expectation - I just followed the logic and figured the folk club was probably much the same.
So why sign your name in blood for more? It seemed like a sensible arrangement for me. I didn't sell large numbers of records and the record company paid advances they rarely recouped.
She started drinkin' we weren't thinkin' too straight, she was doing eighty slammed on the brakes. Got so hot we had to pull to the side, did some shakin' 'til the middle of the night.
I'm not any different from you or the guy down the street or across the globe, we're all connected in some way and hopefully my music can integrate that feeling of human connectedness.
In Japan they're definitely more over the top. They had four Boogie stacks and 20 guitars. But otherwise it's pretty much the same thing, except there's a translator. It's really nice.
I thought people cared about music in a deep way, so I was writing to that spirit in people and in myself. It was me, thinking I knew what was up. Youth, who else can change the world?