Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The wonderful thing about rock music is even if you hate the other person, sometimes you need him more, you know. In other words if he's the guy that made that sound, he's the guy that made that sound, and without that guy making that sound, you don't have a band, you know.
Apache have the strongest nation in the world behind them. So we're going to inflict pain where our European aunts and uncles had to endure it. And so the fact that you could actually get Nazis scared of a band of Jews, that's - again, that's a gigantic psychological thing.
The most significant bands I played in when I first got to New York were Bobby Watson's band, Roy Hargrove's first band, Benny Golson's band, Benny Green's trio, and probably the most significant out of all of those, for me personally, was playing in Freddie Hubbard's band.
I grew up listening to pop music with my dad in the car, and we'd just listen to Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Earth Wind & Fire, KC and the Sunshine Band - all that good stuff. So to see it snaking its way back around again is really exciting, and I love listening to the radio.
The idea behind 'NecroFusion' came about when Praga Khan of Lords of Acid contacted me after I started making a bunch of Twitter posts about how big a fan I was. Lords of Acid was my favorite band in high school, and Praga is a true pioneer of that style of electronic music.
It's a magical thing, the guitar. It allows you to be the whole band in one, to play rhythm and melody, sing over the top. And as an instrument for solos, you can bend notes, draw emotional content out of tiny movements, vibratos and tonal things which even a piano can't do.
You know how kids will wait outside after a gig and try to get an autograph from the band? I would do that, but when I found the guitar player, I would say, 'What advice can you give me?' And a lot of my heroes would say, 'Have your own style.' I always kept that in my head.
No matter what happens with EDM, I would like to go to New Orleans and just play with one of those small funk bands in an intimate venue. How cool would it be to work with a band with those huge horn lines and produce all of that great funk that makes you just want to party?
When it comes to influences, we are influenced not just by Japanese and overseas metal acts, but J-pop acts too. One Japanese rock band we're particularly fond of is Seikima-II. We were attracted by their brand of devil imagery and of course, their high-quality musicianship.
I doubt anyone has ever accused comedians of solidarity before. It's hard to think of a less collegiate world than that of unabashed professional narcissists competing for attention; even when we reluctantly band together on panel shows, we're only trying to sell solo tours.
Growing up going to Christian school and the concept that you're born a sinner and you don't really have a choice to change who you are has been hammered into my head and created the entire reason why I made art and made a band and made records called 'Antichrist Superstar.'
When you play in a band, you're in phase with people. When you're a DJ, you're totally off-phase. Your work time is 3 A.M. - 5 A.M. and I don't think you can connect. You're miserable the whole time. Whenever I see a DJ in the airport, they are always on the verge of crying.
When I was a very young kid, the first music that really turned me on was a new wave of British heavy metal - big, dumb rock music. There was a band called Diamond Head - they were basically the band that inspired Metallica. But I also liked bands like Saxon and Iron Maiden.
It is seldom right to say that anything is true 'according to Google.' Google is the oracle of redirection. Go there for 'hamadryad,' and it points you to Wikipedia. Or the Free Online Dictionary. Or the Official Hamadryad Web Site (it's a rock band, too, wouldn't you know).
I think music is so diverse today, and bands are so diverse. If you were a rock band in the Eighties, you kind of had to stick to one thing. Now, in this age of Coachella and European festivals and stuff, it's kind of anything goes, so that allowed us to try different things.
When we did a lot of that Motown stuff there were four of us on the front line. When we started the evening we'd start from one end of the band and just go along. The lead singer would change all the time. That's the first time that I actually managed to put it into a record.
Blackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren't able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.
Throughout my whole life, as a performer, I've never played with a band. I've always played alone, so I was never required to stay in rhythm or anything. So it was a real different experience for me to start playing with a band. There were so many basic things for me to learn.
As much as I want to go out and tour every single day and I'm ready to rip it right now, there's five people in the band, there's five people who've evolved and grown and there's five people who have to get on the same page and want the same things, and it takes a lot to tour.
I wasn't really terribly familiar with the Beatles when I met George. They were just emerging. They certainly weren't as big as they became later on. I just knew them as a pop group, and that's all. I was keener on George as a man and a person, as opposed to someone in a band.
When Alcatrazz played in Japan in early '84, the record label offered me the opportunity to do a solo album while continuing to play in the band. I wanted the whole album to have vocals, but the record company didn't want that. Initially, the album was released solely in Japan.
In high school, I had a wonderful teacher who, coincidentally also taught Meryl Streep before me. At the same time I had my own rock band, I played bass and sang. I was one of those kids who really enjoyed being with my friends and doing rather insane, but fun, creative things.
I like working with great talent, in every capacity. I have a rule of thumb, in any creative endeavor - whether I'm doing music and playing in a band, or working with producers, or directing - where I generally like to work with people who are smarter than me or better than me.
'Life Changes' is a song that we feel really connects to the spirit of our band and our fans. It's got that positive vibe we always want to put out there, and the message - no matter how many times you get knocked down, always get back up - will forever be part of the GC story.
When I first started drinking, it was working for me. It was great. Like when you're doing a gig and you're in a band and you're in the truck and there's nothing to do in the truck and the gigs are all the same and the hotels are all the same...it's the hotels, the car, the gig.
There's always a spattering of people who see Hanson who were influenced by classic '60's and '70's rock and roll. In a lot of ways, we're sort of the anatomy of a '70's rock band if you examine what we do: white guys who grew up listening to soul music from the '50's and '60's.
We don't want to be Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. That type of thing wasn't what we were after. It was most important for each of us to be equal in input and output - each of us has to pull the same amount, musically, in composition and in every sense of being in the band.
My whole thing is having the perfect balance. Let's say I go to school. I have a day at school. That's the perfect amount of reality. Then I go and play music with my band. Then I go home and hang out with my family and my pets. I think that's the perfect amount of reality time.
European festivals area lot bigger than American ones, but I like the travelling festivals, it's the same production every day and the bands get used to the stage set up and by the third or fourth show of the tour they're putting on a better show than if they just played one day.
I look upon meself as... You take a band that's made up of arms, legs, bodies... I happen to be the piece that talks. And does all that area of it, you know? I'm also very easy to recognize; the darkie in the middle jumping around with the guitar, you know. Dat boy's got rhydm!!!
[Gord] Downie has become more animated than the early days, but he's still the same charismatic performer. And as a whole, that band is really the result of each individual member. If one member was not a part of it, it wouldn't be the Hip. They're all crucial to the whole thing.
I was a bicycle messenger when Alkaline Trio was formed as a way to make ends meet before the band became a career, and I've just always been a cyclist - I BMX'd, and then I got really into - through messengering - I got really into road bikes and fixed gears, which I still have.
Mostly by [listening to] Green Day. I listened to music a little bit before I had heard of them, but after I'd heard of them, I knew music was my calling. I listened to it all day, and I loved it so much that I wanted to be a part of it, so I worked on being in a band from there.
'Frayed Ends Of Sanity' off the 'Justice' album is a song that I really wanted to play with the band, and for years and years, I was always like, 'Let's play this song!' But I'll tell you something: I started working on that song almost from the very first time I joined the band.
I loved 'Rock Lobster.' I probably heard 'Rock Lobster' first at a party or dance. Then we would do the Rock Lobster - get down on the floor and do the whole dance. I thought that was really cool and exciting, that there was actually a band that had their own dance at that point.
I heard a quote once in a documentary about a band that said you're better off owning everything 100 percent and selling 20,000 copies of an album than signing with a record company and selling a million copies. There has never been a truer statement about show business than that.
Tom Petty was one of my guitar students; I knew Duane, and Stephen and I had a band. When he left, Bernie Leadon moved to Gainesville. His father was a nuclear physicist who was sent to the University of Florida to start their nuclear research facility, so he and I became friends.
For me, it's always this constant battle and search when I'm out on stage as to where and when do I really open myself up to the people that are there. How do I let myself feel present in the space, and how do I allow myself to get into the music and interact with the band members.
Everybody in my band is married, pretty much, and have lives at home, and I don't want them to be away from their families so long that they just start to feel psychotic. You have to go home and stand around in your bathrobe doing your dishes to feel like a normal person sometimes.
Although my music is electronic, it has a lot of influences from my past, which is all sorts of genres; I've been in a rock-metal band for a long time, and I still feel like, personally, I have a lot of influence from that. My classical influence, you can find spots here and there.
I remember at one point, with a previous release of mine, I stumbled upon a shareware site, and the total number of downloads was in the thousands, maybe the hundreds of thousands. But there's no doubt that the Internet and that kind of sharing has been a huge benefit for the band.
Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough.
One of the greatest things about our band is that we bring the American dream to the world. Here's a bunch of kids that were living in nowhere New Jersey, and we made it through a lot of practice and a lot of work and a lot of luck. It shows the world, 'If we did it, you can do it.'
It's been a long struggle. But we've made huge progress. I mean, when I started at Berkeley, women weren't allowed to be part of the band. No women were allowed into the male faculty club. I mean, I was there. I remember that! The worlds were so divided. So the change has been huge.
In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the 'Mind of God' is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace.
At some private events, we'll see the CEO of the company get up and do his 'Rock Lobster' dance. The band used to grumble that, 'All they talk about is hair and don't take us seriously,' but I've realized that what this band does the best is let loose and let people's freak flag fly.
I majored in extracurriculars, honestly. I joined the Harvard Stand Up Comedy Society, which is a ragtag band of misfits. I wrote for 'On Harvard Time,' which was a student TV show trying to be 'The Daily Show.' And I wrote a humor column for 'The Crimson' starting my sophomore year.
I'm used to coming up with a lot of parts. And I don't have to do that so much [with Divine Fits]. This is the kind of band I've always wanted to be in because we never set up any aesthetic rules when we started it. We just wrote and edited, and it ended up sounding like Divine Fits.
I've actually thought very little about solo work up until just very recently. Most of it is because in my band, Incubus, it is very much a collaborative effort. I do what I do in the band, and everyone plays their respective parts, but in the end, we are sort of a democratic process.
When I was 9, I was into T. Rex, Gary Glitter, and Alice Cooper. I knew The Beatles because my nan introduced me to them, but T. Rex was the first band I got into myself. I got 'Metal Guru' a few months after hearing 'Children of the Revolution' in Pwllheli in North Wales at a market.