Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's a funny thing. I'll be in my home town of Columbus at a restaurant or something, and the waiter maybe asks, 'What do you do?' and I say, 'Oh, I'm in a band... Twenty One Pilots,' and he'll say, 'Cool, I'll check it out. I never heard of them.' And then I say, 'In September we're playing the Schottenstein Center,' and it's like, 'What?!'
I love the weird overdub style, like 'The Madcap Laughs' by Syd Barrett, where you can tell it's being overdubbed and it's kind of warbly. It creates a different experience. Or the 'White Album,' where you can tell it's overdubbing. But there's something about a band in a room - it's a feeling you can't replicate. There's a feel to the music.
Remember the first time you went to a show and saw your favorite band. You wore their shirt, and sang every word. You didn't know anything about scene politics, haircuts, or what was cool. All you knew was that this music made you feel different from anyone you shared a locker with. Someone finally understood you. This is what music is about.
Signing to a major label was an experiment for us. It was a challenge: working in a big studio with a producer was a challenge in a lot of ways. It all shaped what the band went on to become through the '90s. After we made 'Goo,' we went out and toured with Neil Young in ice hockey arenas for three months, and that was the same kind of thing.
Big band music, to me, it really has three key elements. First is the lyrics are really sweet, and they're just really family-friendly. The second thing is the music is jazz music, so the music is complicated enough to hold your attention for 5 or 6 million plays. That makes the songs interesting. The last part is the fact that it's danceable.
When I was about 15 I had already been recording on my four track in my room, but I couldn't find anyone in my town to be in a band with me. I was in a band very briefly with a bunch of guys and they kicked me out because they wanted to play grindcore. I think they didn't think I could tread hard enough or something. So I started playing solo.
Everyone knows that quote because of the Doors." Jace looked at her blankly. "The Doors. They were a band." "If you say so," he said. "I suppose you don't have much time for enjoying music," Clary said, thinking of Simon, for whom music was his entire life, "in your line of work." He shrugged. "Maybe the occasional wailing chorus of the damned.
My dad and I didn't talk much. Our relationship was OK but not amazing. So there I was, dressed up in my sort of uniform, the clothes my band was wearing at the time. He could tell I was I getting serious. I guess he knew I was going to go for it. So he told me how to handle myself professionally, not to take what people write about me to heart.
There is something to be said though when you have 4 or 5 guys playing with no net, there is a sense of urgency, It is organic with a lot of anticipation and you can hear it, the way it is played. My favorite bands that I love from way back have a lot of things going on and it makes it real, it is not tangible but it is the spirit of the moment.
If people knew that Burzum was just the band of some teenager, that would sort of ruin the magic, and for that reason, I felt that I needed to be anonymous. So I used a pseudonym, Count Grishnackh, and on the debut album, I used a photo of me that didn't look like me at all to make Burzum itself seem more out-of-this world and to confuse people.
I was part of a metal and rock band, and I performed in front of 3000 to 4000 people for many years. I was the loudest mouth up there on stage. We would be screaming, head-banging and mass venting. We would all vent our feelings together, which is ideal as compared to participating in political and social forums, and I never felt any restrictions.
I used to go trick-or-treating all the time. When I was young we had the plastic mask with the rubber band that would cut your face, and you couldn't breathe and it was really sweaty! I had the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man. I used to love the Incredible Hulk, and then one year I had the great idea to be Mr. T, and that was an awesome costume too.
Well, Peter Rowan and I had plans to form a band when he left Bill Monroe. I always thought it was going to be a bluegrass band, but I guess when Peter left Bill Monroe he had had enough of bluegrass. He had written some songs and of course the Beatles were a big influence back then. So, we decided to something different and it ended up being that.
Yes, anyone can log onto your "anonymous" band's MySpace page and hear the music. So, in theory you have gotten your music in front of 5 billion people. The other thing is that something has to cause them to go to those bands MySpace page, and it's that reliance on taste makers or radio, that is still very much a part of how music is sold and marketed.
Man's cleverness is almost indefinite, and stretches like an elastic band, but human nature is like an iron ring. You can go round and round it, you can polish it highly, you can even flatten it a little on one side, whereby you will make it bulge out the other, but you will NEVER, while the world endures and man is man, increase its total circumference.
I listen to everything. As I told you, sometimes I just want to shut off from music and be silent. Then I play a song and it's refreshing. It's almost like initializing yourself. Recently I was in South Africa doing a press day for my tour. I listened to this band called "Freshly Ground." They were doing a live gig there so that's the last thing I've heard.
Some of the best trades come when everyone gets very panicky. The crowd can often act very stupidly in the markets. You can picture price fluctuations around an equilibrium level as a rubber band being stretched -- if it gets pulled too far, eventually it will snap back. As a short-term trader, I try to wait until the rubber band is stretched to its extreme point.
Shannon and all of us started the band so it just felt really natural, and then she quit, and then she came back, and then she quit again. I love working with her and would do it again, but that's just not in the cards. And Josh is a great person to play with - he can play any instrument. He's really inspiring and positive. It was great. It was meant to be temporary.
I've thought about bands or performers who appear from nowhere: You come out of the greenroom in this secure little unit, then you do this thing and you're shielded from everybody. I'm thinking of brilliant people, like Mariah Carey, who have no interaction. They interact with the audience at the time of the live thing but there's no build up and there's no afterward.
Some of my favourites... there's the classics like Blur and Oasis and Pulp, Suede and The Charlatans, The La's, The Smiths, The Cure, stuff like that. That was a huge part of my teen-years and bands I still listen to right through to this day, but it had a huge bearing on me as a teen and it was some of my favourite music, and is still to this day some of my favourite music.
If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly; then I'd go out in the back streets and main streets and bring them in, all the sick, the halt, and the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks; and the band would softly bubble out the 'Hallelujah Chorus'.
Let me be clear: I'm a believer in a robust military, which is essential for backing up diplomacy. But the implication is that we need a balanced tool chest of diplomatic and military tools alike. Instead, we have a billionaire military and a pauper diplomacy. The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service - and that's preposterous.
The rewriting is always crucial to what I do; whenever I do a scene, I always tell myself that this isn't final and that I can do it again, better. The pacing is probably from experience. I've always liked gradual disclosure. I keep thinking of my rubber-band theory. You have a rubber band that you keep pulling and pulling and pulling, and just at the moment of snapping you release it and start another chapter and start pulling again.
After a harassing warfare, prolonged by the nature of the country and by the difficulty of procuring subsistence, the Indians were entirely defeated, and the disaffected band dispersed or destroyed. The result has been creditable to the troops engaged in the service. Severe as is the lesson to the Indians, it was rendered necessary by their unprovoked aggressions, and it is to be hoped that its impression will be permanent and salutary.
Every band should study Queen at Live Aid. If you really feel like that barrier is gone, you become Freddie Mercury. I consider him the greatest frontman of all time. Like, it's funny? You'd imagine that Freddie was more than human, but... You know how he controlled Wembley Stadium at Live Aid in 1985? He stood up there and did his vocal warm ups with the audience. Something that intimate, where they realize, 'Oh yeah, he's just a f***ing dude.'
Men are noisy, narrow-band devices, but their nervous systems have very many parallel and simultaneously active channels. Relative to men, computing machines are very fast and very accurate, but they are constrained to perform only one or a few elementary operations at a time. Men are flexible, capable of "programming themselves contingently" on the basis of newly received information. Computing machines are single-minded, constrained by their "pre-programming."
Personally, the message that I would like to convey to everyone is just that life is really great and you can do whatever you want with it. That's what I feel like I've gotten out of my experience with the band, because I have done so many amazing things that I never thought I would get to do-and I don't really feel like I'm any more qualified than the next person. I feel like people should take their goals seriously and do exactly what they want, because they can.
Christmas turns things tail-end foremost. The day and the spirit of Christmas rearrange the world parade. As the world arranges it, usually there come first in importance -- leading the parade with a big blare of a band -- the Big Shots. Frequently they are also the Stuffed Shirts. That's the first of the parade. Then at the tail end, as of little importance, trudge the weary, the poor, the lame, the halt, and the blind. But in the Christmas spirit, the procession is turned around. Those at the tail end are put first in the arrangement of the Child of Christmas.
