My personal tastes... I actually like quite a bit acoustic and more mellow kinds of things. I quite like American music, like The Fray, I'm a massive fan of them, and The Killers.
I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.
The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me.
I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.
I don't want to be the cliche American Idol dude. I want to be different, you know - that's the whole goal, me and music. It's about being yourself and being unique.
I've hosted the Soul Train awards, the American Music Awards... and I had my own talk show. So if I can't host by now, what the hell can I do?
I used to go to soul nights because I loved dancing, and so did my friends, and we loved the music. We used to go listen to black American soul.
There is no singular 'reason' why Africans use fractals, any more than a singular reason why Americans like rock music. Such enormous cultural practices just cover too much social terrain.
I'm still trying to make it. I'm still trying to get this over and do it and hopefully leave some kind of a mark on the course of American music, particularly in the tradition of what you might call the singer-songwriter.
But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians, who are imprisoned behind these bars; music's got these bars and measures you know.
I like Celtic folk music, Native American music, and any kind of early music. There isn't a lot of music that I don't like... except for Show Tunes.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
We have the greatest hospitals, doctors, and medical technology in the world - we need to make them accessible to every American.
Harvard Medical School, the University of South Florida and the American Psychiatric Association have all conducted studies showing that the earlier one begins gambling, the more likely it is he or she will become an addicted, problem gambler.
When I took a couple of years to do the documentaries after I left 'American Morning' - what was I gone for, five years? - I didn't feel that I was floating under the radar.
One out of forty American men wears women's clothing. We've had more than forty presidents. One of these guys has been dancing around the Oval Office in a prom dress.
Yes, U.S. travelers dress better. The British are always so conspicuous in hot climates. They don't seem to wear shorts. American men seem to be comfortable wearing hot-weather clothing.
I romanticize. I live with the ghosts of Elvis and Frank Sinatra. It seems so glamorous. They were American men who don't exist anymore. But there are ugly things about them, too.
As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did.
Within a lot of African-American households, I think, there's an idea that black men don't want to take an active participation in the lives of their children. That if they do, there has to be some sort of ulterior motive.
You know that being an American is more than a matter of where your parents came from. It is a belief that all men are created free and equal and that everyone deserves an even break.
