I was really conscious of that when I went in because I felt that I was pretty solid on the first one, but I didn't have the groove exactly where I wanted it.
Before I got into stand-up, I used to be a hip-hop dancer in a crew, and my name was J. Smoove, and my partner was J. Groove.
This is laid down with a groove funkier and blacker than anything Prince of Michael Jackson--or any other black artist of the recent years for that matter--has come up with.
When you hit a groove, it's not you; it's the spirit world. The spirits whisper the ideas in your brain and prod you along. They're the ones that are really happy.
Balance, the stroke of the wise, the style of the sharp. The way, the groove. Bal-ance: the sole of the feet, the soul of the Universe, takes step after step down the beat to time: da DUM, da DUM. Bal. Ance.
That's the best way to feed the human mind. That's how Bob Marley did it. He never put it in your face. After you got the groove, you were just singing the hooks, because you thought it was cool.
This has been a great experience for me. The first couple of days you don't always feel too well. You adjust to the fluid shifting, how to fly through space without hitting things or anybody else. But then you get in a groove.
Now I'm fortunate to have a good band in CA, and play many solo gigs as well. My point is that I stopped playing in bands and played solo for four years, to get back into the groove and pulse of writing and singing and who I am on stage.
White people get nervous and speed things up. You don't have to be in a hurry because you ain't got nothing to gain and you ain't got nothin' to lose. And that's where the groove lies.
There are writers' rooms that will write episodes all together, who will break into little groups and write certain scenes. Everyone's process can be a little bit malleable. Everyone tries to get into a groove or find what works for their room.
The Jewish background is not that far from the black groove. Blacks are downtrodden, Jews are downtrodden, therefore they have something in common in that affliction. Being downtrodden often makes one more empathetic and sympathetic.
People who care about records are always giving me a hard time. I mean, I would destroy records in performances, and break them, and whatever I could do to them to create a sound that was something else than just the sound that was in the groove.
If the music in a groove fits with what you're playing, then play it; if not, then you can play it backwards. If that doesn't work, you try it at a different speed. If it really doesn't work you just break it. The whole ritual to put a record on a tu...
Al and Tommy and I sharing the biggest laugh because it was predicted by everything we did in the first three or four records in my career. It was predicted in the grooves that we would be here sometime later on down the road.
On stuck status? Don't crush the groove, bust a move.
So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.
I am grateful to those who are keepers of the groove. The babies and the grandmas who hang on to it and help us remember when we forget that any kind of dancing is better than no dancing at all.
I think we have lost our groove as a country. One of the reasons was the attack on 9/11. We got knocked off our game. From a country that always exported hope we went into the business of exporting fear.
I am the 'Cosmic Dancer' who dances his way out of the womb and into the tomb on 'Electric Warrior.' I'm not frightened to get up there and groove about in front of six million people on TV because it doesn't look cool. That's the way I would do it a...
There's something about live players that you cannot get with machines: With live musicians, you can strike a groove, you can feed off each other... And, even though somebody might make a slight mistake, it's all real!
The Faces do not, as some have recently alleged, play badly. They are more than competent, especially at creating a mid-Sixties Rolling Stones-styled groove, as their excellent version of 'Memphis' proves.
