I don't sing melodically. Rhyme pattern is how I sing. I also write like a lyricist or an MC because that's what I was before I was a singer. I just took those elements and put them into music.
Well when I was young, when I was very young, when I was a little boy I don't remember the music I heard, but there was an article in the Brooklyn Daily written by my Aunt about how I could choose phonograph records.
My father was the proprietor of a music shop on Forty-third Street, where many of the finest performers and musicians of the day would come to shop. He knew the classical repertoire inside out.
I'm an old-school, embarrassing Joni Mitchell fan. Her music made a hook in my soul and hasn't let go for all these years. I even sing her songs as lullabies to my kids.
We make music for a living. Like I've always said, if you like what you're doing, you're halfway there; if someone else likes it, that's even better. If they don't like it, at least you like it. Not to be selfish, but you kind of have to be.
I was a folk singer who became totally over the edge with country music. I found my voice and style working with Gram Parsons. I learned how to listen to George Jones records and the Louvin Brothers.
The iPod has taken away the whole platinum record sales prospect. Sincerity and specificity are going to be the hot commodities in music. Everybody can have anything that they want, so now it gets into what specifically you have to give.
There was certainly, like, a rebellious, like, youthful rage in me. And there was also the fact of no getting away from fact that I am white, and you know, this is predominantly black music, you know.
I felt like I had a really bad case of writer's block... Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.
I've been in the studio experimenting on making a CD of my own. I'm trying out different producers, styles, sounds. With music, as opposed to acting, you are not playing a character. You are showing people who you are. I really want to have my spirit...
Anything I do has to have integrity, so if you just want to make music, it's not difficult finding support. The hard part for a publicist or manager is making a star.
BMG has been an awesome partner throughout my career, and with New London, we plan to continue bridging the gap between soul, pop, London, and New York - uniting them through music.
I've had the privilege of meeting and/or interviewing most of the top metal and hard rock artists at various points in my career and sharing their stories and music with millions of fans on air through TV and radio.
When it comes to grunge or even just Seattle, I think there was one band that made the definitive music of the time. It wasn't us or Nirvana, but Mudhoney. Nirvana delivered it to the world, but Mudhoney were the band of that time and sound.
Our music has always been instant reactive and I guess taking our time to absorb things and say what you really want to say could be much more offensive than anything we've ever done.
One of the things I particularly enjoyed doing was taking raw sound from locations during the film, like the candy machine, and writing pieces of music to go with them, which is totally unnecessary within the context of the film, because they have th...
Well, my sister played trumpet. Can you imagine having a sister blowing the trumpet around the house, Fred? And my brother, he played piano. Everybody was playing some kind of music, so it was natural for me to get into it.
I've already got notebooks full of ideas for new music, so I'm gonna kind of nurture that just like I do all of my ideas and perfect it until it's ready and then I'll just let it go.
When I first put out music, people didn't know what I looked like. They called it a new type of something; they couldn't put a genre on it - it was where indie and urban kind of meet in the middle. I thought that was quite exciting.
I just want everybody to know my music and get to know my squad, Remy Boyz; just to show people New Jersey. New Jersey got talent, too. I mean, everybody sleeps on us, and they put us as the underdog.
But I was always much more interested in reading fashion magazines than I was music magazines when I was a teenager. Just that sense of romanticism and escapism and the dream of it has always been quite alluring to me, as well as that sense of becomi...
