The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.
Music never dies. Do we really need another Madonna tour? Does she have to compete with women performers 25 years her junior?
I don't really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.
I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial.
People ask me all the time which I would prefer doing more, but I honestly can't say. When I'm filming, I'm like, 'No, this is my favorite,' and when I'm writing music and recording and performing, it's like, 'This is definitely it.'
I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.
I think people are tired of fake music, man. And there's a lot of it. Technology has reached the point where any boob can walk into a studio and with a little AutoTuning you can have a hit song. I think it's pathetic.
To me, it makes more sense to write different songs and to play different kinds of music and to find your own voice. But no matter what, get out and play for people. Get out and learn, and do everything that you can, you know?
When I was in seventh grade, I totally had a crush on a guy who was older than me, and he listened to alternative music. So he was into Days of the New and stuff like that, and more poppy stuff, too, like Matchbox Twenty.
First, I'd become an avid reader of blogs, especially music blogs, and they seemed to be where the critical-thinking action was at, to have the kind of energy that I associate with rock writing of the 1970s or Internet e-mail discussion lists a decad...
I have ADD or something. Even when I am doing something, it's me on the computer, I'm painting and I'm writing music. I have to rotate what I'm doing every 15 minutes.
Hip hop is the new rock n' roll, you know what I mean? And anybody who doesn't think that is just sort of living in the past. It's all just American music, really, when you get right down to it.
That by listening to some music, by reading some books, by looking at paintings, and most important by hanging out with one another - by collaborating with one another and creating your own network - you can achieve something that is much better than...
An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.
Jazz isn't dead yet. It's the underpinning of everything in this country. Whether it's a Broadway show, or fusion, or right on through classical music, if it's coming out of the U.S., it's not going to survive unless it's got some jazz influence.
Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they're going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It's just a given law.
So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.
I thought that I would like to be affiliated with some school or institution. As time went on, I also decided on the subject that I wanted to get involved with in addition to music: it was Black Studies.
I'm saddened to see that everyone's pitched out the baby with the bath, in that we say that it can't be one or the other, it could be both. I mean, just because we listen to classical music doesn't mean that we can't listen to jazz.
I'm also very pleased that we were able to include a full orchestrated score for Dragon's Lair 3D. The 40 different music pieces blend with the action to make you feel more a part of the whole adventure.
I'm in a real minority as far as having really supportive parents in regards to the arts. They never batted an eye as far as not letting me do that stuff. That's invaluable. I can't believe how unabashedly supportive they were about everything, betwe...
