There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.
There are a lot of bands that have a huge appeal, but I don't understand why. Guns n' Roses. U2. But you know, that's just my thing. Music is pretty personal.
In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict, because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words we are continually changing the score.
I've had a very, very interesting view of the planet over the last 30 years, touring as excessively as I have. And music is the most evocative, transformative, connective force in humanity, man.
If I put a value on my music, and no one's prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan; it can't work.
I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians.
When I was young, people were almost identified solely by the kind of music they liked. People fell into categories of who liked what.
Memphis is the place where rock was born and Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed. It's full of contradictions, abject poverty, and riches that only music can provide.
I grew up using hearing aids, and I had speech therapy and so forth, and that helped me to develop a passion for music and helped me to develop my drumming talents.
After all my years of doing instrumental music I still like just a simple instrumental song with a nice catchy melody and an opportunity to play a solo over a harmonic structure.
My favorite moment of the whole thing was when John Belushi suggested that I get a hold of all the blues records I could so I could research the music.
Music reality shows provide a platform to people who have talent and gives them visibility and exposure. It is a win-win situation for participants.
I think that a song, when it works, never mind a piece of long form music, even a song is something that speaks to itself but has a language all of its own, ideally.
My music is so often like a lullaby I write to myself to make sense of things I can't tie together, or things I've lost, or things I'll never have.
I don't do much press. I don't like to talk about my music too much before I do it.
I've pretty much run the circle of labels and dealing with that whole kind of battle, because you're the one creating the music, but you're not the final say. That's always been hard.
The classics are only primitive literature. They belong to the same class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive medicine.
If you have music you want to play that no one asks you to play, you have to go out and find where you can play it. It's called do or die.
In the '90s, the radio was still alive with all different kinds of points of view, and I think that's why people are longing for that time. It was the first time that alternative music broke through to the mainstream.
Pop music seems to be the way radio programming has chosen to support female artists. They have chosen not to support a more provocative voice from women, which I find disappointing.
As far as spiritual influences in Christian music, I would say Crystal Lewis - a lot of her songs especially. The ministry she has through her songs has really hit me.
