Drugs, sex, booze, all the stuff that we wanted to do. The problem was that we didn't want to learn the top 40 'cause most of the music was awful and we had this other idea about what we wanted to do.
As time went on, we formed a number of different bands. We played in rival, neighborhood bands. We learned more songs and we learned how to play Chuck Berry music and we learned Ventures songs.
Sometimes, when you're on the streets, certain music inspires you, and then you have a vision. But, at the end of the day, it's a synthesis of visions, so you have to think, as a director, of a scene, or how to deliver a line, or how do this visually...
It would no doubt be very sentimental to argue - but I would argue it nevertheless - that the peculiar combination of joy and sadness in bell music - both of clock chimes, and of change-ringing - is very typical of England. It is of a piece with the ...
Mix-tapes are something that have been going on for a while. They've been pretty important to hip-hop for the past 10 years. It's the way we advertise our music to the public for free.
You know, I do music. If you look under the hood of the industry I'm in, it's all based on technology. From radio to phonographs to CDs, it's all technology. Microphones, reel-to-reels, cameras, editing, chips, it's all technology.
I was greatly influenced by musique concrete when I was, like, 10. I was completely mesmerized by the idea that you could make music out of sounds. So that's been a constant influence on all my work.
Since I was a kid, music was what I wanted to do. I thought I could make it by my own talents. That's what I wanted to prove.
But an innovation, to grow organically from within, has to be based on an intact tradition, so our idea is to bring together musicians who represent all these traditions, in workshops, festivals, and concerts, to see how we can connect with each othe...
I think the purpose of a piece of music is significant when it actually lives in somebody else. A composer puts down a code, and a performer can activate the code in somebody else. Once it lives in somebody else, it can live in others as well.
The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, bu...
When you do music concerts at Taj Mahal and the Acropolis, you have to be careful about your performance being appropriate with the place that surrounds you. It has to be appropriate to the culture - it should fit the building behind you, the environ...
I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.
What I don't like to hear in music is something has not been thought through: that a sound is just there randomly. I want to make sure that every single little noise that's in my song is there because it's supposed to be there.
I have a room dedicated to music and recording. I go there first thing in the morning and just before I go to bed. And it has a window to my street, so I can watch all the crazies walking by.
I look at WorldstarHipHop in the morning, Bossip, Global Grind, and everything in between, but it's all so quick, I don't even think about it. And I've never been a fan of lyrical or socially conscious rap music.
Well, my mom taught public school music for almost 40 years. And she's about 5 feet - and very mighty. And she would control her kids a lot by giving them the eye, or the stare.
I was very influenced by the musicals and romantic comedies of the 1930s. I admired Gene Harlow and such, which probably explains why, since the end of my marriage, I've dated nothing but a succession of blondes.
The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy - rather like a long-term marriage.
Since the big band started I'm just always swamped with movies and things. It certainly pays the bills and it's very satisfying, because I get to write all these big charts and all this crazy music.
But then I go through long periods where I don't listen to things, usually when I'm working. In between the records and in between the writing I suck up books and music and movies and anything I can find.
