When you're walking down the street, or you're at a restaurant, someone catches your eye because they have their own look. It goes way beyond what they're wearing - into their mannerisms, the way they smile, or just the way they hold themselves.
I come from a place where everything about me, even my body language, is saying: I mean you no harm. I smile, I laugh. Basic stuff for most people.
I could be hit by a Sara Lee truck tomorrow. Which is not a bad way of going: 'Richard Simmons Found in a Freeway in Pound Cake and Fudge, With a Smile on His Face.' Let's face it. We don't know anything.
I don't think success has changed us as people at all. We are the same lunatics that we were when this band first got going. We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.
Some people really trip on success or popularity. My friends would talk to me about that, about tripping on all this stuff, but you know what I tripped on? I started buying property.
Audiences love Paul Taylor, and so do I. Not everything, and not always, but year in, year out, he gives me more concentrated pleasure than I get from any other dance company.
I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.
I listen to music two ways: As a person, you have an instinctive, personal, emotional response. But as a music supervisor, you have a secondary response, which is, 'Will this sit well under dialogue?' 'Can people die to this?' 'Can people kiss to thi...
I wrote 'Wish U Were Here' for Cody Simpson, and he invited me to perform with him on tour and be in his music video. He was shy at first. I think it's the surfer boy in him that makes him so mellow.
My song 'Play It Again' is a perfect example of my music because the verses go so hard, and they're so urban; and then this pop hook comes out of nowhere and socks you in the face and makes you want to dance.
Be honest with yourself and the way you act when you hear music. That way, when people watch, they'll see something from your heart and soul, and as a result will communicate your feeling and thought much better.
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.
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...
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.
I said to myself a long time ago that I didn't want to be that hanging-on-for-too-long, aging-rock-musician guy, and that's why I sort of got away from music.
When people say, 'Your music was the music of the Seventies,' I say, 'So was discoteque.' The Seventies was also the highest peak of heavy metal. Pick a genre - they were all alive.
I hated science in high school. Technology? Engineering? Math? Why would I ever need this? Little did I realize that music was also about science, technology, engineering and mathematics, all rolled into one.
I think that hip-hop has done what it was supposed to have done, which is it defied all the laws of what is statistically a music genre and what statistically is not a music genre. Because it wasn't supposed to be here.
I claimed identity as Jewish musicians for political reasons, because most of us were touring in Germany and, at this time, twelve years ago, there was a strong resurgence of Nazism in the places we were touring and part of that was on the music scen...
There's a certain groove you pick that makes the music flow, and when you have it it's in your pocket. It's the feeling behind the rhythm... to me, the hardest thing to strive for is that feeling, behind the groove.
If I had grown up in any place but New Orleans, I don't think my career would have taken off. I wouldn't have heard the music that was around this town. There was so much going on when I was a kid.
