Holland is a really small country, but with a very strong club and festival scene. Dance music has been huge in Holland since the late eighties. So there were a lot of opportunities for producers and DJs to release records and play live.
I find the songs I want to record by listening to as much music as I can. 'When I hear things I really like, I ask the writers to send me a tape of everything they've ever written.
That's what my music... I'm working on a solo record right now, it's gonna be more hip-hop than anything, like electronic hip-hop, futuristic hip-hop. I'm probably gonna be rapping on it.
I always knew I'd be in music in some sort of capacity. I didn't know if I'd be successful at it, but I knew I'd be doing something in it. Maybe get a job in a record store. Maybe even play in a band. I never got into this to be a star.
Once I started working with generative music in the 1970s, I was flirting with ideas of making a kind of endless music - not like a record that you'd put on, which would play for a while and finish.
In pop music, the public usually see the results - the hit records, the Grammy Awards performances, the concert tours - but not all the work that goes into getting into the spotlight. And not everyone realizes that, even if you have a lot of talent, ...
I never expected to record again. I knew I had done everything I ever wanted to do. I was satisfied. But... all the time I'm watching the country music horizon. And I'm sayin' 'Lord, is there anybody gonna come?'
Solace is my favorite song. It was the last song we wrote for the record. It was right when we really started to mesh as far as music goes and we started really connecting with each other.
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.
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.'
When I was growing up in the early '70s and really getting into music, waiting outside the record store for that 45, waiting for a single from The Dead, The Clash, David Bowie, or T-Rex or something to be there. There was something about that that wa...
I didn't grow up with Broadway music. My mother played Perry Como, while I listened to Andy Williams records. Later on it was Cream, Grand Funk Railroad and lots of R&B like the Isley Bros. and Parliament.
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.
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.
When I recorded Contra la Puerta, I never really thought out doing the material live. Mostly because I haven't really seen any electronic music performed live in an interesting way.
I think that technology has both introduced new sounds but also allowed an increasingly painterly approach to recording music as you can now paint over what you've done and more and more refine an existing performance.
I began the process of recording myself seriously in the fall of 1999. If I could finish an album of my own music, I would. Five years later I am happy to say I have.
Absolutely, I grew up listening to soul music. People like Stevie, Aretha, Ray Charles, Michael and Prince. My parents' record collection was all I had when I was a little kid. If it wasn't that, it was something else in their collection.
During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey.
I was really amazed when I started hearing 'Songbird' on the radio. I couldn't believe that the record company promotion department had actually convinced radio music directors to play it -because there wasn't anything like it on the radio at the tim...
