Anytime you give a man in a wig a microphone, anything can happen.
You can’t even imagine how it felt to have a cassette that you could take with you with a microphone so you could put down an idea and not have to hum it a million times to remember what it was.
I’d done drag since I was 14, for special occasions, and in 2010 a friend of mine with her own burlesque group was looking for a host. During a party I was just fooling around, taking the microphone, saying stupid, funny things, and she asked me afterward if I wanted to host her burlesque show every Saturday.
I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I’d go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on ‘Laugh-In,’ Flip Wilson.
I found at an early age the times when I learned the most about myself was when I got thrown out there on a stage in front of a microphone when you didn’t really want to be out there, where you’re kind of afraid.
I’m always working on new songs. With the technology these days, any idiot can record on Pro Tools on your laptop. All you have to do is plug a microphone into the input jack and anybody can have their own recording studio. So I’m always down in my basement, singing along to riffs or whoever I’m collaborating with.
When it comes down to the music, it’s just you and the microphone. It’s not you and the record execs.
Every time I talk about this, I say: when the singer is singing, he must be respected, you must be able to hear what he’s saying. You can’t put a trombone and a drum up there, and a microphone on the drum, microphones on everybody. You can’t hear what he’s saying.
Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone.
We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.
Even when I played, if they gave me the microphone after a match, whether a doubles final or a singles final, I’d handle the microphone pretty well.
Bobby Heenan to me, he was the best. Of all the guys that have been managers that can pick up a microphone and talk, he was a natural and so good. His character like mine was so hated, it was like a little weasel.
Republicans just can’t help themselves. They get in front of a live microphone and within a few sentences are rocketing down the swiftest and most direct route to the all-you-can-eat comedian-and-talk-show-host buffet.
Despite all the technical improvements, it still boils down to a man or a woman and a microphone, playing music, sharing stories, talking about issues – communicating with an audience.
It is easy to criticize me from behind a pen or a microphone, from someone who never set foot on a football field.
I loved the Cure and Bauhaus and the Smiths. The people in my town weren’t privy to that kind of music and I got abused. I discovered the microphone to get out some of that angst.
I sing a lot, so if I have lipstick, it gets all over the microphone, so I rarely wear lipstick.
I was born with a silver microphone in my mouth, and that was an advantage. My father wrote books and was also a great broadcaster.
When I grab the microphone, I am the greatest rapper, musician, and artist that ever lived, ever, in the entire universe – but when I put that microphone down, I am a man with so much to learn, personally and professionally.
I’ve been fortunate enough to be given the blessing by Triple H down at NXT to start coming out to the ring with a microphone in my hand.
When MLW first called me, they said, ‘Take a look at the product, see what you think, and see if you can make it even more edgy and more dangerous,’ and give me a live microphone and I’m going to do that.
Some shows feel very reverent – when you’re in a seated theater, no one really sings. I love it when people sing! I wish people would sing all the time. Because one of my favorite things when I get to do as a musician is step away from the microphone and listen to everyone sing together.
My first, what, five, six years I was never given a microphone. Now we have this New Day thing where we talk pretty much every single week. It allows me to open up a whole different side, so I just think it’s really important to be able to adapt.
A microphone has a certain range. It’s not as good as your ears, but it will capture an enclosed space, the harmonic content in a room. Nice old tube mikes do that pretty well. And that’s a good sound.
It’s funny, though, because when I first started going to races after we met, I was extremely nervous. It’s like being backstage and hoping you don’t trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone, so I was really hesitant.
When you get to the end of a TV series, you feel totally out of sorts as an actor. You feel unfit; your voice box has collapsed on you because you’ve spent all day muttering into a microphone that’s two inches from your head, and you feel desperate to spread your wings and do a bit of real thesping.
It doesn’t matter if one is live on-air or sitting through a commercial break. There aren’t any on or off switches on a lapel pin microphone; it is always ‘hot.’
I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute.
As for radio and movies, I like the movies better, although the work is much harder. The cinema has microphone technique, staging, and glamour all wrapped up into one.
Me as a person, man, I’m just rapping reality. Every time I get in front of the microphone I’m just speaking about real life and what’s happening.
I’m honestly not the kind of person who wants to step up to a podium, test the microphone and be like, ‘Hey, I’m homosexual and this is who I am, hear me roar.’ That’s not who I am.
Every day I have a tour bus that comes around my house and stops. You can hear them on their microphone. If you don’t embrace it, it’s going to destroy you.
The Doctor character originated from playing Halo 2 on the Xbox and it had proximity chat where you could engage with someone in real-time on the microphone, and I loved that; I ate that up.
When I first started, it was a dare. Someone basically said, ‘You’re a tough guy… but I’ll bet you won’t get on a microphone in front of a bunch of people.’ I was terrified, but I did it. Once I broke the ice and got onstage and got some laughs, I thought, ‘That’s not so bad.’
Even the idea of people paying to hear me shouting into a microphone for an hour is alien to me – and I hope it always will be.
I feel like something I’ve wanted to do for a really long time, in a feature film or anything, is playing a rocker. Somewhere where I can be on a stage and have a guitar or a microphone and just kind of jam out.
In standup, you don’t have anything near you except a microphone. There’s something a lot more self-conscious feeling when there’s cameras coming in for close-ups. It makes you very aware.
There is a reason why, on a DS, you get that little click when you press a button. There is a reason that it was important to have a microphone in the Wii Remote.
I found that the flute was too limiting. Soon I bought a microphone, then loudspeakers, then an echo, then a synthesiser. Much later I threw the flute away; it was a sort of process.
I would love to do much more singing; it’s just one of those things where I can’t quite describe what it feels like when you’re standing in front of a forty piece orchestra, and there’s nothing between you and an audience but a microphone. It’s like strapping yourself to a locomotive, and I love it.
Dana White hides behind a microphone and behind a TV camera and spouts off and calls people names because he doesn’t like their opinion.
You know, every time it comes, every time that light comes on or every time that camera comes on, every time that microphone comes on, the Mac Man seek and destroy.
There are a lot of comics at the top end making staggering amounts of money and selling out stadiums. I think stand-up is a more intimate thing than that. Maybe because of the kind of comedy I do. It’s like a discussion, but I’m the one with the microphone.
‘Begum Jaan’ was such a very different zone for me. After the filming was complete, I got immersed in voice modulation. I had to shout my lungs out into the microphone and then dub for it to get that hoarseness in my voice.
I want to get to the point where one day I don’t have to have anything but a rug and a microphone stand on stage and still be able to sell out places like Madison Square Garden, like Bruce Springsteen does.
I’m only just learning what language to use when I want my microphone turned down, you know, because it’s all so new to me. It can be quite difficult on a daily basis to communicate with the people I work with, so I’m just looking forward to knowing more.
There are plenty of good, rational, compassionate and talented conservatives who deserve a microphone and a platform. It’s time to pass the baton to a new generation of leaders who don’t speak – or think – like Archie Bunker.
At the age of 15, I bought a USB microphone on a trip to the United States with my family, and that was my first recording studio.
