I now possess the tools as a producer and a songwriter to really just go out and make smashes all day long. I could make an album full of smash records that got pop appeal. But my heart is in hip-hop. My heart is in telling stories. And it’s like therapy for me.
I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He’s not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.
I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog. I had fun trying to duplicate what I was hearing on these records, only using the instruments I had at hand – an acoustic guitar, and that’s all. It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s harmonies using the guitar.
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.
You can’t trust an artist that just makes good records.
When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going; there was no reason to quit.
The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.
I’ve noticed that when I am selling a lot of records, certain things become easier. I’m not talking about getting a table in a restaurant.
Johnny Mercer started Capitol Records, and he brought in Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Nat King Cole. He just let them sing whatever they wanted, and it became the best record company in America.
I remember when I was coming up, the music stores where you could get guitar strings was where I got my records from. Now the place where you get your records from is where you can get your DJ mats and your mixers.
The brank, or scold’s bridle, was unknown in America in its English shape: though from colonial records we learn that scolding women were far too plentiful, and were gagged for that annoying and irritating habit.
Composing is what I love most from what I do. Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another.
Now the music industry is sort of like a Craigslist venture, right? Where you’re making your own records and selling them online.
If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he’d probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people.
This is a very screwed-up business. Record labels don’t sign a lot of bands these days. We just want to find a home and stay there and make records and do our thing and not have to look over our shoulder.
I look in music magazines now and see things on Luther Allison, and my name’s getting out there more, thanks to all the good people at Alligator Records and at my management company.
Throughout my years in From First to Last, I was always dabbling and making electronic music on my own time. The first records I ever owned were crossover electronic rock, like Prodigy, Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.
I was tempted my junior year to go out of college and forgo my eligibility. I had broken several world records. I did have a lot of people telling me that I should go pro.
Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That’s like a sports thing, it’s not usually a comedy and writing thing.
Rhythm and blues started even before phonograph records were being produced because black people entertained themselves. It wasn’t done for money. It was done for entertainment. Most white people didn’t know anything about this because prejudice kept them from ever seeing what was going on.
I’m friends with Carla Olsen and she’s doing a lot of producing these days. She’s getting quite a little collection of records that she’s produced. She’s real busy.
Obviously, I want to sell records, but I do it because I find it therapeutic. In music I can be myself.
It’s like, how do you continue to make records that are representative of who you are that your fans will recognize as your band, while still trying to push things forward and present new sounds for people.
Speed eventually neared its peak. The records forced me to work ever harder to drop a less and less time. These time trials came to feel like races, which are fun to run sporadically but not daily.
People aren’t buying records like they used to, so it’s nice to try to figure out a way to make them do it. I would enjoy the same thing to own an old movie house, to try to trick people to come in – like having 3-D or Smell-o-Vision or Vibra-Vision or something. Mcguffins to get people interested.
I do like Britney Spears. I think she’s cute. I think she’s fun. And I like her records. You know, I’m not a pop snob whatsoever. I think she makes great pop records.
When you are studying jazz, the best thing to do is listen to records or listen to live music. It isn’t as though you go to a teacher. You just listen as much as you can and absorb everything.
The Shades never recorded anything, Little Daddy and the Bachelors recorded a couple of records, ya.
As for my stuff, I’m just doing guest verses for other people’s records. I try to stay recording, because if I don’t, I get rusty.
Selling records is fantastic. But if you’re not loving what you do, and if everybody is throwing knives at you, it can get old very fast.
I stopped beating up on myself. I stopped asking myself why I didn’t sell this number of records, why I don’t have corporate sponsorship. I just don’t buy into any of that anymore.
My first two records are so simply constructed. The reason isn’t because I wanted to make simple music. It’s because I don’t really have the chops.
But I’m always trying to plan ahead too and in doing so, and in working on this album, I’ve met a lot people that I hope to be involved with, on their records and in their situations.
I made records in the past that are as traditional as any other country records that have been made, but at the same time the records have a contemporary slant on it too.
It really does take a lot of time to make records, to be in the studio and do all that stuff.
In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made.
I spent a lot of time in Tower Records. I’m a huge music nerd, and Tower was instrumental to me when I was growing up.
China’s got a billion people and a hit record over there is a million records. You know that ain’t right.
The great irony was that, while I was being portrayed as a monster, I was in Khatmandu with my children, doing soup kitchens for Tibetan refugees, using all the money from my records to feed three hundred people a day, and working with monks connected to the Sammye Ling Buddhist centre in Scotland.
With those people, I’m very far apart, because I believe that government access to communications and stored records is valuable when done under tightly controlled conditions which protect legitimate privacy interests.
I like to break the records, break the limits.
When something happens in Africa, an artist will sing about it and stuff. We have all the records; we have everything. Free Mandela records and all that.
It’s typical of record companies. They sign you because you’re unique, and then they want to put you in a mold so they can sell records.
I don’t know why we sold a lot of records or why so many people came to see us. Like ‘Sabotage’ – would you put that song on, like, ‘I’m gonna listen to that right now?’ It’s a weird choice.
Apollo Records signed me for my gospel ability.
By providing our school districts with direct access to criminal information records, we can help ensure timely and complete information on prospective school employees.
Making records should be fun.
My records are borderline dance records. They’ve got a real electro-rock heart and soul, and the vibe of the sentiment is pop, but there’s a lot of people that were like, ‘This is a dance record.’
I first fell in love with music when I was a little boy. When I first heard music, I felt the beauty in it. Then, being able to tap along on a table top and box was great, but my favorite thing to do was to watch records spin. I would almost get hypnotized by it. These things are what drew me in initially.
I wouldn’t say I’m underrated, but more reserved. Only time will tell, but I’ve been good so far in being consistent and making hit after hit writing for myself and other artists, from rap to R&B, and being able to make those different records.
I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother’s aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.
All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like, as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it’s another world. It’s filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers – all kinds of people.
