Musician Quotes - Page 40

• I had a really nice association with Richie DeRosa, a great musician, a great drummer and composer and arranger. And I had a number of classes with him.

  Jon Gordon

  Nice, Numbers, Class

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• Percy France told me, similarly, he and Bird used to hang out. They were good buddies. And he said, "Man, we'd just walk through town, sometimes with our horns. And we'd walk by past an Irish bar. And you'd stand outside and check out the music. And Bird would go in and sit in with these traditional Irish musicians. Then we'd past a Greek restaurant and we'd hear that. And Charles "Bird" Parker would go sit in with those guys. He was just listening to everything, reacting to everything.

  Jon Gordon

  Past, Men, Guy

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• I saw a nice interview with Dave Binney recently. He was saying, "Man it was never easy. It's not like 'Oh wow, the good old days.' What, when certain people couldn't vote?" There was more work for musicians in the '40s, '50s, '60s. But I don't think it was ever easy.

  Jon Gordon

  Nice, Men, Thinking

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• I was able to go over [Saxophone Competition] and work a little more in Europe. I'm thankful that those of kinds of things. Simultaneously, some nice things did come in. I got a nice festival that came in, in Virginia through that. There was a club that opened in DC in the famous Willard Hotel near the White House. And the club was called The Nest. I played there a few nights. Some musicians in Philly and D.C. kind of brought me down and got me on a couple things. So things opened up a little bit.

  Jon Gordon

  Couple, Nice, Night

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• I did, I was in Europe a lot. I would say, mid 20s to late 30s. Less so in the last ten or twelve years. Based on some political stuff and other things, I think I'm not the only musician, the only American jazz musician that's not going to Europe quite as much. I think we're seen a little differently in the world, unfortunately, than we were pre-Iraq invasion and things like that.

  Jon Gordon

  Thinking, Years, Europe

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• My aspirations and dreams keep evolving. I think dreams evolve and I want to become a better songwriter. I want to do more collaboration within my genre and I want to continue to make records. I want to just keep getting stronger as a musician and make movies.

  Morgan James

  Dream, Thinking, Stronger

  Source: youknowigotsoul.com

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• Whether it's a designer or a musician, I think the most important thing for people who express things are to be unique. There should be something unique only to them.

  Taeyang

  Unique, Thinking, People

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• My attitude towards my time as a musician, is that I really wanted to completely reinvent myself and not be one of these people who, twenty, thirty years later, is trying to recreate something that happened. I'm glad that Neil Young still makes records, but I don't know that everybody needs to be frozen in time forever. I think it's good that pop music is ephemeral.

  Kurt Ralske

  Attitude, Thinking, Years

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I don't think my skill level is up there as a musician. I think I'm best at writing in general. The musicians that I know are really good, and I feel like I have a lot to do until I become a musician.

  Ian Simpson

  Writing, Thinking, Skills

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• My love of R&B and hip-hop has influenced my life not even as a musician, but generally in terms of growing up and looking to America as an inspiration.

  James Vincent McMorrow

  Growing Up, Inspiration, America

  "James Vincent McMorrow, On the Move". Interview with Pimploy Phongsirivech, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 31, 2016.

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• Hip-hop has been the guiding light of my life as a musician and a music fan. It's the one common thread through all of it from the time I bought my first record probably. It's always been there.

  James Vincent McMorrow

  Common Threads, Light, Hip Hop

  "James Vincent McMorrow, On the Move". Interview with Pimploy Phongsirivech, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 31, 2016.

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• If you're a musician, you create what you love and hope other people love it as well. Amongst musicians, the starting point is what they love, and then they bring people to them. As a comedian, you have to say something that people relate to, or nobody laughs. As an actor, you have to perform the character in the way that people relate to.

  John Bishop

  Character, Laughing, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I think most musicians know if they make the same record twice, even if they say they don't.

  Stephen Malkmus

  Thinking, Records, Knows

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Sonically, musicians always go above and beyond in our efforts to disrupt radio. It's always about being different. Our radio is never conventional anyway.

  Pusha T

  Effort, Being Different, Radio

  Source: theneptunes.org

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• After Hurricane Katrina, I wanted to go back to New Orleans to help musicians return to the city. But Andrew Young advised me, "If you want to help people, go work at an investment bank." His contrarian advice opened my eyes to the importance of capital. "Learn how to make some money before you give it away." I learned that you can bring about good in the world especially if you have a paycheck.

  Kabir Sehgal

  Eye, New Orleans, Cities

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• The source of inspiration can be any of the things:deep emotional experiences - say, romantic love or spiritual contemplation.I think such rare moments come only when you have total concentration. You are consumed in and by the music. I guess you could say that it is akin to contemplation. In order to reach this desirable state of mind you have to rise above the environment you're in at that particular time - a bad piano, glaring stage lights, or the attitude of the audience. Sometimes the inspiration of the other musicians you're playing with helps you reach this stage.

  Dave Brubeck

  Spiritual, Attitude, Inspiration

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and many other great jazz musicians objected to their music being called jazz. While the outside world may want to put a label on it, those who create it think of it just as music, and tend not to classify it.

  Dave Brubeck

  Art, Thinking, World

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• I thought - being a musician doesn't help your medical credibility really. Although I started to rethink that when I learned that Albert Einstein was quite a violinist and in fact would perform a lot with symphonies. So if it's good enough for Albert, it's good enough for me.

  Neal Barnard

  Helping, Medical, Good Enough

  Source: thecelebritycafe.com

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• In the hierarchy of instruments, if you're a harpist, you're considered someone with a brain much more than if you're a singer. Even though singers, particularly singers who can play piano... If you go to the office of career development, you can get a gig much easier. Still, musicians tend to look down on you. I think they've got some nerve, because if they could sing, they would do it, but most of them can't.

  Nellie McKay

  Thinking, Office, Brain

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Listening closely to songs these days, there's a lot of lazy songwriting where people get away with it. I don't want to be too critical about it. But I also feel like I wanted to say something a bit different from just being a musician and singing about yourself. Ultimately, that's not really interesting to me. Even when I was a kid, I was interested in observing people and maybe making my own stories. That kind of reflects in my music.

  Steve Gunn

  Song, Kids, People

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think a lot about writing and I try to read a lot. Being a musician, I don't take the words lightly; they are very, very important to me. At the same time, the words have to be musical and have to fit.

  Steve Gunn

  Writing, Thinking, Musical

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I thought for a minute about an actor and a musician simultaneously, but I think that's always very loaded as an actor when you become a "slash," and you do an actor "slash" anything. You better be really, really good at it.

  Gabriel Mann

  Thinking

  Source: smallscreenscoop.com

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• Performing as a musician is a lot different than performing as an actor. As an actor, you can hide behind the character in the play, and there's a director and other actors. When you're a musician, you're right there. It's sort of like being a comedian. You're giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.

  Billy Crudup

  Crazy, Real, Character

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• I came to writing kind of late. I was an engineer, and the one thing I've learned is that you have to steer a project in the direction of the maximum fun for you. You could say lively energy, or you have to try to be intrigued. Basically, if you were a musician and you were playing joylessly, nobody would want to hear you.

  George Saunders

  Fun, Writing, Trying

  "George Saunders: It's All About Suckage-Avoidance". Interview With Doug Polisin, www.audible.com. March 15, 2017.

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• The idea that musicians/artists have a responsibility to be community leaders or "role models" is problematic to me because I really believe that some of the most exciting art is not community-minded at least in any obvious or direct way, which is not to say that it is not ethical or consciousness-changing.

  Kathleen Hanna

  Art, Believe, Responsibility

  Source: www.artistdirect.com

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