favourite quotes about music:
"I put it out there and ask, how many different ways can you feel about something? Do you have freedom of emotion, do you have freedom of feel, or is it Pavlov's salivation formula? You're only moved by what you're programmed to be moved by. For those people who say, 'I only like this or that played this way,' my only question is, how much can you feel? How much can you really feel?"
--Wayne Shorter
"We start making sense of the world through sound in the womb; after we are born we still rely on sound to tell us what is, as we wait for our eyes to start working. We do not, cannot, ascribe meaning to sound, as we do to image or text, yet we understand it. Thus there is an essential dichotomy between structure and content in an art that is free of meaning yet communicates directly on the most primitive level."
--Stuart Jones
"It's a merlot reduction sauce. He takes da bait. Dante doing the buck and wing at a Skip James suku jump, an underground serist. Drink once and thirst no more."
--Tom Waits on Captain Beefheart
“"Nowadays people just sit there going, ‘amaze me, amaze me, amaze me.’ That'’s a vampiric relationship. When you read something by a great master, it'’s work. The most expensive thing that there is, is to spend your effort, intention and attention on something consciously.”"
--Andrew McKenzie (the Hafler Trio)
“"You can'’t be idealistic in this world and not be crazy. Because they’'ve created such a deep structure now, you can'’t get in. And we don’t want to get in; we’re on the outside. But we’'re not on the outside looking in, we'’re on the outside looking out. So I feel we’'re in a very healthy place. The idealists will always be in society, and we will survive."”
--John Zorn
"We got instruments that are computer-generated. They play perfect. But did you ever hear anyone cry in tune? Make love in tune? We've got the whole spectrum to deal with, but we go and de-spectrum ourselves. I'm downsizing to maximize the creative part. Working on being more spiritual, so that the music has power. Not military power. Damn that. But power where the note is still going on after I stop playing. The note is still going inside of the people when they walk out of the room."
--Hamiet Bluiett