Tim Gane Quotes

I think recordings have been a terrific advance because now, when you have a piece of music, particularly something that appears to the listener very complicated, there's really a push to the world to try to figure out what it was that he was hearing.

Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge'... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, trying to understand the mysteries of the world.

I think 'Invisible' is a great song, but I don't know how accessible it is.

Sometimes people talk about music, whether blogs or magazines, in a strange way where it doesn't seem like they're actually listening to it.

You know I take music seriously, right? So I expect journalists to take being a journalist seriously.

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

I never understood music. It seemed to me to be the maximum amount of noise conveying the minimum amount of information.

People need to put my music in a perspective where they use other established artists from the past, and almost all the names I see related to my music are great musicians.

I wrote the music column in my high school newspaper.

When you don't know what the band looks like, it puts the emphasis on thinking and taking the music and message more seriously.

It is better to make a piece of music than to perform one, better to perform one than to listen to one, better to listen to one than to misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of 'culture.'

A lot of people don't listen to the lyrics, really.

A lot of music fans are still interested in insightful perspectives on music - maybe even more interested than ever, since everyone needs help making sense of the incredible variety of sounds that have sprung up in the wake of the Internet revolution. There's a lot of room for unique, qualified voices who can provide good reads.

My confession: I listen to great music very badly.

If you are making music for other people, you will have to be aware of how people relate to it.

Nobody talks about music as having intrinsic meaning, how it engages the mind.

I'm very nerdy about my music, and I like interrogating people about what they put on playlists.

I was a big music fan, but I never bought a bunch of records or was very educated, I guess, on who was who or what was what.

I couldn't imagine what it's like to be a journalist talking about music. You're left with empty descriptions; you probably have to make up a sort of weird cocktail of band influences and references to other music to get your point across.

You don't need any brains to listen to music.

There are so many things that are misunderstood or not recognized about my father's music because they've been filtered by people who work for magazines like Rolling Stone.

Finding great songs is the hard part of my gig - it's not as hard as songwriting, that's much more daunting - but I love playing other people's music.

I'm always very careful to make the distinction between music criticism and music journalism. A lot of people don't. But criticism doesn't require reporting. You can write criticism at home in your underwear. On the other hand, journalism takes legwork - you have to get out there and see things and talk to people.

Music critics are part of the world, and I am part of the world.