Mike Gordon Quotes

Interestingly, songs used to be short, then they became longer, and now they're getting shorter.

The only thing contrived is the production - you can over-produce to the point you kill a good idea, you can under-produce so that the song's amazing but you'll have folks at a radio station saying they won't play it, so there's this balance, and it has to be true.

'Hound Dog' is a really short record, and most singles didn't last three minutes.

Bob Dylan did the first really long record - Like A Rolling Stone - I think it was four minutes.

Pop songs are like a D.J. set crammed into three minutes.

I don't have time to stand around and listen to an 11-minute song.

I think anything you listen to is going to be different. You're going to listen to a song differently if you're just sitting around somewhere listening on your phone as opposed to sitting in a dark room listening to a vinyl album. It's going to be a totally different experience.

I am the entertainer, I've come to do my show You've heard my latest record, it's been on the radio It took me years to write it, they were the best years of my life It was a beautiful song but it ran too long If you're gonna have a hit you gotta make it fit So they cut it down to 3:05.

This is nothin for the radio... but they'll still play it though

The more you push the budgets up, the more you make records cost $20, the more you make records last 4 and 5 minutes on the radio.

Radio is paid by advertising. They decide what songs to play that'll keep people listening. And that's what promoters and the Classic Rock people do.

I don't have to play the song all the way to the very end - I use it while it's good and while it's cool and while it's exciting, and then I get out.

Chimes?" Phyllis asked. "Chimes to call a lover? Chimes with the voice of a bird trapped in them? Chimes that play you whatever song you most desire to hear?" "No thanks," said Nick. "We've got MTV.

I've never really been nervous about any concerts. I enjoy it so much. All that matters is getting the songs played well, trying to get them to sound as close to the record live, which isn't easy, because my music is quite complicated to play.

I don't want an angry song with no silver lining ending up on my album. Then I'd have to play, or feel obliged to play, that song every night in repetition as a mantra of anger.

I didn't understand how to get a practice space or buy gear - I never thought I could do any of that - let alone get in front of people and play the songs.

You try to play the song better than you had before.

ZZ Top did get a chance to play with Lightnin' Hopkins and Jimmy Reed, there's still that one, single song we just can't shake... J.B. Hutto's "Combination Boogie".

Words are the instruments you play to the song of your ideas, you're just playing covers.

If there's a certain song that I want to reach a certain person or certain type of person, that's when I play it for people.

I don't know any songs. People have asked me to play a song, and I say, "I don't know anything."

I started playing the bass because nobody else would play the bass, and then I got bumped up into singing because no one else really wanted to sing. So I learned how to sing and I wrote the songs, so I tended to get the most attention.

My son youngest son David's favorite song - he plays guitar - and he likes "Devil Pray." That's his favorite.

I feel like I always had an ear. I have the ability and the gift to hear a song and really play it in a matter of five to 10 minutes and make my own version out of it. So it's always been easy playing by ear.

The only way I was allowed to play was by convincing bands to let me do a few songs while they set up. That went on for years.