Anthony Fantano Quotes

I'm very much into the Gypsy Kings. It's rumba and very festive, very passionate music, rhythmic guitar, passionate singing about love from happy people.

So, it ended up being what you have there, seven songs brand new and ten live songs which is a good mix.

Greatest hits is easy because one has nothing to do - except that we both, Roger and I, felt that new songs should be there because I've been away for awhile.

At a time when club music has gone more electronic, I've gone the other way: organic and world music.

I was into all sorts of music as a kid. I was very curious about ethnic music and different styles. I loved Django Reinhardt. I loved Ella Fitzgerald. I was also influenced by all the crooners of the day, like Johnny Ray, Frankie Lane.

'Moffou' is one of my favorite records.

The music of 'Damadamm!' will be released by my company, HR Musik, and you will find a completely different Himesh in every song.

I'm playing deep African music.

But we're still rehearsing and planning to make a new album next year. We have some really good new songs that we've already been playing on that last tour that we just finished.

I was very engaged by the folk music movement.Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary. And then I sort of discovered world music, and fell in love with ethnic music of all sorts.

I'm obsessed - not just interested, obsessed - with folk music, street music, the parallels between a country's street music and its so-called classical and intellectual music, the way certain scales have travelled right across the globe. All this ethnological and musical interaction fascinates me. Have you heard any trance music? That's the thing.

People asked me to change my name for [808s]...I think the fact that I can't sing that well is what makes "808s" so special.

The books are always there, just the way you wrote them. The plays often don't turn out the way you wanted them to because in the theater, you're always involved with collaborators and they don't always see the work the way you do.

The biggest thing for me is the new music. I'm playing a lot of new music that is not released yet on my tours. Seeing the reaction to that is super inspiring.

Everybody does music from his culture and his experiences with his culture. There are not so many people who are interested by the music coming from different countries and different cultures and trying to make music from that, from all these experiences.

I think making an album is a difficult thing.

The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.

Woody Allen is kind of the one example I don't have. Because the way he works and the amount of shooting time that I did on that film, I didn't really get to know him, so he kind of stays as "Woody Allen" to me.

One of the things that we talked about was this idea of 'Memento Mori' - like the reminder of our own mortality - and so we were sort of trying to express that in our press photos. And it's one of the themes of the album [Modern Vampires of the City] as well.

Vocal arrangements are something I'm working a lot with for the new songs.

You can put out an album and it could be totally out of the window as far as what you want to do performance-wise.

I've never had a musical career. So I think it's been unaffected. I play the accordion. In terms of thinking of it as a musical career, I think it's sort of like calling yourself an astronaut because you have a shiny suit.

You become acutely aware, if you're touring a lot, that you need new songs to invigorate the live show. And make it interesting for yourself, too.

Music helps set a romantic mood. Imagine her surprise when you say, "We don't need a stereo - I have an accordion."

I've never done an album like this. With Biophilia, I was being like Kofi Annan - I had to be the pacifist to try to unite the impossible. Maybe that was a strange, personal job between me and myself, to show how overreaching I was being as a woman. The only way I could express that was by comparing it to the universe.