Josh Silver Quotes

I just learned my lyrics and tried not to bump into the trumpet player. That was my philosophy.

Well, you know it was so different from when you rehearsed. You're out there with your guitar and trying to get a sound, but it doesn't sound anything like what you expect!

We record a lot of our shows, we record our soundchecks.

It's always important for us to record, so if we're not performing live, that's what we're doing.

There might be two or three songs I'm trying out. I've been singing these songs (on the new album) in the studio, but I haven't really done them live. It's intimate to sing them in a studio. Now, I've got to be on a stage and be in front of a lot of people.

And the general opinion is we are much better on stage than in the studio.

For a long time, I couldn't actually deal with playing concerts; it was a totally alien concept to me, 'cause I was used to playing in clubs and dance halls.

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that.

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience.

It's different playing in a studio than it is playing live, of course.

When you do a song new live on stage, it's kind of a bit weird until it gets worn in, you know, like oiled up a bit. It's still a little bit stiff until you really thrashed at it for a few weeks.

I'm very proud of my records, but my most natural creative tendencies have been in live performing. There's a beautiful element to recording and making records, but I've always felt a little shy with it.

Well, you know, I mean, I first did my live shows in the late 70's and in those days I had a boatload of equipment that always seemed to be going wrong.

My first-ever date on my first tour, the sound completely cut out. So I had to go on and just shout loudly to the audience.

I personally don't like to use as many effects because when you play live, something always goes wrong.

I do love live performing, but I'm not a stand-up naturally, and I don't like the lifestyle of working just in the evenings at clubs and stuff - not a natural gig-er.

No matter how much you rehearse on that stage, once you add 30,000 screaming people with flashing cameras into the equation, it's pretty intense.

There are so many challenges and different parts to the job of singing. When you're in the studio, you have to be really, really, precise. You've got to keep everything clean and nice because that's going to be something that's down forever. And then you go onstage, and it's much more in the moment.

That gets me upset- you're jamming along, checking out the crowd and having a good time, and then your equipment goes down. You can't just stop the show and say, 'Oh, Jeff's got a guitar problem.'

In the studio is one thing, but playing live is the important part, I think.

I think that no number of rehearsals can guarantee the outcome of a live show.

Performing live can be a drag, the process that leads up to the actual performance. It's all the travel, it's working up all the details and everything, which I hate.

But I'd say recording and playing on stage are two completely different things. Being up there in front of all those people is like jumping off a cliff into icy water. The recording process is a totally different energy.

You can kind of run drills and practice, rehab behind closed doors as much as you can, but there's nothing that simulates being in front of a live audience with live TV cameras.

I think there's an attitude these days that you can go straight from a studio to the stage, and it isn't really like that. But playing live was the most important thing for me at the start because whenever I recorded something, it didn't sound right; I didn't like how my voice sounded. It was just raw.