Chris Milk Quotes

I've played in bands myself, and sat on the floor photographing some of the greatest bands in the world while they rehearse. What's always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you're in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you.

Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.

One of the fun things about playing live is watching the audience sing the songs back to us.

Performing music live, there's a certain magic to it.

I tend to like the heavier things, especially live on stage. I need that energy and interaction and feeling the audience.

When I go to a live show, I want to be moved. That's why you do it. And it's not very often that a band will move you live.

I can understand why rock stars are rock stars and why they play in front of people because the buzz that you get is insane. It's probably the same as when you do something on stage and you work off the audience. The buzz you get when you're playing a song and everyone is screaming and dancing and what have you and singing along is incredible.

I love being a gypsy and getting on the bus with the band making sounds for the people who love and enjoy a night of Americana and good times.

Often times at a concert, I just close my eyes. Music is very transportive and visual for me like that.

I trust microphones, speakers and recordings less and less, and no longer buy into the idea that I can recreate at home, or in my earphones, the experience of hearing live acoustic instruments. The orchestra is already a set of speakers that react differently to each player, each room and each concert - it's that high level of uncertainly and unrepeatability that I like. The music is just soaked into the walls of a room straight from the instruments - and it's a one-off deal. The alternative - left speaker, right speaker - is kind of a compromise.

The difference between deafness and any other disability is that there is no way to put yourself in a position of knowing what it would be like because you can't stop yourself from hearing your own breath or your own heartbeat. You can not remove sound entirely from your life. You can get a sense of what being blind is like by closing and covering your eyes which provides a source of empathy because we can all project ourselves to that. But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't.

I really love going to shows where I'm sandwiched between people, and you don't know if the sweat on you is yours or the person's next to you.

My favorite idea is doing an all-night tent show starring my friend's band Marijuana Deathsquads, where everyone would wear super-loud headphones, and there would be tons of subs and lights. It'd be really dope.

I've never been drawn to concert DVDs because they take away the part of the equation that's most important to seeing a live show: getting jostled around and feeling the energy in the room. I definitely didn't want to make one of those.

When I'm at a show, I'm yelling and cheering. I'm with those guys [the Grateful Dead].

If you're up there performing a song for the first time, it's as if you're hearing it through their ears. You become acutely self-conscious of the song in performance, so that's a good thing before recording. But I like to have some surprises for the audience; I don't want the audience to know everything that's going to be on the record, because these days, with the Internet, people become avid collectors of pre-knowledge.

I always call performing live "giving the people the medicine," because when you're engaged in it, you can feel the sort of soul magic being exchanged between the performer and the audience.

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.

They began to tune up, and suddenly the auditorium was filled with a single sound - the most alive, three-dimensional thing I had ever heard. It made the hairs on my skin stand up, my breath catch in my throat....I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn't just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen...It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.

The Town Hall Pub on a Wednesday night was just regulars anyway, so we could play whatever. Worst case scenario, it would be the same seven people who were always at the bar getting drunk, and they would be there for us. But we just told our friends and family, and they came out to support us. Then they told their friends, who told their friends, who told their friends. It was a full-on event.

I like people to go away from a Queen show feeling fully entertained, having had a good time.

It's heartening to return to live music, heartening for people like me in a band. It's a very traditional thing to return to. It re-validates the original form that we fell in love with.

There's a side to being in a band that some people embrace and some don't: the fact that you're performing and you care about how it comes across.

I love being in an arena that has like 10,000 people and huge crowds. I want to do a show at like the Viper room so badly. Like go up on stage and thrash myself around, go jump into the crowd. You can effing swear, get drunk on stage and do whatever you want basically.

The more you think about and interact with other people, the more you realize that it is untenable to privilege your interests over theirs, at least not if you want them to listen to you. You can’t say that my interests are special compared to yours any more than you can say that the particular spot that I am standing on is a unique part of the universe because I happen to be standing on it that very minute.