Musical History Quotes

Listen to really old blues guys and how they weren't allowed to sing about what they meant; they alluded to things. I find that style amusing, and I think it's a little harder to write.

One thing a lot of people don't know about Fun. was that the three of us all came from 10 years of touring with our own projects. That's how we met, actually.

My whole family's been involved with music, and it's been so since the minstrel days.

The thing with me is, about that - about rock and all that - years and years of crate-digging, listening to old music, you kind of start to connect the dots. And I was seeing the thread that was connecting everything together, which is pretty much the blues. And everything soul or funk kind of starts with that.

In America, at the beginning of talkies, they pulled Fred Astaire from the theaters and put him on the screen and had all of these great composers write songs for him. They call it the Great American Songbook; I call it the Fred Astaire Songbook because they were written for him.

The talk-box thing that T-Pain does is something new and different for this generation because they don't know about Zapp or Teddy Riley. I think he's creative and has made the talk-box his own in the hip-hop world, but if these young ones studied their musical history, they'd know that.

It was sort of in the jam-band era and it was at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester [New York], right where I grew up. I actually went back there a couple years ago when I was on tour for Kroll Show. I performed at that theater, which was really cool to go back to the first place I'd gone to a concert.

I've played drums since I was 15. My sisters and I all played instruments. I kind of started with piano and then I actually played saxophone with a jazz band in middle school. So, any knowledge I had of jazz music was from playing alto-sax back then.

At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.

As far as the creative side of making great, great albums and really trying to go down in history? I don't see that happening lately, you know what I mean? You have a lot of guys is talented, but at the same time, timeless music is more important to me.

Dates and periods are of interest only to the student of musical history.

Jerry Garcia was a great American master and the Grateful Dead are not just a genuine piece of musical history, but also an important part of American history.

I'd been performing in bands since I was 12 which represented, at that point, about 16 years of playing music.

When the Beatles came to America and took me off the map, I thought I would return the favor, and I moved the family to England!

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

A hundred years ago, when Richard Strauss, who has already been quoted and already been heard today, and other creative people, laid the foundation stone for the joint assertion of their rights and interests, they had pioneering work ahead of them in Germany.

I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface.

I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.

What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.

To be in one band that changed the world musically is pretty good, but to be in two bands that changed the world musically, that's amazing.

I've grown up with jazz - the Joe Hendersons, Oliver Nelsons, Miles Davis and stuff - but I was also listening to, like, Slipknot, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine. There was all of that weaved - interweaved - in there, and being from L.A., you tend to know your musical history.

Musical revolutions, I don't know how many I've been through.

From the first time I played with Lester Flatt, I sensed an extreme amount of history around me.