There's a few tunes of mine that don't have jokes, but most of them have a joke and they have a humorous point of view somewhere.
When I'm at home creating music, I usually wind up laughing. It's always, like, funny - like, what the hell did I just write?
I can play anything - piano, drums, guitar, harp - I can even play a trumpet through another trumpet.
Years ago, I was performing, and people kept calling out for 'Puppy Love' and I just didn't want to. Then I thought I'd have some fun, so we did this insane heavy metal version of it. The applause was polite.
Erroll Garner is one of the few musicians I believe has a sense of humor in his music.
Birth of the Cool' became a collector's item, I think, out of a reaction to Bird and Dizzy's music. Bird and Diz played this hip, real fast thing, and if you weren't a fast listener, you couldn't catch the humor or the feeling in their music. Their musical sound wasn't sweet, and it didn't have harmonic lines that you could easily hum out on the street with your girlfriend trying to get over with a kiss.
There are two instruments worse than a clarinet - two clarinets.
Most young comedians would be lying to say that they weren't huge Weird Al fans when they were kids. Weird Al is probably the first person I ever realized had a career that was just making jokes.
And now, in honour of the 150th anniversary of Beethoven's death, I would like to play 'Clear the Saloon', er, 'Clair de Lune', by Debussy. I don't play Beethoven so well, but I play Debussy very badly, and Beethoven would have liked that.
Music can be witty, but it's not funny unless it's conceptually funny.
Geddy once joked, 'You're the only guy I know who rehearses to rehearse!
I have what we call a 'symphony act.' I'm the only comedian, I think, in the country that does it.
I'm a performer. I do comedy and music, and I blend them together. My band is 'Nasty Delicious!'.
There are bands that make parodies of being in a band, like Spinal Tap. That's a big influence. They're making fun of a rock band, but they write lyrics that are better than real rock bands.
Funny songs aren't usually that good. Like Weird Al and maybe a couple of Beatles songs, but it's kind of hard to bring humor into rock music in an interesting way.
I'm doing a pilot for Comedy Central with the band Steel Panther. They're faux heavy metal. They started as kind of a tribute band out here, or a cover band, and they're funny guys, and they just sort of morphed into their own thing.
Uncle Dave Macon was a great balladeer and banjo player from the early part of the 19th century... He would take a social problem or something that he was looking at and make up a clever little song about it, you know, in a language everyone understood, a man of the people.
I always use my Les Paul. I have a Hamer as well. I use a Tele and an Esquire - once in a while, I will use a Strat, and I never use any pedals... except for in my car.
There's nothing like a love song to give you a good laugh.
Guitar solos, to me, should be a really articulate way to make fun of guitar solos.
I'm in the lane where I can make music but also have it be funny and still good at the same time.
As jazz fans, it was amusing for us to play jazz harmonies on these big, ugly electric guitars.
In a band with humor, it's easy to be a caricature, especially when you've been around as long as we have. But we sing those songs as genuine as we can, always from the heart. When we do the fish sounds in 'Rock Lobster,' Cindy and I are pouring our hearts out.
My sister and I - she's a musician - we jam all the time. We always play around for giggles with stuff that seem unconventional or stuff that seems funny. A lot of the stuff sometimes is just a response from jam sessions in her room, so she'll be on the guitar or the keyboard, and we'll just start singing and doing stuff.
In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs.
