...fuck. (Musician's edition.)
Yes, I know there's already a book on the subject, but I've been collecting a ream of quotes from artists and other folks I admire who seem to have always had their finger on the pulse of The Struggle and its final boss, Acceptance. All these quotes have made my spidey-sense tingle in one way or another, and have made me feel not so alone on my own path and the often lonesome process that creating can be.
Please enjoy.
(Apologies to any photogs whose snaps I've borrowed. If you would like me to do a takedown, send me an email and I'll do the needful.)
"If you're going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly."
-Mark E. Smith, The Fall
"Don’t make art for rich people."
-Bill Drummond, The KLF/JAMS
"Never play to the gallery."
-David Bowie
"All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff."
-Frank Zappa
"At times, I will get in the studio and force myself to just write an entire front-to-back record."
-Jason Molina
"I'm about creating a body of work and moving on to the next thing."
-Mark Lanegan, Screaming Trees
"Anytime I make a record, it's followed by a painting period. It's a good crop rotation."
-Joni Mitchell
"I gave up drinking lots of whiskey and began to practice yoga and meditation. As a result I am not dead."
-Billy Childish, Thee Headcoats, founder of Stuckism
"I suspect the older you get the more invisible you become."
-Nick Cave
"Forget me not, or I'll forget myself."
-Rozz Williams, Christian Death
"All I want for my birthday is another birthday."
-Ian Dury, The Blockheads
"You have to believe in what you are saying in your music. Doors will slam, rooms will be empty. Calls will be unanswered. That can't matter to you."
- Greg Dulli, Afghan Whigs
“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it.”
-Brian Eno
"Will you ever get used to the sound of yourself, when it's enough to make you fall in love with the sound of anything else?"
-Mac MacCaughan, Superchunk
"I suspect a singing teacher would have a fit with my diction. They'd probably think I was doing a very bad job."
-Elizabeth Fraser, Cocteau Twins
"In the end, I don't know if it's good music or bad music or indifferent music. I have no idea. I don't really care too much, it's done with and over with. People would say, why do you release it anyway, if you don't really rate it? The answer is, whatever music it is, bad, good, indifferent, stupid, boring, whatever, – it's truthful. At the time, it's the truth, and it's honest. There's no attempt to portray an image or a career or anything. It's what it is."
-Vini Reilly, Durutti Column
"I'm proud of all our records. Even the crap ones."
-Joe Strummer
"I started out as an actor but now I act to fund my own productions. I've managed to separate my mindset."
-Crispin Glover
"I really think there’s an unmatchable experience, that stretches from the auditioning/signing of an artist all the way through recording, mastering, promotion, licensing etc. to the actual manufacturing, that cannot be fully absorbed by individuals only doing one of those jobs."
-Ivo Watts-Russell, 4AD founder
"Tech companies have put my kids through college. And put me in a house. And spent thousands of dollars funding OXBOW records. So It’s not the companies. It’s the zeroes that they hire who then hire other zeroes so that eventually anywhere there was anything interesting in San Francisco all starts to sound, if you listen not so carefully, like staff meetings."
-Eugene Robinson, OXBOW
"When you cut in the present, the future leaks out."
-William S. Burroughs (on the mechanics of cut-up technique)
"We all know that there is no quicker way to empty a joke of its peculiar magic than to try to explain it."
-David Foster Wallace (on Kafka)
"When you have to put on shades in the studio, you know you have to stop."
-Mike Patton
"Don't do bad."
-Jesus, God
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What I’m reading: The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel (Rainer Willman)
What I'm listening to: Supper (Smog)
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