52 quotes found
"Somebody will ask those of us who compose with the aid of computers: 'So you make all these decisions for the computer or the electronic medium, but wouldn't you like to have a performer who makes certain other decisions?' Many composers don't mind collaborating with the performer with regards to decisions of tempo, or rhythm, or dynamics, or timbre, but ask them if they would allow the performer to make decisions with regard to pitch and the answer will be 'Pitches you don't change.' Some of us feel the same way in regard to the other musical aspects that are traditionally considered secondary, but which we consider fundamental. As for the future of electronic music, it seems quite obvious to me that its unique resources guarantee its use, because it has shifted the boundaries of music away from the limitations of the acoustical instrument, of the performer's coordinating capabilities, to the almost infinite limitations of the electronic instrument. The new limitations are the human ones of perception."
"Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical. Music, which should pulsate with life, needs new means of expression, and science alone can infuse it with youthful vigor. Why, Italian Futurists, have you slavishly reproduced only what is commonplace and boring in the bustle of our daily lives. I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm."
"[Nowadays] it’s cool to play an instrument, whereas there was a period of time where these kids didn’t even know instruments existed. It was all electronic. Now, through electronic music, instruments have been brought back in. It’s a cycle for sure."
"Because American electronic music had risen from underground creative circles — and it was still largely relegated to the modern art world and academia — there were still many questions around the space age sounds that computers could create. What would become of performers? Is it actually music?"
"Pop music can't be described, but quantified."
"The attitude to sexual love in the "pop" song is so ugly and mechanical as to seem schizoid, and psychopathological. Exposed as they are to such powerful cultural statements, young people are being encouraged to forfeit genuine commitment in love in favour of depersonalised sexual activity, with an undercurrent of violence, and to take false solutions in which they must deny their deepest needs, by hate."
"... And this is the origin of pop music: it's a professional music which draws upon both folk music and fine arts music as well."
"Pop music is probably the only art form that is totally dependent for its success on the general public. The more people buy a record, the more successful it is — not only commercially but artistically."
"If you do a lot of variety shows, you sometimes forget your job as a singer. But I got really excited after practicing together again. I can’t wait to go on stage."
"Maybe it’s because of a rumor that ‘we aren’t suppose to be in a relationship’, which had caused quite a stir, but this is a restriction that's applied to a very small percentage of artists, I think. It's an image that was required for idols, like the one that says that we never even go to the bathroom… we’ve been in this industry for a long time now and we are doing what we want to do, so we’re allowed to fall in love."
"Because we have so many of those pose and gestures, I feel like many people assume that we’re super bubbly and animated."
"Pop is a consumer article, anyhow; after use you throw it away. Forget about the "art" bullshit."
"Disco is the best floor show in town. It's very democratic, boys with boys, girls with girls, girls with boys, blacks and whites, capitalists and Marxists, Chinese and everything else, all in one big mix."
"Disco is a major influence in the world of fashion. It is a dynamic factor in contemporary advertising. It is a message from every consumer that there has been a rediscovery of America's greatest by-product: fun."
"Hit the floor[,] babe[;] disco ain't dead, and neither am I!"
"Break-beat music and hip-hop culture were happening at the same time as the emergence of disco (in 1974 known as party music). Disco was also created by DJs in its initial phase, though these tended to be club jocks rather than mobile party jocks -- records by Barry White, Eddie Kendricks and others became dancefloor hits in New York clubs like Tamberlane and Sanctuary and were crossed over onto radio by Frankie Crocker at station WBLS. There were many parallels in the techniques used by Kool DJ Herc and a pioneering disco DJ like Francis Grasso, who worked at Sanctuary, as they used similar mixtures and superimpositions of drumbeats, rock music, funk and African records. For less creative disco DJs, however, the ideal was to slip-cute smoothly from the end of one record into the beginning of the next. They also created a context for breaks rather than foregrounding them, and the disco records which emerged out of the influence of this type of mixing tended to feature long introductions, anthemic choruses and extended vamp sections, all creating a tension which was released by the break. Break-beat music simply ate the cherry off the top of the cake and threw the rest away. In the words of DJ Grandmaster Flash:""
":'Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records. The type of mixing that was out then was blending from one record to the next or waiting for the record to go off and wait for the jock to put the needle back on.'"
"Discos are little nirvanas where the solemn roar of rock music allows the son of Siddhartha to savor the little nothingness. To not be for a little while is all that is asked. Little ‘nothings’ that the life of today's individual needs in order to be reborn and live another week."
"I hadn't heard of either disco or Meco. When I was asked to listen to Meco's now-famous recording, I was a little apprehensive, wondering how a pop record could be made from "The March from Star Wars" and what it would be like. I immediately liked what I heard and sensed that a geniune communication was taking place. Meco took things forward another step by bringing Star Wars to a vast audience who otherwise would not have heard it in its original symphonic setting. I am most grateful to Meco for all of this and I am delighted that 'disco' and 'Meco' are now household words."
"Disco is here to stay."
"Disco is from hell, okay? And not the cool part of hell with all the murderers, but the lame ass part where the really bad accountants live."
"OFFSHOOTS OF THE SEMENESE PEOPLE INVENTED DISCO WHILE HAVING SEX UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF COCAINE. IT IS A SHAME UPON MY RACE - BUT WHAT IS DONE IS DONE."
"The rhetorical process functioned in many areas other than speech: Curtius wrote about 'rhetorical landscape representations' while Serpieris speaks of 'la retorica al teatro' (the rhetorical use of theatrical space), and music historians have learned that the language and approach of musical theory in the Middle Ages were borrowed directly from medieval grammar and rhetoric."
"The honk-a-tonk last night was well attended by ball heads, bachelors and leading citizens."
"It was moaned by resonant moaners in honky tonks of the southwest."
"This place ain't no damn honkatonk, stranger," reproved the bar-tender... "Folks get throwed outa here sometimes."
"Its master whose anonymous dust lay with that of his blood and of the progenitors of saxophone players in Harlem honky-tonks."
"Honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses."
"These honkey-tonks ran wide open twenty-four hours a day... Their attendance was some of the lowest caliber women in the world and their intake was the revenue from the little, pitiful gambling games they operated."
"I didn't know God made honky tonk angels I might have known you'd never make a wife You gave up the only one that ever loved you and went back to the wild side of life"
"It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels As you said in the words of your song Too many times married men think they're still single That has caused many a good girl to go wrong"
"I met a gin soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis, She tried to take me upstairs for a ride. She had to heave me right across her shoulder 'Cause I just can't seem to drink you off my mind. It's the honky tonk women Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues."
"I walked into a honky tonk just the other day. I put a nickel in the jukebox just to hear it play."
"Soul music … arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying."
"Soul is truth, … no matter where it comes from, no matter how it is presented."
"God would be a very selfish god if he gave all the soul to one race. … When one sings from the heart and it reaches another heart, that's soul."
"There's not many Americans, certainly not many of the teenagers I met when I first went to America, knew anything about [rhythm & blues artists] at all. … They do now, which is very groovy."
"But now if I can wrap myself up in that song, and when that song gets to be a part of me, and affects me emotionally, then the emotions that I go through, chances are I’ll be able to communicate to you. Make the people out there become a part of the life of this song that you’re singing about. That’s soul when you can do that."
"Rhythm and blues used to be called race music. … This music was going on for years, but nobody paid any attention to it."
"When I think of soul, I think of grease 'cause ain't nothin' no good without the grease."
"What they call rock and roll now is rhythm and blues: I've been playing for 15 years in New Orleans."
"Our church does not use musical instruments, as harps and psalteries, to praise God withal, that she may not seem to Judaize."
"Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting."
"Where there is devotional music, God with his grace is always present."
"We have brought into our churches certain operatic and theatrical music; such a confused, disorderly chattering of some words as I hardly think was ever in any of the Grecian or Roman theatres. The church rings with the noise of trumpets, pipes, and dulcimers; and human voices strive to bear their part with them. Men run to church as to a theatre, to have their ears tickled. And for this end organ makers are hired with great salaries, and a company of boys, who waste all their time learning these whining tones."
"Eric Cartman: Christian music doesn't require any thought at all! All you have to do is get crappy love songs and replace the word "baby" with "Jesus"."
"Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) has grown over a long period of time. Its foundations are evident in the early hymns of various Protestant faiths. Overtures of intimacy and sentimentality were mixed with Christian music in the 19th century as the feminine ideal of piety combined with the temperance crusade emerged. Even militaristic themes characterized hymns in the early 20th century as the world and the United States fought several major wars. By the 1960s, however, Evangelicals began to realize that "Bringing in the Sheaves" on Sundays couldn't begin to compete with weekday broadcasts of "Hey Jude" and "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," especially among younger listeners. Composer Ralph Carmichael began the CCM renaissance with pieces such as "Pass It On" and "He's Everything to Me." Musical creativity burst onto the Christian music scene as the younger generation brought its hippie culture, with music largely devoid of theological divisions, into various churches."
"Elvis changed the country music scene quite a bit; he almost put country music out of business."
"American country music … was and is … the soul music of white people."
"Country music is three chords and the truth."
"By the mid-1960s, advertisers no longer thought of country radio stations as only being listened to by country folk. During the 1950s, it looked as though country would not survive the popularity of rock and Top 40 formatting, but the introduction of the "Nashville Sound" - typified by the now-classic recordings of Patsy Cline, - proved that crossover hit making was possible. By the mid-1970s, country had its place in radio, with more than 1,000 stations playing country format. Country had become suburban-it had given a voice to adult problems, such as infidelity, boss hating, and the like, whereas pop music seemed stuck in teenaged concerns. Country radio listeners were therefore older, and were nearly always white. By the 1990s, one survey determined that country stations were number one in 57 of the top 100 radio markets in the United States."
"Unlike hip-hop, many country artists have dominated within their genre without ever becoming pop-culture fixtures."