I project stronger. If you notice the old records - they're much lighter - vocally much lighter in sound than the records that I'm doing today.
Blackheart Records being 25 years old represents staying power and the fact that we weren't able to get a record out through conventional means, so we had to create this record company to put out our records if we wanted to be a band that had records to give out to their fans.
We were poor [with my mother], and we didn't have too much. So we sat on the floor and we had a record player, and that's all we had in that room in the apartment. But we had whatever we had. Six records and a record player and it seemed like magic. Seven or eight years old, you know.
I had a handful of records, but when I was 11 years old, I liked Puccini as much as Little Richard. They both made sense to me.
When I was a bit older I had all of the George Carlin records, all of the Steve Martin records, all of the Cheech and Chong records and all of the Richard Pryor records.
As Korn go on, it's the same things - bad childhoods and mean moms. It gets too old after a while. How old is Jonathan? Thirty? How long has it been since he lived with his parents?
If you listen to 'Electric,' 'Entourage,' and 'Been With A Star,' all those records are records that I dug into the crates for to help me create that feeling of old funk. No one makes records like that anymore.
I'm buying records a lot, like, every week I'm just buying old reissues or old originals or new records that I have heard about.
My mom had early rap records, like Jimmy Spicer. In the middle of the records was a turntable and a receiver - I used to scratch records on it - and on top was a reel-to-reel. In front of that wall were more stacks of records. It was either Mom's record or Pop's record, and they had their names on each and every one.
Once you get to 22 or 23, you're already old school. It's the bubblegum ones that buy records, have fun, party. You get older, you get sophisticated, and you don't go buy no records too much.
A lot of those early blues records and soul records were pretty much live. It was what it was, and they had goofs and mistakes, but it still kept its charm. We have to remember to keep the feel. It's so important.
I wish records got made faster and looser with less thought in them, but since touring is so much more profitable than records, you spend so much time on the road that it's hard to work on them. And the records get further and further apart.
We have had too much of the Clintons, too much of the establishment, too much of Bushes. We have had too much of the old names and the old theories. It`s time for a new theory.
People are always telling me how much they loved 'Empire Records.' We had so much fun making that movie. I was so young - 16 or 17. I still had a tutor!
I had been digging so much for my show, Minimal Wave - constantly finding fresh old material to play every week - that I ended up discovering all these obscure bands that no one had really heard here. It was very exciting to be able to play their records on the air for a new audience and be able to get instant feedback.
My dad would play me all of these records: Miles Davis records, John Coltrane records, Bill Evans records, a lot of jazz records. My first exposure to music was listening to jazz records.