A Quote by David Johansen

I don't know if it's possible to affect my ego any more. There's no room left. For me, I think I make music like the way I think it should be made, like what rock should sound like. It has nothing to do with the current marketplace. And so from that state of mind, it's gonna sound different from anything else out there. And when something sounds different, I think that can be inspiring to other musicians.
When we sit in meditation and hear a sound, we think, 'Oh, that sound's bothering me.' If we see it like this, we suffer. But if we investigate a little deeper, we see that the sound is simply sound. If we understand like this, then there's nothing more to it. We leave it be. The sound is just sound, why should you go and grab it? You see that actually it was you who went out and disturbed the sound.
I do experiment with lots of different genres. In making music, I don't think of genre like, "I want to do this, because I'm going use that country music sound; I'm going use that hip-hop sound; I'm going use that acoustic [sound]." It's just making music. So now that I've traveled a lot more since I did Acoustic Soul, I'm sure that different sounds will come into place, because I have been exposed to it and I like it. But it's not so much of a conscience effort. It's mind and spirited. You know, we're humans.
I always say that you should just listen to it and see what you think it sounds like it is. I don't think it should be labeled. Most musicians feel like that. No one wants to put their music in a category. But, I don't think it's all over the place. I don't go from metal to jazz, or anything crazy.
Well, things hold up even if they sound dated. It can be very difficult to listen to 80s pop songs with really, really gigantic smashed drum sounds. You just want to turn that gated reverb down on the snare. It sounds wrong now. It sounds amateurish. And ugly. But at the time it sounded state-of-the-art. So yeah, I think it's important not to sound state-of-the-art in a way that anybody else is going to sound. Or you'll quickly sound like yesterday's state-of-the-art.
There's two or three kids out there trying to make good music, and the rest of them sound like it's been strained through some kind of white toast or something. It all sounds just too neat and perfect, with no surprise to it at all. No story, no nothing. It's like building cars, like an assembly line. It doesn't sound like anything that came from a guitar.
I think I'll always make music that sounds different from what is current, but I doubt that it'll sound consistently the same as what I've been doing.
A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it's going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that's available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.
All music done, as I said, through low res mp3 and $5 earbuds and so I think as a producer or a band you want your music to sound good in that medium. Sometimes when I'm doing a mix I'll listen to it on my laptop, on the crappy speakers on my laptop. It lets me know what the tracks gonna sound like if someone else listens to it that way.
Part of the success of This American Life, I think, is due to the fact that none of us sound like we should be on the radio. We don't sound professional; we sound like people you would know.
Everybody is afraid to touch the topic of religion, especially with the extreme muslims. It's such a touchy subject. You can attack any other religion and nothing bad will come about, but I think those that are extremists, the way they are taught or the way, as I'd like to say, "brain-washed." they're not of sound mind, They're of a different mind.
We look so very different from the way we sound. It’s a shock, similar to hearing your own voice for the first time, when you’re forced to wonder how the rest of you comes across if you sound nothing like the way you think you sound. You feel dislodged from the old shoe of yourself.
When I do a record, it sounds more punk and raw. Or it will sound louder, or it will sound more shocking. Or mind-boggling. I'll be trying to figure it out, but once I've got it figured out I'll be like, I know this; I know where this came from. I think art is most interesting when the intention is not clear.
The last thing a young artist should do in poetry or any other field is think about what's in style, what's current, what are the trends. Think instead of what you like to read, what do you admire, what you like to listen to in music. What do you like to look at in architecture? Try to make a poem that has some of those qualities.
My James Bond wasn't any different to my Saint or my Persuaders or anything else I've done. I've just made everything that I play look like me and sound like me.
I don't think all films should necessarily look like they do on digital video. I think it cheats the audience, at some point. If you try to make an epic and you shoot it digitally, that doesn't make much sense. I think there's a certain kind of film that could be a "digital film." But it shouldn't be interchangeable with other films. It should be something more than just a capture medium. It should be a different form altogether, something new.
There was a great push and pull of what Blink-128 should sound like all the time. Travis Barker comes from a different background than I do, and Tom DeLonge comes from a different background than either of us in terms of what we write and what we think a song should be. Tom pushes me out of a box that I put myself in.
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