A Quote by J. D. Souther

Stand-up comedians say that anyone in the audience can be funny, but people paid to see us because we're just a little bit funnier. In the same way, I think anybody can play music - in fact, I think everyone has music in them, but some of us can do it a little better.
The personal boundaries, I think for comedians they're a little bit different anyway, but I think people - feel free to do stuff - It's interesting with comedians because when we walk on stage, oftentimes we're talking about ourselves for an hour and we're talking about very intimate details, so after hearing us for an hour, a lot of people feel very comfortable with us because they feel like they know us and they're our friends because we just told them our innermost secrets and details of our lives for an hour. What they forget is we know absolutely nothing about the audience.
Another one of my favourite sayings is, you can't handpick your audience. I feel like I'm making music for people who think like me about music, and that takes a lot of different forms. I could never generalise - but I think if I were to generalise, I'd think that you would say that most of my fans are music lovers who are looking for something outside of the mainstream: maybe a little bit hard to pin down, a little bit hard to categorise.
I always think everyone else is funnier than me. I look at other comedians and I say, 'I wish I was that good.' People think I'm funny, and I say, 'I'm not.'
The way I look at music, what I'm interested in is not necessarily creativity - in many ways I think creativity is overrated, actually. What I think is important is authenticity. I want to hear music that has the resonance of the people. I want to hear music that is an amplification of them. Because then, I can experience the people. But because the music has become so institutionalized, everyone is learning and regurgitating the same material in the same way.
When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work.
I think when you hear good music or the experience you have to the music which makes you remember it, it's so priceless. Really, it's the same thing for us when we make it, to actually see the idea come together to be something that's special and then to see people kinda degrade it, it is a little discouraging.
Listening to a lot of guitar rock and roll music and feeling quite eccentric because everyone expected me to learn and develop like R&B. This kind of made me feel a little bit better, because I realized it was all the same, you know. There's no difference. It's just music.
Everything I do is intended to make people laugh and think. I just think something is funny, it's not hurting anybody, not stabbing anybody, not shooting anybody, not making anybody watch me perform. There are thousands of comedians, don't come see me because it's not like I hide it.
I'm more than a little suspicious of humor in poems, because I think it can at times be a way of getting a reaction out of a reader, or an audience, that is something closer to relief: i.e., thank god this isn't poetry, but stand-up comedy. Some poets are really funny, but more often poets are fourth rate stand up comics at best. But they benefit from the sheer relief of the audience.
I don't hate on the whole EDM thing happening in America because, although the music is not of my taste - a little bit brash for me - I think it's also introducing a lot of young people to dance music, and then they're discovering better dance music through it.
Mostly, whenever I'm booked to do instruction, I just play a little bit and get people to ask questions. We'll play some music for 'em, 'til somebody hollers out, 'Play 'Milk Cow Blues' or 'Play 'San Antonio Rose.' We play requests and demonstrate our music.
Records were vitally important to the development of music and of all music cultures. With that being pushed by the wayside, I can't see an iPod uniting us. In fact it separates us, the streets are full of people bumping into lamp posts, listening to their own little universe, and there's no sharing in that.
Just when you think we're living in a little bit of a divided world, music brings us together.
I've always felt like my music would stand for itself and I would stand for myself. So I've kept my music a little bit esoteric, and I've kept the lyrics a little aloof. I try to say something important, but I don't necessarily preach.
In comparison to the U.S. health care system, the German system is clearly better, because the German health care system works for everyone who needs care, ... costs little money, and it's not a system about which you have to worry all the time. I think that for us the risk is that the private system undermines the solidarity principle. If that is fixed and we concentrate a little bit on better competition and more research, I think the German health care system is a nice third way between a for-profit system on the one hand and, let's say, a single-payer system on the other hand.
Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.
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