A Quote by J. D. Souther
Think back to the early rock n' roll records, and the average record length in the '50s - and well into the '60s - was two and a half minutes. It's very hard to put that much songwriting into two and a half minutes.
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Man has here two and a half minutes-one to smile, one to sigh, and a half to love: for in the midst of this minute he dies.
We take a lot of inspiration from punk rock and early rock 'n' roll from the '50s and early '60s.
Half of the modern world goes back as far as Pearl Jam. The real historians go back to U2. But they need to go back further. They have to go back to the '50s and '60s, where things started. That's how you get to be your own personality, by studying the masters. Rock and roll was white kids trying to make black music and failing, gloriously!
You have an hour and a half or two hours - maybe two and a half hours - in a movie, and it has to be a self-contained three-act structure. It's like a rock and roll song. Certain things have to happen for it to be a toe-tapper and get people excited, leaving the theater.
The first listen is very important to me. Half of my favorite records just hit you in the face immediately with something memorable and within three-and-a-half minutes you know you've heard something really special. I want to make records like that, but it's a big challenge.
'Cause a musician, you can't tell me, "I've got this message I want share with the public," and it's three-and-a-half minutes long. That's not it. If your message is only three-and-a-half minutes long, then we got nothing else to talk about. Because life is more complex than three-and-a-half minutes.
The fans are the end result of what we do. Sometimes I think we forget that those are the folks that mean it in this game. There's plenty of evidence to be found that you can have all the #1 records in the world, but if you really ain't touchin' them, you don't come home with gold records and platinum records. I'm very proud that we've only had one #1 record, but we've sold two and one half million!
The makeup [for Count Olaf] took about two and a half hours every morning. The meditation was another hour and a half. I would eat a big breakfast - that was probably 45 minutes. And then it was lunch.
I wrote 'Always Love' in 10 minutes. It's a very positive song, more positive than I am in reality, but I was feeling good for three and a half minutes. And every time we play a show I think, 'Well I should probably be that positive,' but I'm not.
I meditate in the morning, and my daughter will do it with me, looking like the most perfect little Buddha. I'll do ten minutes of yoga, then two to ten minutes of meditation. She'll sit there quietly half the time.
I think that I recall the nostalgic '50s: the start of early television and rock-and-roll, and I think everything seemed to get very generic. Not much has changed.
Be more attentive to what successful people have to say about all the opportunity around you. Anything important - which takes only two minutes to point out - will exceed most people's attention span by at least a minute and a half. Learn to pay attention for two minutes at a time - and you will see more opportunity than you know what to do with.
I'm making a record that's half stripped down acoustic which is the way I perform a lot and half of it is very produced. It's really hard to keep music simple but I was trying to keep it simple and focus on one or two instruments and vocals.
My first show sold within the first 3 minutes, and I came back to the studio and spent the next two and a half years making almost nothing.
My first show sold within the first 3 minutes, and I came back to the studio and spent the next two and a half years making almost nothing
Sometimes there's no qualitative difference between two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half hour shows. It's just a matter of how long you do it. It's not like the show must be three hours and 30 minutes to work. That's just not the case.
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