A Quote by James Vincent McMorrow

It bothers me when musicians listen to music from the '60s and try and recreate it. Those people weren't trying to recreate music from the '20s. Why do it? — © James Vincent McMorrow
It bothers me when musicians listen to music from the '60s and try and recreate it. Those people weren't trying to recreate music from the '20s. Why do it?
I think people assume that whatever kind of music you make is the music you listen to. Don't get me wrong, I listen to tons of pop music and all the music that really inspires Best Coast is very straightforward '50s and '60s pop music, but I've been listening to R&B and rap since I was a kid. I grew up in L.A. It's part of the culture. I listen to anything.
In my music, I'm never going to force anything to try to recreate a moment or something.
When I listen to music, there's usually some aspect of that music that I like, and that's what I take and try to bring into my own music. Bringing in other musicians to collaborate with is a good way for me to test out new ways or make music that I might have not discovered on my own.
What's always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you're in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you. I wanted to find a way to unlock the intensity of that, to recreate that unique perspective, first for the hundreds of people who attended the concert, and eventually for a much larger online audience.
It's impossible to recreate music from the past. Music always states the truth.
That’s why I make music. When I listen to my favorite music made by other people, that’s what it does to me. So as a musician, I’m just trying to do the same thing with music I make. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But when someone comes to me and says the music I’ve made has affected them emotionally, that’s the most gratifying part of my job.
Music means communication to me. I say 'listen you people out there, listen to my music, let's be one.' Music is a friend to me when I am lonely, when I am blue. You can't define music 'cause music is cosmos and it knows no barrier or definition. You have to feel music to dig it.
You can't recreate the '60s.
For me music is pretty personal. I generally listen to it alone, and I've never been a lover of concerts. So I don't think I really bond with other people over music. That's not unique to music for me, either. I feel that way about film, television, art, everything. I read a book alone, so why wouldn't I listen to music alone?
I’ve broken a cardinal rule of art, music, and career paths: actors are supposed to act, and musicians are supposed to music. That’s how it works. You don’t buy fish from a dentist, or ask a plumber for financial advice, so why listen to an actor’s music?
That authentic experience that happens both in the artist and in the audience you can classify as a mystical experience. You can classify it as aesthetic shock, or even a psychedelic experience. Some people seek to recreate that experience through drugs. But the other way that you can do it is through art, and through spectacle. We have those experiences when we go to rock shows, or when we listen to a piece of classical music, or read a particular poem, or see a painting.
That's for non-musicians to say: "I only listen to this or that type of music." I think musicians love all music, or at least that's my case.
Grunge, like Nirvana and all that. Heavy metal, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Guns and Roses, drum and bass. I like to listen to it and try and break down what makes a fan of that music say 'Ah fuck that other music', do you get me? Trying to figure out what makes them tick, I always try and break that down with every piece of music. But the energy in that music, I love it.
There's always so much music around me now, it seems like everything has to be something with music, so in my spare time I try not to listen to anything. It's so hard for me to listen to something without trying to see a benefit in it: 'Maybe I'll make my own version of that track or maybe I'll do this or that.'
I'm always intrigued by people that listen to my music, I just naturally want to get to know people who listen to my music because people who end up having such an attachment with my stuff, I wonder why they have such a connection to something that's so personal to me in the first place.
For me, let's keep jazz as folk music. Let's not make jazz classical music. Let's keep it as street music, as people's everyday-life music. Let's see jazz musicians continue to use the materials, the tools, the spirit of the actual time that they're living in, as what they build their lives as musicians around.
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