A Quote by Michael Stipe
Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.
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Sometimes you hate your music, sometimes you don't. Sometimes I listen to the record and it's really hard for me, and other times I listen to it and I give myself a pat on the back.
I listen to anything anyone gives me. I always go back to a few basic favorites. I can always listen to Django Reinhardt and hear something I haven't heard before. I like to listen to Art Tatum and Coltrane and Charlie Parker. Those are guys who never seem to run out of ideas.
A big marker in my life was realizing you could record sound: I liked to make little recordings and then go back and listen to them. It becomes something outside of you then and you can listen to it objectively.
I'm not performing now. What I do now is listen to music all day long. Listening is very nourishing to me. I might go back to perform, I might make another record. I've got a record half finished.
Sometimes when a record's done, I'm satisfied and I won't listen back to it for a while 'cause I'm usually pretty tired of the songs. Then I've got to learn them again to play them live, and sometimes it takes a while to realise it's a really good record.
Sometimes a person has to go back, really back-to have a sense, an understanding of all that's gone to make them-before they can go forward.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble. I don't only listen to the guitar player.
I don't think I could have had a better experience than I did with 'Girlfight.' It was a humbling experience to be so well received. And it was equally humbling to be ripped to pieces with 'Aeon Flux.'
We record Dream Theater shows and I'll sit on the bus and listen to my playing - what worked, what didn't. A lot of times it's embarrassing and humbling, but that's what you have to do to get better.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.
I think baseball has such a way of humbling you. You can go 20-for-20, and before you know it, you're going to go through an 0-for-30. It has that way of knocking you back down to earth.
I know a lot of bands that will make their first record and get to a certain level, and then when the second record comes out, they can start where they left off as a headlining act playing in front of a certain number of people, or they can go back out and make a lot less money and open for people. I feel like if you go out and just go right back into that headlining stuff, you're playing to the converted.
Sometimes you need a humbling experience to think about a few things.
I do go back and listen to my songs. I'm biting my fingernails the whole way through, but I do listen. I have a lot of songs I've wanted to re-record just because of how advanced technology is and the different instrument sounds that I'm more experienced with.
I call it "being interrupted by success." We had done The Soft Bulletin, which came out in 1999, and we knew we that were gonna make another record before too long. But in between this, we were still in this mode of kind of just - not re-creating what we could be, but kind of doing different things. For the longest time in the Flaming Lips we were like, "Make a record, go on tour. Come back, make another record," and you know, I think, frankly, we were kind of like, "There's more to life than just recording records and going on tour."
I sometimes think this is just my life: I go to mow the lawn and sometimes go to space. But when other people say what you've done is really impactful, that's really humbling.
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