A Quote by Stuart A. Staples

I think it started with both the shows and the box set from finishing White Material. I think we were also pretty desperate to get it released. We felt pretty proud of it, and it just escalated from there. We were thinking about playing some live shows, doing the soundtracks live. It was just trying to shine a little light on this 15 years of work we've done.
I think that we just take our time with everything. We don't feel that there's a rush to become something that we're not yet. We like to really feel things out and know what we're doing. We hadn't ever really played a lot of shows live after we released our EP, and that's when we started doing it - we started playing out live consistently right after we released our EP and we got a new drummer because Shannyn [Sossamon] had quit.
When we set out our original program from the beginning, obviously our markets were pretty limited, and we were thinking about them mostly as U.S. shows, and they would travel like other U.S. shows have.
'Good Times' was with a live audience, three camera, and that was really intimidating. Because there were people on both sides, moving from set to set, and it was pretty scary. As I say, I didn't have a foundation in Hollywood. I hardly knew anybody. Just at the social level. I felt pretty isolated here, I really did.
Me and my band, we love playing live, and I think it shows. We have one of the better live shows in the state, and I think it's because we just love playing live.
I didn't feel that so much as an outsider when I started writing; I've felt that way all my life. I don't know, man; I guess I was just wired wrong. When I was growing up, I always wanted to be somebody else and live somewhere else. I've always felt a little uncomfortable around people. And I'm not trying to romanticize this, because it wasn't romantic. I wasn't trying to be a rebel; I just always felt a little out of it. I think that's why it's pretty easy for me to identify with people living on the margins.
I'm taking a pretty light load. I'm doing well. Gideon and Jason are both in school too, so we find time between shows to get work done, and during the day. I really like Columbia. Unlike high school, I don't feel any pressure to get straight-As. I just like learning.
When I'm representing my music live I think of it very much in a rock band sense. When I first started doing festivals in the 90s there really weren't other DJs playing the stages I was playing. So I felt I was being afforded an opportunity to kind of make a statement about what DJ music can be live. In the 90s, if you were a DJ you were in the dance tent, and you were playing house music and techno music. There was no such thing as a DJ - a solo DJ - on a stage, after a rock band and before another rock band: that just didn't happen.
When we first started playing shows, we were all 17. Everybody started somewhere. There were guys throwing shows in condemned houses and backyards just for the love of music and for the love of what bands were standing for.
We've been pretty lucky we've played with Feeder, Hundred Reasons and Puddle of Mud, but I think the one we're most proud of is playing with The Deftones because when we were kids they were everyone's favourite band. I think all our mates were pretty envious.
I think that live music is really pretentious - all of it. I hate festivals and live shows, because as soon as I get on stage, I start performing for people and it becomes about sex, banter, and skill. They're looking at me and not thinking about themselves. I'm thinking about how cool I look. It's just stupid - all live music is really stupid. I wouldn't encourage going to see anybody live, ever. Not even me.
Unfortunately, I'm an engineer. I'm always thinking about, what's the task and how do I get it done? And some of my tasks are pretty broad, and pretty fuzzy, and pretty funky, but that's the way I think.
I think when we were making the first album, we were like 16, 17 years old, and I think just years and years of recording and playing shows - I know me, personally, I kind of figured out my style more and vocally learned a better way to sing in the studio.
I think back to some of the pots we made when we first started our pottery, and they were pretty awful pots. We thought at the time they were good; they were the best we could make, but our thinking was so elemental that the pots had that quality also, and so they don't have a richness about them which I look for in my work today. Whether I achieve it all the time, that's another question, because I don't think a person can produce at top level 100 percent of the time.
When we were doing noisier shows, they were fun, but we were trying to be really obnoxious and it wasn't like we were trying to make good music. I mean, I'm happier when we have smoothed out a little bit. I think that the spirit of the noise and experimental stuff is still there, but it's easier to do when you're a freshman in college.
I used to play Saturday night shows with different little groups. If I could get a show, I would do it. I used to do mad things - I used to go and do these shows and go on my knees and roll on the ground - when I was 15,16 years old. And my parents were extremely disapproving of it all. Because it was just not done. This was for very low-class people, remember. Rock & roll singers weren't educated people
Very early on, when I started doing these plays and live shows, I would travel from city to city, and there were a million shows out there... so I wanted to step out among it, and I started putting my name above the title.
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