So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame.

We live in ugly times.

I think that if they want people to listen to ten or twelve songs, they have to give the listener a reason to listen to ten or twelve songs or to buy ten or twelve and listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling one or two for their iPod or their computer.

As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again.

The more you know, the more you know you don't know and the more you know that you don't know.

I'm just wearing regular street clothes. Pretty much all the time. In the summertime, or when it gets warm out, shorts and sandals or something like that. Stuff that I don't mind getting a little sweaty.

The assumption is that your personal life has to be a mess to create, but how much chaos can you allow in before it takes over?