Quotes About Album

I think record cover sleeves really led towards, but at the same time the album as we know it didn't come into being until mainly after the Second World War because record labels realized they'd be able to make a lot more money putting all the singles of an artist onto one album and selling the whole album as a kind of a concept.

The Sicilian Defence was our attempt at quickly fulfilling our contractual obligation after I Robot, Pyramid and Eve had been delivered. The album was rejected by Arista, not surprisingly, and we then renegotiated our deal for the future and the next album, The Turn of a Friendly Card. The Sicilian Defence album was never released and never will be, if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist.

The guy we want to get is the guy who did the Aerosmith album which is coming out in two days, and a Chili Peppers album, and a couple of Pearl Jam albums. We want to get someone that will sort of bring out the high energy aspect more than the dreaminess that was on the last album.

You're not going to hit it every single time, and that's why, when I record an album, I do probably close to 50 songs. Each song I record has to get better. If it's not better than the last song that I made, it'll usually linger for a couple of months, and then it'll be put on the backburner, and then there'll be another song that I do, and then it often doesn't make it on the album.

The nice thing about working for a label like Domino is that there's no pressure: They've got a roster of 40 active bands, and they can bang out an album or single in a week, so it's not the end of the world to not have a Max Tundra album in 2005.

It was 22 years of work in a row, right up until 1987. Twenty-two years in a row-either on tour, writing an album, or recording an album. It wasn't until 1987 that I was able to take a breath.

I could have taken the easy life and just done classical, but I felt very strongly about the album, my first pop album, the first time that I'd fused so many influences. I was very proud when it was in the charts in 25 countries at once.

The album is a definite departure. I haven't written original material before, except for one song on my first album, but Elvis and I did six songs together on this one.

I just put out a hardcore double album. Next I'm gonna put out an introspective album.

So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.

I try to mix the fashion with the music and what's going on at the time...at the time [when my uniform was black on black] I was putting together an album, my album was my name at the time; very minimal, very stripped down, very everything but it still had and have to have some level of pop.

I don't really marinate in anybody's album because I don't really want to sound like anybody else when I put my album out. So I'd rather not even be tempted to listen to a bunch of other stuff with any degree of emersion in it, cause I just don't want to sound like anything else, so I kinda focus on my own music.

Everybody else goes out and plays a show as if it's their album, which is boring. I'd rather sit at home and listen to the album, because I hate to be in a smoke-filled, loud room - that's not enjoyable for me at all...I always look up to guys who can sit and do dinner music...they're singing in tune and playing somebody else's music, and I don't think I could do that...it's the shittiest job in the world.

When you put an album out, you can't do any material from the album if people are paying to see you.

That was an idea of the record company, and also that was my first album after MCA and we wanted to come back with a strong album that would be noticed. If we put the vocals by very talented people and very meaningful songs, then the vocals would be a platform so that I could be noticed again. All of the MCA albums were just loaded with problems -- you know, the right musicians, the engineers. The record company would say 'You have to make music for black radio, you can't do what you have been doing with The Crusaders.' Everybody was telling me that was over, finished, done.

George Carlin's album, 'Class Clown,' came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I'd come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don't even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.

My next project will be a Christian album, another one. I wrote the songs for the ones you're referring to, but I want to do some of my old gospel favorites. That's what my next album's going to be.

I used to split my time between writing, music and painting. I would work on a book and then abandon it, start a band, do an album, quit music, then do a gallery show. Eventually I decided to give writing a serious shot.

I tend to write pretty much by myself. I always did that anyway. I used to write with Ron Strykert 'cause he was the only guitarist and we played well together. We lived in the same place. I would play a certain style and he would kind of dance around what I did, in a sense. I learned from him and also vice-versa. With this band, I think I bounce ideas off everybody. Perhaps on the next album they'll be more collaborative stuff, but for the last 2-3 years, I've been pretty well writing by myself.

I like to believe a true fan of music or an artist has a genuine respect for what the artist does and has a distinct understanding of their actions. In that buying an album they are helping the artist to continue making music. It's hard because everyone wants something to be free.

I had the pleasure of listening to Rickie Lee Jones' Flying Cowboys album on audio cassette, which had just come out at that time because I am an elderly man.

Obviously it always takes longer to finish an album than you think it will. That's always going to be the case. Everything takes longer than you think it will. Occasionally things happen fast.

Jonathan Coe's genial, likeable novel can only be described as a kind of lit-prog-rock concept album... Coe recreates the period with such loving accuracy that I frankly suspect him of having planted a secret microphone in the tin Oxford Mathematical Instruments box I carried around in my school days... As always with Jonathan Coe, the sheer intelligent good nature that suffuses his work makes it a pleasure to read.

I don't want to give too much lugubrious thought to the gravitas of a coherent album. I don't want to develop a life of slavery to a large topic. I want to throw out some singles and that's what I'm doing, and they're not to be done in any other way.

All the characters on the album are inside me, though none are me. They are sides of me or who I was.

It's my intention to make something stand outside the realm of album art, but it also feels comfortable to me to be in it. It's tricky and definitely a requires striking a delicate balance.

I've been performing since the 60s and I made my first album in 1969, so it's been a bit over twenty years.

I love it. It's the most legitimate way to acquire and sustain an audience of people who are interested in your music. Touring allows me to play material that isn't on the album and that they wouldn't be able to hear otherwise.

My days are kind of controlled by my projects, so sometimes they're album covers. Sometimes they're commission portrait shoots. Sometimes they are editorial, so it kind of - I don't dictate it.

But for the most part, for the majority of a stand-up audience, you better have new stuff they've not heard. And if you put an album out, just consider that material gone. At least that's how I see it.

I feel like I have re-created myself on every album. I try to do that. It's like playing a game with yourself, trying to compete with yourself.

I've only had one platinum album, and it's 'Red River Blue'.

Inside was the second LP album of a comedian's performance before an audience.

I know acts and I'm not going to name names but these people sold ten million copies the first time and the second album sells three million and it's considered a failure and they're dropped and that's really a shame.

I think my favourite song on the album [Second Hand Rapture'] is 'Head Is Not My Home', I love the vocal melody and it's such a power hit of a track. Every time it pops on I like listening to it, I'm really drawn to it.

It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.

My first album was me finding myself and my voice, finding how I sing. I was rolling with the punches because everything was new to me.

It was more about getting together with other musicians and playing live. I needed to suss out a full set [for the Last Summer tour], and I didn't want to play Fiery Furnaces material. So half of our set was new songs that we ended up recording for this album. And that made such a huge difference - going into the studio after playing a song for two years, knowing it inside-out and having sung it millions of times, and then recording it is a totally satisfying experience. You're suddenly in this controlled environment and you can make it sound exactly as you've been imagining it.

Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

I'd stopped doing music all of a sudden, and because of Chill and Jay and B, I got half of my album on a solo project. Then I get a call a week later and Jay is like, "Yo, Janet [Jackson] likes one of the records. We'll take five but are you cool with giving Janet one?" I was like, dude, we can do whatever you want to do.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

One thing that's really pulled me in to helping artists create their album is that I get to help them tell a story. It's about the way you frame that story and finding the best way to tell that story.

I really like my life right now. I have friends around me all the time. I’ve started painting more. I’ve been working out a lot. I’ve started to really take pride in being strong. I love the album I made. I love that I moved to New York. So in terms of being happy, I’ve never been closer to that.

If it came back I would be thrilled. I would be delighted to write more songs. I need them now because I want to make an album and I have to depend on other people's music, which I've done for years. But still, it'd be really nice to be able to sprinkle it with my own.

In 2008 it's easy to get huge before you have an album out with the Internet. I think that's great and you see a lot of artists like that. It seems like it's becoming rarer to find a band that has been touring for six years, doing small shows and then breaking out.

You do your work. You get up in the morning, you choose an outfit, you know? It doesn't have to be the best thing that you wear, you know what I mean? It's music, man. You do an album, complete it, and then musicians are on to the next thing. Nobody cares about how many units it sold as compared to the old one.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music and rather than just doing one thing when I make an album, the challenge to myself is to write all these diverse tracks, but to make them work. It's like a jigsaw because if you've got a lyrical track going into a hard rock track... it's got to work. You've got to write things that will work together.

A lot of what you do is about how you look. You're a good-looking guy who plays music, and you can't do anything about what happens because of that. If people say, "He's cute. I'm going to go buy his album," hopefully they'll like the music, too.