Outsight Quote Page

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.
There's also a negative side."

- Hunter S. Thompson

"It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins."

- Benjamin Franklin

"'Freaking out' is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole"

- Frank Zappa

"Free downloads didn't begin the dismantle of the record industry. GREED did. Free downloads just allow music lovers the ability to preview the crap record labels have been forking out for years and say, 'hey, I don't want this for $20.00."

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

Samuel P. Huntington (seen on http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/)

"The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things -- but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad -- to be willing to risk everything to really express it all."

- Samuel P. Huntington

"You live fruitfully in tension. To create...is to be under tension. Paradise is a state of inertia where nothing happens. It is a form of death. Tension is necessary. Once it's over you drop dead in six months."

- Arthur Miller

"A Musician's Day

An artist must regulate his life. Here is my precise daily schedule. I rise at 7:18; am inspired from 10:30 to 11:47. I lunch at 12:11 and leave the table at 12:14. A healthy horse-back ride on my property from 1:19 to 2:35. Another round of inspiration from 3:12 to 4:07.

From 5:00 to 6:47 various occupations (fencing, reflection, immobility, visits, contemplation, dexterity, swimming, etc.).

Dinner is served at 7:16 and finished at 7:20. Afterward from 8:09 to 9:59 symphonic readings out loud.

I go to bed regularly at 10:37. Once a week I wake up with a start at 3:14 A.M. (Tuesdays.)

I eat only white foods: eggs, sugar, shredded bones, the fat of dead animals, rice, turnips, sausages in camphor, pastry, cheese (the white varieties), cotton salad, and certain kinds of fish (skinned).

I boil my wine and drink it cold mixed with fuchsia juice. I have a good appetite but never talk when eating for fear of strangling.

I breathe carefully (a little at a time) and dance very rarely. When walking I hold my sides and look steadily behind me.

Being of serious demeanor, it is unintentional when I laugh. I always apologize very affably.

I sleep with only one eye closed; I sleep very hard. My bed is round with a hole in it for my head to go through. Every hour a servant takes my temperature and givens me another.

For a long time I have subscribed to a fashion magazine. I wear a white cap, white socks, and a white vest.

My doctor has always told me to smoke. He even explains himself: 'Smoke, my friend. Otherwise someone else will smoke in your place.'"

- Erik Satie, quoted in The Banquet Years (Shattuck)

"On the one hand a tottering world in flight, betrothed to the glockenspiel of hell, on the other hand: new men. Rough, bouncing, riding on hiccups...Let each man proclaim: there is a great negative work of destruction to be accomplished. We must sweep and clean..."

"The world is threatened with peace and quiet. I love storm and dread it when the wind abates."

“Rock n’ roll does for music what a motorcycle club at full throttle does for a quiet afternoon. The results bear passing resemblance to Hitler
mass meetings.”

“The whole music business in the United States is based on numbers, based on unit sales and not on quality. It’s not based on beauty, it’s
based on hype and it’s based on cocaine. It’s based on giving presents of large packages of dollars to play records on the air.”

“Modern music is people who can't think signing artists who can't write songs, to make records for people who can’t hear.”

“When you hear my records today...you hear a vanilla sounding artist with no black inflection, although I was trying to imitate what I
heard.”

“You go through stages where you wonder whether you are Christ, or just looking for him.”

"You’ve gotta be business savvy really, or else you get the piss taken out of you.”

“That’s not easy to find in a corporate world, somebody who cares about music.”

“I’m a snake oil salesman as much as anyone else, but I try to keep something for myself...I don’t kiss the world’s ass.”

“Anybody that forms a group, writes songs and releases records and says they don’t care if people like them are complete liars.”

"I mean the Cranberries could go on and take a shit and the people would probably love it.”

“To sustain hatred is a very difficult thing to do, year after year. It’s exhausting.”

“The problem with alternative radio is that it has no fiber at all, and is giving itself it’s own enema.”

- Mike Halloran, former KUPR PD

“If we do our job...Music’s not black or white, it’s green.”

- Jim Caparro, PGD

“Going to radio with a rap record prior to going to the consumer is like having no foreplay with your girlfriend.”

“We’ll take advantage of the changes going on in the music business because we’re lean and mean.”

“That’s the shame about Miles Copeland; he’s evil, but he’s got a heart of gold.”

“We are the Beavis and Butt-head generation, whether we want to recognize it or not.”

“You can’t control the public from itself. If they get good tickets, they scalp them. If they get bad tickets, they bitch.”

“People don’t want to see a whole lot of crap anymore than they want to see one piece of crap.”

“American music is something the rest of the world wants to listen to. Our job is to make sure they pay for it.”

“You’ve got to feel comfortable with people telling you your shit stinks.”

“My bass player came up to me and said, ‘Sarah, when are you going to start being a bitch?’ And I said, ‘That’s why I have a record company.”

- Sarah McLachlan

"I hate to say this, but [in the late '70’s] it was like the smart people liked punk and the dumb people liked Journey.”

“Kill all the major record company presidents.”

Howie Klein, 1978... KSAN Radio Show "The Outcaste Hour"

"I’ve made hundreds of legendary records that people talk about that didn’t sell.”

“Listen, the easiest way to get laid by a girl, or get rid of her, is to write a song about her.”

“Without music, the greatest marketing plans in the whole world don’t mean shit.”

- Eddie Rosenblatt, Geffen Records, also attributed to Christopher Knab, FourFront Media and Marketing

“Who could have dreamed in 1965 that the alternative society would eventually multiply to such extraordinary proportions that it becomes
our mainstream.”

- Clive Davis, Arista Records on listening back to an Air Supply song during a mixdown in the studio

“If the milk industry can make their product seem sexy and increase consumer demand, there must be hope for music.”

- Gary Arnold, Merchandising Manager, Best Buy

“I think the second you feel you’ve gotten somewhere, you’re nowhere.”

- Michael Goldstone, VP A&R, Epic Records

“You’re a local band until you get a record contract, then all of a suddent Bruce Springsteen is your competition."

“If KISS is a dinosaur, damn straight I’d rather be that than a mouse.”

- Gene Simmons, KISS

“We’re the McDonalds of rock. Were always there to satisfy, and a billion served.”

“I sent a demo of the band Confederate Fagg to an A&R friend at Sony. I asked him what he thought. He said, "Don't know yet. Let me see what my boss thinks."

"If you are still at the same point you were after six albums, and all of them came out on a major label, I don't want to hear about how 'the label didn't understand us,' or 'our management didn't make us a priority.' If after that time you are still at the same level, either you suck, or people do not like you."

"On what label records are on is as important as the color of my underwear."

- Dan Lifetime in Appeal zine

"So many people are scared of their hearts. You don't have to eb scared of your heart. You just have to find a new road."

- Iggy Pop

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

- Benjamin Franklin

"What else is human nature but a euphemism for inertia, cultural conditioning, and what we are before we make something of ourselves?"

- Walter Kaufman

"He sings about love, women, things that are easy to communicate. The Americans, the British, they sing about political and social troubles. There is enough of that in our lives. Why do we want it from our singers as well?"

- Franco Reali (BMG Italy) on Europop star Ramazzotti

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

- Dr. Seuss

"If you are looking for fairness, you've come to the wrong universe."

- Dr. Edward Nather

"A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them."

- Jim Morrison

"The highest art is the art of living an ordinary life in an extraordinary manner."

- Tibetan proverb

"[G]uys now that run record companies, they can't keep time to a march."

- Ray Charles

"Happiness is a skill, not an acquisition. It is a choice you make in each moment, not a state you one day achieve."

- Entertainer Fredda Valentine

"What kinda music you up for, honey? Good bad, bad good, fun bad, shallow good, or headache-inducing award-winning bad bad good?"

- With apologies to Peter Hannan ( Adventures of a Huge Mouth )

"Inability is often the mother of restriction, and restriction is the great mother of inventive performance."

- Holger Czukay (Can)

"Curioiste assomme la cucaracha aber niemals il gatto" (Curiosity kills the cockroach, but never the cat.)

- French proverb

"If there's light in the soul, there'll be beauty in the person If there's beauty in the person there'll be harmony in the house If there's harmony in the house there will be order in the nation If there's order in the nation there'll be peace in the world"

- Chinese proverb

"A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them."

- Jim Morrison

"It's nice if you'e fourteen years old. I prefer to listen to Dylan."

- George Harrison on Oasis, U2 and the Spice Girls.

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in proportion."

- Francis Bacon, Essays: Of Beauty

"The new man will find himself only when the warfare between the collectivity and the individual ceases. Then we shall see the human type in its fullness and splendor."

- Henry Miller, Time of the Assassins

"Being free doesn't mean you don't have to buy nothin' or do nothin'."

- Frank Zappa

"Many people think they are thinking when they are just rearranging their prejudices."

- William James

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thing partitions do their bounds divide."

- Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel

"All happy families resemble each other; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

- Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"It's nice if you'e fourteen years old. I prefer to listen to Dylan."

- George Harrison on Oasis, U2 and the Spice Girls.

"It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible noncomformist warmly acclaimed."

- Albert Einstein

"Only when something has become problematic to we start to ask questions. Disagreement shakes us out of our slumbers and forces us to see our own point of view through contrast with another person who does not share it."

- R. D. Laing, The Politicis of Experience

"[L]ove is provoked by a lie and consists solely in the need of having our sufferings appeased by whatever being has made us suffer."

- Marcel Proust

"Music is serious. Music is like a prayer, and you just don't put anything in a prayer, you say important things."

- Bob Marley, according to his son Stephen

"...I like Wagner's music much better than anybody's. It's so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing you."

- from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey

"Bah...dust isn't a bad thing. Besides having the taste of ancient biscuit and the smell of an old book, it is the floating velvet which softens hard surfaces, the fine dry wash which takes the garishness out of crude colour schemes...Who than can despise it..."

- from J. K. Huysmans' La Bas

"I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it a prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels."

- Frank Sinatra

"Building more prisons to fight crime is like building more cemeteries to solve [AIDS]"

- Dennis Luther, former warden of FCI McKean

"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."

- William Clayton

"All governments perpetuate themselves through the daily commission of acts which a rational person might find to be stupid or dangerous (or both). Naturally, our government is no exception..."

- Frank Zappa, Liner Notes to Joe's Garage (1979)

"The conscientious objectors to modern music will, of course, attempt everything in the way of counterrevolution. Musicians will not admit that we are making music; they will say that we are interested in superficial effects, or, most, are imitating Oriental or primitive music. New and original sounds will be labeled as "noise." But our common answer to every criticism must be to continue working and listening, making music with its materials, sound and rhythm, disregarding the cumbersome, top-heavy structure of musical prohibitions."

- John Cage (1939)

"If you were ever happy all the time, you wouldn't be human, you'd be a game show host."

- from Heathers

"Guilt is plainly an entirely social emotion which depends on assumed standards; not to mention fear of other humans, hatred of them, and fear that they may discover that hatred."

- Celia Green, Advice To Clever Childern (1981)

"Our basic experience of consciousness is passivity, which is another name for boredom. Boredom is a state of being from which one finds it difficult to escape into other states, a self-isolating anxiety, like a turtle on its back."

- Colin Wilson, Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963)

"The sane person pretends not to be egocentric, and pretends not to notice other people are egocentric, and dislikes people who do not pretend these things."

- Colin Wilson, Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963)

"It is better to make a piece of music than perform one, better to perform one than listen to one, better to listen to one that misuse it as a means of distraction, entertainment, or acquisition of "culture."

- John Cage

which means, in effect, that someone feels he is being persecuted when the people who are persecuting him don't think that he is. But, we haven't got a word for the condition in which you are persecuting someone without realising it, which I would have thought is as serious a condition as the other, and certainly no less common."

- R. D. Laing, The Facts of Life (1976)

"Human nature has been sold short...Man has a higher nature which is just as insitinctive as his lower nature, and this higher nature includes the need for meaningful work,for responsibility, for creativeness...for doing what is worthwhile and for preferring to do it well."

- Abraham Maslow, Eupsychian Management : A Journal

"If marijuana is a dangerous drug, the greatest danger associated with smoking it may lie in being arrested."

- Robert M. Julien, A Primer Of Drug Action (1981)