Jazz Band Quotes

Don't clap I'm not a jazz band for Christ's sake. ~ Dylan Moran

I've played drums since I was 15. My sisters and I all played instruments. I kind of started with piano and then I actually played saxophone with a jazz band in middle school. So, any knowledge I had of jazz music was from playing alto-sax back then. ~ Miles Teller

I used to sing with my father's jazz band and then when I was ten years old a musician friend of his suggested that I try out for the first west coast production of Annie. ~ Molly Ringwald

The history of all big jazz bands shows was, first they played for dancing, and then they played for singing. ~ Norman Granz

I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear. ~ Pete Seeger

If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don't practice for three days, the public knows it. ~ Louis Armstrong

When I was growing up, in L.A., I went to these schools, Fairfax High School, Bancroft Junior High School, and they had great music departments. I always played in the orchestra, the jazz band, the marching band. ~ Flea

Shared leadership ... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music. ~ Phillip C. Schlechty

I was hell-bent on being a soccer player all through junior high and high school. ~ James Snyder

I was a jazz major in high school, in an all-jazz band. No matter what I do, it features my musical influences. ~ Wyclef Jean

There are those, too, who are ethnically predisposed in favor of funerals, who recognize among the black drapes and dirges an emotionally potent and spiritually stimulating intersection of the living and the dead. In death and its rituals, they see the leveled playing field so elusive in life. Whether we bury our dead in Wilbert Vaults, leave them in trees to be eaten by birds, burn them or beam them into space; whether choir or cantor, piper or jazz band, casket or coffin or winding sheet, ours is the species that keeps track of our dead and knows that we are always outnumbered by them. ~ Thomas Lynch

It's true I've always been attracted to the jazz band in an orchestral way, rather than a band way. ~ Gerry Mulligan

Around middle school I studied jazz guitar and ended up playing in a jazz band for a bit. But, after high school, I haven't even touched a guitar. ~ Mike Tucker

I suppose subconsciously I was thinking in terms of having the scale of it matching the scale of the images. Hence the sort of string quartet, jazz band and electronic stuff. ~ Jonny Greenwood

The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite. ~ Theodor Adorno

In high school, I was always into Jerry Lee Lewis, and they decided they needed a piano player for the jazz band. I had my little boogie-woogie thing that I did, so I did my little boogie-woogie thing. I had a very high-pitched voice. ~ Nellie McKay

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands. ~ George Santayana

I think the key that differentiates the good actors from the mediocre ones that are still trying to come up, is that the good ones know how to listen. It's like being in a jazz band. They know how to listen to what the other musicians are playing. And where to come in and where to sit out. That's my approach to being in an ensemble cast and working with any kind of actors in a scene. ~ Wesley Snipes

I used to hang out a lot in jazz clubs, and the groups took to a kid like me who wasn't afraid to get up and sing with a jazz band. Then I started to hang out in rock clubs and learned to carry off different styles. ~ Eric Burdon

Now, the instrumentation in the jazz band and the jazz dance band has gone through many evolutions. For instance, in the 'twenties the tradition was two or three saxophones. ~ Gerry Mulligan

It was liberating to do comedy. It felt like playing in a jazz band. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Communication is the essential medium of a creative culture: the communal sea in which we all swim. A company that can't communicate is like a jazz band without instruments: Music just isn't going to happen. ~ John Kao

March 6, 1961

I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass, drums, and sax -- playing in one of the large rooms. A heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air. The host appeared now and then looking pleased, as if he liked seeing strangers in every room, the party out of his control. It wasn't wild, but with a constant flow of people, who knows what they're doing. It became late and I was a little drunk, wandering from one part of the house to another. I entered a long hall and was surprised by the silence, as if I had entered another house. A girl at the other end of the hall was walking toward me. I saw large blue eyes and very black hair. She was about average height, doll-like features delicate as cut glass, extremely pretty, maybe the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. When she came up to me I took her in my arms and kissed her. She let it happen. We were like creatures in a dream. Holding her hand, I drew her with me and we passed through rooms where people stood about, and then left the house. As we drove away, she said her name was Margo. She was a freshman at the university, from a town in northern Michigan. I took her home. It was obvious she'd never gone home with a man. She didn't seem fearful, only uncertain, the question in her eyes: "What happens next?" What happened next was nothing much. We fell asleep in our clothes. I wasn't the one to make her no different from everyone. ~ Leonard Michaels

My brother Leon started it all. He played the piano. In school they made me leader of the orchestra because I played the violin, but I followed Leon and the boys in his jazz band around. ~ Louis Prima

The way that we imitate each others' riffs is something that other bands don't do as much. If we're jamming with a jazz band, or I am jamming with a jazz band, I have to catch myself, the tendency is always to do that. ~ Mike Gordon

We are probably the most frustrating band to soundcheck because we always go off on jams and our sound-man is sitting there going: "oh god, I don't want to interrupt this, but ... we've got to get things moving along ... " We're just easily distracted because we want to be writing all the time! ~ Theresa Wayman

Life is a series of pulls back and forth ... A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. Most of us live somewhere in the middle. A wrestling match ... Which side win? Love wins. Love always wins ~ Mitch Albom

I've always gravitated naturally towards a little bit of a heavier thing, having been in punk bands and metal bands before I ever got into pop. ~ Lights

And you used to be everything to me
And now you're tired of fighting
Tired of fighting
Fighting yourself ~ Muse

Skid Row would probably be my favorite Jersey band. ~ Eddie Trunk

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words. ~ Billie Holiday

My music is jazz. ~ Yusef Lateef

All the art for Tool is done by the me and the band. ~ Adam Jones

We do what we want to do. We write songs. We try not to repeat ourselves too much. We have our own sound and our own way of doing things. Up until now it has always been enjoyable. None of the members have ever got to the point where they don't want to be involved in it ... It's not entirely possible for me to stand back and look at the Rolling Stones because being a part of it you can't. I wish that I could just sit in the audience for one night and see the show. Everyone in the band has said that at some point. But then you wouldn't be seeing the whole band. And that's the problem with that. ~ Keith Richards

So, practice, particularly after you've attained a job, any kind of job, like playing with a four piece band, that's ... an opportunity to develop. ~ Buddy Rich

Doesn't every band sort of appropriate their influences into what they do? I guess that would be my defence: if you're making something, you kinda can't help being a conduit for other things. ~ Panda Bear

You're asking if I'm happy? I've got 87 million in the bank, I've got a Rolls Royce, I've got 3 stalkers, I'm about to go on the board at Manchester City, I'm part of the greatest band in the world. Am I happy with that? No, I'm not! I want more! ~ Noel Gallagher

and were willing to suffer pain if necessary." A young woman in the spring and summer of 1967 was walking toward a door just as that door was springing open. A stage was set for her adulthood that was so accommodatingly extreme - so whimsical, sensual, and urgent - that behavior that in any other era would carry a penalty for the daring was shielded and encouraged. There was safety in numbers for every gorgeous madness; good girls wanting to be bad hadn't had so much cover since the Jazz Age. San Francisco - glowing with psychedelic mystique, the whole city plastered with Fillmore and Avalon posters of tangle-haired goddess girls - was preparing for a convocation (of hapless runaways from provincial suburbs, it would turn out), the Summer of Love, through which the term "flower children" would be coined, while in harsh, emotion-sparking contrast, helicopters were dropping thousands of U.S. boys into the swamps of Vietnam. ~ Sheila Weller

I hated school ... I freaking hated it. The fact is that it revolved around something you didn't have access to. If you weren't on the football team, if you were in the band, you were a leper. When people say those were the best years of our lives, I want to scream. ~ Trent Reznor

Record labels, which used to have complete control, are essentially irrelevant. The process of a band exposing itself to the world is extremely democratic and there are no barriers. Music is no longer a commodity, it's an environment, or atmospheric element. Consumers have much more choice and you see people indulging in the specificity of their tastes dramatically more. They only bother with music they like. ~ Steve Albini

I never wanted to be a part of planet Earth, but I am compelled to be here, so anything I do for this planet is because the Master-Creator of the Universe is making me do it. I am of another dimension. I am on this planet because people need me. ~ Sun Ra

I don't know that many chords. I'd be loaded if I knew that many. But that's not my aim. My aim is to move from one vein to the other without any trouble. The biggest thing to me is keeping a feeling, regardless what you play. So many cats lose their feeling at various times, not through the whole tune, but at various times, and it causes them to have to build up and drop down, and you can feel it. ~ Wes Montgomery

I stayed a kid for a pretty long time, and the logistics of being in a band, I did not take seriously at all. ~ David Pajo

You can't just walk into someone's house and take $15 bucks out of someone's wallet and then walk out with their song. You can't do that. You got to know the difference between stealing from being cool to the band and paying them what they're deserved. ~ Richard Patrick

If I had coal and fire
And metal fine and true
I'd make an iron band
An iron band for you
I'd pick up all the pieces
From where they fell that day
Fit them back together
And take the pain away
But I don't have the iron
And I don't have the steel
To wrap around your broken heart
And teach it how to heal
Somewhere in the fire
Somewhere in the pain
I'd find the magic that I need
To make you whole again
I'd make the iron band so strong
I'd make it gleam so bright
I'd fix the things I've broken
I'd turn my wrongs to right
But I don't have the steel
To wrap around your broken heart
Wish I could make it heal
Wish I could make it heal
(Ch. 27) ~ Jennifer Donnelly

There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go. ~ Rainn Wilson

I know of musicians who have played together for decades who hate each other. The Modern Jazz Quartet for one. ~ Gary Burton

These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M.Cain. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She found herself unable to think of a name for her detective, let alone a cohesive original plot, and even her pseudonym was poor: Emma T. Wilde? She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. She had tried being in a band, writing plays and children's books, she had tried acting and getting a job in publishing. Perhaps crime fiction was just another failed project to place alongside trapeze, Buddhism and Spanish. She used the computer's word counter feature. Thirty-five words, including the title page and her rotten pseudonym. Emma groaned, released the hydraulic lever on the side of her office chair and sank a little closer to the carpet. ~ David Nicholls

My strongest hope is for a cameo as a band playing in a club visited by the detectives on 'Law & Order: SVU' during the course of an investigation, maybe during sound check, or something, so they can force us to stop playing while they question the sound guy. ~ John Darnielle

I don't have to come back, because I am still here! And I'm not an '80s thing. I already worked with my first band back in East Germany and that was soooo '70s, young man. I'm a '70s thing. If I'm a thing at all ... and an exciting thing. ~ Nina Hagen

I feel more confident about what we're doing as a band and what we're trying to do as a band and the way we're looking at it as a band. ~ Shannon Hoon

When you listen to someone sing from inside their head, their same mix, and you listen to their voice as loud as they like it, or the track of the band as low as they like it, you can really hear all of the nuances and the mistakes if there are any. ~ Adam Young

We can all be grateful that there is a place like (University of) North Texas! North Texas has been unique among schools in the country that offer jazz studies ... quality! ~ Peter Erskine

Love is kisses and touches and all the little things that make your body flood with emotions such as need, want, protectiveness, jealousy, hurt, and anger. It can take your breath away, or smother you at times, and make you feel like you can't go on. Your heart may race a thousand miles per minute, then slow down, and then race again, just with a simple look. Love is deadly and can kill you from the inside out if you let it. It makes you do stupid, ridiculous things, and say senseless sappy words, or listen to silly love songs, jazz, or dance in the streets, or laugh, or smile. Love is a weapon, or a drug, and can drive a person mad. I know what love is ... ~ Lyra Parish

What happens in the band room stays in the band room. ~ John Green

My high-school dream was to be in a band, pay my rent and eat - and I've been able to do that for 20 years. So I'm completely content. ~ Evan Dando

When the subsidies are going out there to fund arts, I'd like to see jazz given a better shake of the dice. It attracts as many people as opera does, but not the subsidies. ~ Sebastian Coe