01c. 1973 ADOne forgets that part of one's performance is one's history—or sometimes the lack of it. You're playing against what an audience knows, what they expect. This seems to be true of all performers; there's baggage that gets carried into the venue that we can't see.David Byrne / quote ↗
02c. 1973 ADI pick up a copy of Newsweek on the plane and immediately notice how biased, slanted, and opinionated all the U.S. newsmagazine articles are. Not that the Euro and British press aren't biased as well--they certainly are--but living in the United States we are led to believe, and are constantly reminded, that our press is fair and free of bias. After such a short time away, I am shocked at how obviously and blatantly this lie is revealed--there is the 'reporting' that is essentially parroting what the White House press secretary announces; the myriad built-in assumptions that one ceases to register after being somewhere else for a while. The myth of neutrality is an effective blanket for a host of biases.David Byrne / quote ↗
04c. 1973 ADSimplicity is a kind of transparency in which subtle nuances can have outsize effects.David Byrne / quote ↗
05c. 1973 ADBut at times words can be a dangerous addition to music — they can pin it down. Words imply that the music is about what the words say, literally, and nothing more. If done poorly, they can destroy the pleasant ambiguity that constitutes much of the reason we love music. That ambiguity allows listeners to psychologically tailor a song to suit their needs, sensibilities, and situations, but words can limit that, too. There are plenty of beautiful tracks that I can’t listen to because they’ve been “ruined” by bad words — my own and others. In Beyonce's song "Irreplaceable," she rhymes "minute" with "minute," and I cringe every time I hear it (partly because by that point I'm singing along). On my own song "Astronaut," I wrap up with the line "feel like I'm an astronaut," which seems like the dumbest metaphor for alienation ever. Ugh.David Byrne / quote ↗
06c. 1973 ADI also realized that there were lots of unacknowledged theater forms going on all around. Our lives are filled with performances that have been so woven into our daily routine that the artificial and performative aspect has slipped into invisibility.David Byrne / quote ↗
07c. 1973 ADPowerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good.David Byrne / quote ↗
08c. 1973 ADI like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.David Byrne / quote ↗
10c. 1973 ADIt's a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn't support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, 'Well, yeah,' but you start to think, 'Why not, though?' What makes one more valuable than another?David Byrne / quote ↗
11c. 1973 ADThe true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.David Byrne / quote ↗
12c. 1973 ADWith pop music, the format dictates the form to a big degree. Just think of the pop single. It has endured as a form even in the download age because bands conform to a strict format, and work, often very productively, within the parameters.David Byrne / quote ↗
13c. 1973 ADMy favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.David Byrne / quote ↗
14c. 1973 ADIt's not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.David Byrne / quote ↗
15c. 1973 ADTo some extent I happily don't know what I'm doing. I feel that it's an artist's responsibility to trust that.David Byrne / quote ↗
18c. 1973 ADOn a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one's own town.David Byrne / quote ↗
19c. 1973 ADYou can know or not know how a car runs and still enjoy riding in a car.David Byrne / quote ↗
21c. 1973 ADThere's a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you're self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn't so easy in a car, and you can't cover as much ground walking.David Byrne / quote ↗
22c. 1973 ADI'm not suggesting people abandon musical instruments and start playing their cars and apartments, but I do think the reign of music as a commodity made only by professionals might be winding down.David Byrne / quote ↗
23c. 1973 ADI don't listen to the radio very much, but that could be because I don't have a car.David Byrne / quote ↗
24c. 1973 ADWhy not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?David Byrne / quote ↗
