Yeah, we try to get the best musicians possible, and Justin [Robinson] is a great musician, man, a great player. You must have been surprised to see him out there, then.
I've never had a band with more than 3 people (meaning only two string players), so I love having the ability for 3-part polyphony.
When you are 18, 19 or 20 you can get away with more, but as you get into your twenties you realise that it is harder and harder to lose what you put on. Look at Ricky Hatton. That isn't good for you and so you know not to come back overweight or out of shape. Why? Because you'll get stick from fellow players and you'll struggle.
Everyone thinks footballers have it easy and at this time of year see loads of pictures of players relaxing on beaches and in bars but what they don't see is most of them will be doing their own fitness regimes. If you don't you will get back and you will be off the pace, might get injured and won't play football matches.
The game [football] has moved on a lot but still, ask most players and they will tell you that pre-season isn't their favourite time of the year.
I just want to be a better guitar player, really.
Once we get out on the road, my tour manager who is also my guitar player does a great job of taking weight off of my shoulders where I can just focus on playing the shows.About two hours before every show, the pacing starts and the anticipation builds. I prepare for it just like I would when I used ride bulls, slap yourself in the face, wake yourself up and get your heart going.
Pushing myself against my own will really, because some of this stuff is hard. I don't consider myself to be a great guitar player, so pushing myself as a guitar player or pushing myself as a singer, as a performer, and just riding that fine line between being so hard on yourself that it's counter-productive and being so hard on yourself that nothing is ever good enough is what drives me.
The people I still talk to are some of the old Galaxy players all over the place. That's a bond that's pretty special.
As a player, I was fortunate to work with coaching and medical staffs that underscored the importance of utilizing injury prevention exercises, which contributed to my healthy and long playing career.
As far as dude running the ball, or running with the ball, and somebody hit you helmet to helmet, I think you got an opportunity to go down. You got an opportunity to slide.
I got to play with some of the best players in the game, from Victor Martinez and Travis Hafner and Grady Sizemore in Cleveland, to here with Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Cole Hamels. Obviously, to Seattle with Ichiro and Felix Hernandez, and then to Texas with Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler, Mike Young. It was a great experience. Without being traded I never could have gotten to do any of that.?
I just play to win. I play to be competitive; that's it. I think every player hopes that they do something special that everyone remembers later in life, or whatever. But that's not why we're playing. At least, that's not why I play.
The situation was, the team I was on when I got injured went down to the lower leagues. In America, they don't have that relegation, so when the team went down to the lower region, every player has his value, and they went off and sold any player who had value.
I was a football player at college and dislocated my thumb. I was out for a bit and passed the theatre and saw some lovely drama students walking into an audition for 'Much Ado About Nothing' and thought: 'That's what I'll do when I recover.' I joined that production and was hooked.
Give me five players like Robinson and a pitcher and I'll beat any nine-man team in baseball.
I'm sure that the average person thought we would fold up right there. That's all everyone thinks we're about, anyway. Alexander, Alexander, Alexander. But it's about the brotherhood. Shaun's a great player, but we have a lot of weapons around here.
I wasn't a bad basketball player, but I was far from the world's greatest. Good defense, no offense - that was me.
It is really amazing to be able to do cinematic, big feature style film music on a weekly basis and do it in LA, on a big scoring stage, on a studio lot, and do it with the right players and make it sound great.
I'm an absolutely dreadful hockey player.
Comedy is like music. You have to know the key and you have to find players with good chops.
I was a really good youth boxer, and I enjoyed the sport very much. Once I actually started to play the trumpet, it is very similar to boxing. Most of the great trumpet players boxed: Miles Davis was a boxer, Wallace Roney is a boxer, Terrence Blanchard is a boxer. In a boxing ring, no one can help you. It's just you and the other guy, and your job is to get him out of there, to outscore him in the best sense of it. When you learn to box, the first thing they teach you is to protect yourself at all times, and some people also learn that they like being hit.
A female piano player is always pretty cool to me.
I think playing the way I played, and knowing the game the way I know it, I think I'm going to have a better idea as to what the mindset of each player was.
I wanted to stay in the game. I wanted to learn more about the league, what goes on behind the scenes. As a player, you don't really think about that, nor do you really care: you're worried about your job.