Many of the songs were written as a way of paying tribute to specific people, but in the end the songs took on a life of their own and I didn't worry about accuracy or biographical truth, so it's not a problem.
And now everything has changed once again. The air of the Close each evening is full of bird song - I've never really noticed it before. Full of birdsong and summer perfumes, full of strange glimpses and intimations just out of the corner of my eye, of longings and sadness and undefined hopes.It has a name, this sweet disturbance. Its name is Lamorna.
When I first started out, I thought it was enough to make an angry song that pointed out the problems of the world.
I always know when a song is good or close to finished. When I sing it, it makes me feel the emotion. My tears will start flowing or I'll start laughing. I'll start feeling whatever intensity or emotion was the seed of that song.
Playing on the streets of Iraq, or in Israel or the Gaza strip, I'd sing angry protest songs against war. People would say, 'Make us clap, make us dance, and laugh and sing.' It really made me think about the importance of happy music.
Learning is available at the library for free; under a tree with a dog-eared paperback; at a job with a boss who gives you responsibility and mentorship; while traveling; while leading a cause, movement, or charity; while writing a novel or composing a poem or crafting a song; while interning, apprenticing, or volunteering; while playing a sport or immersing yourself in a language; while starting a business; and now, while watching a TED talk or taking a Khan Academy class.
To propel our Louisiana culture into the future seems to be quite a task, but if one lives for the music as Cedric does, the path seems effortless. These songs may well be early brushstrokes of a life's worth of possibilities, not only for himself, but also for the identity survival of a culture.
The poems in Helena Mesa’s virtuosic first book, Horse Dance Underwater, run with such speed, verve, and alacrity they leave you breathless, exhilarated, and transformed as if the purest kind of song had lifted you into the air. By this quickness of language finding lyric speech, Mesa’s poems remind us of art’s joyous and ecstatic effects.
For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.
I studied voice at Yale with Blake Stern from the music school, and he had me singing German lieder and Italian songs.
Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast.
I write a lot and I will have some originals on the record. I think it is a mistake for an artist like me to think I am a better writer than Cole Porter. I think it is important to realize what my strengths are. I do like to write and I'm not shabby but I don't think I'm the most brilliant writer. I think it would be a shame and sort so egotistical to say I don't need these wonderful writers. These men created works of art and wrote hundreds of beautiful songs. It would be a mistake for me to say at this point in my career that I am so good.
I remember we were out on the road when the album finally came out in February 1973. I listened to it in my hotel room and just got this really big smile. I was thinking, 'It's amazing, we're really pulling this off'. The album was very, very unique and very, very different. I was really proud of the songs, especially 'No More Mr Nice Guy', 'Billion Dollar Babies' and 'Generation Landslide'.
Songs are snapshots of things - it's likened to looking at pictures. It will never feel like it felt in real life. When you look at it, it always feels different. It's sort of the same with songs.
I think I get really into comfort music: '60s stuff, '50s stuff like Frankie Avalon. I love it - such simple songs, but so well written. That, and old French pop. I love that, because I don't speak French. It's all just pop music! But I love it because it just makes me focus on the melodies.
Songs are snapshots of things - it's likened to looking at pictures.
Beautiful songs could sometimes take a person out of themselves and carry them away to a place of magic. But when Jill sang, it was not about the song, really. She could sing the phone book. She could sing a shopping list. Whatever she sang, whatever the words or the tune, it was so beautiful, so achingly lovely, that no one could listen and be untouched.
I always thought the piano scene was kind of unique to shoot because we were actually able to film with the playback of the actual song. And that was quite amazing because it almost made it easier - music is usually something that is added after filming has finished so to be able to shoot a scene with music was really wonderful.
I just try to tell a story with a song, and be able to try to transmit the emotion to you. That's all I'm really trying to do.
There's no hierarchy in suffering. I think songs that are transcendent are the ones where everyone can feel something from it, you know?
My favorite period is when we lived in the land of the three-minute song. The Motown thing - I thought they were genius in knowing that's as much as a listener can take.
I found it unbearable when I allow the song to meet the music, to allow the story to meet the music.
But for me, it [singing] was a way to get out the feeling of the song, and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing.
The saddest songs are written when a person is happy.
I can write songs without a guitar.
