CDs Quotes

I still do mostly listen to CDs. I think that every format really is a different way of listening. If you take a different sort of psychological stance to it – like, I think the transition from vinyl to CD definitely marked a difference in the way people treated music. The vinyl commands a certain kind of reverence because it’s a big object and quite fragile so you handle it rather carefully, and it’s expensive so you pay attention to how it’s looked after.

In terms of what has been happening recently, there have been, I think, some really interesting new instruments that have come out that sort of show me the direction of the future. Korg has introduced the – they’ve had a whole series now of these things called Kaoss Pads. They’re wonderful because they do get your muscles working again. And what DJs do, of course, with their DJ turntables now, the CD turntables, which have pitch change and speed change and everything else. They’re doing something that I think is interestingly physical.

I got an amazing 10-CD set, it’s the music that Alan Lomax recorded in Haiti in 1936. And what’s incredible is how fantastic the drummers are and how off-the-grid they are. The liveliness is astonishing; they’re just totally alive, these recordings. It’s very interesting, to me, to be reminded of that, that there was a time when things were not that tight.

With his new CD ‘Tactiles’ Liberty Ellman emerges as one of the most intriguing, albeit unorthodox, guitarists on the New York scene today. An album of original, esoteric compositions marked by dense polyrhythms, dissonant, angular lines and an organic logic that ties the whole thing together in brilliant fashion.

Andy Kindler. Andy’s set – somehow he slayed that night. But something weird about it that wasn’t translating for the CD. I don’t know what it was. But we listened to it and it wasn’t the greatest audio recording – I mean, the quality of it was good. But we didn’t want to put it on the record because it doesn’t represent what Andy does.

Brian Posehn went up at 4:45 in the morning. And he gets lost at a certain point. I don’t know if we kept him getting lost on the CD. That joke isn’t as technically well delivered as I’m sure it is in his Comedy Central special. But the whole disk has this looseness and flavor to it where anything can happen that a lot of people will prefer.