"it took me about three or four weeks to toilet train my cat, nightlife. most of the time is spent moving the box very gradually to the bathroom." -charles mingus
"she had a chihuahua named carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind." -tom waits
"he had a huge room with nothing in it except this huge vast hammond organ, right next door to the police." -david bowie
"he's got a mind like a sewer, and a heart like a fridge" -elvis costello
"you can't hold the hand of a rock 'n' roll man." -joni mitchell
"lou's jukebox spun for love and many other things, too: beauty, pain, history, courage, mystery" -laurie anderson
"hey there, hey now, well, you can make a pacemaker blink, easy thing, make a man's heart go bibbity boom. -john cale
"i've still got things inside me, sad things, happy things, that people don't know about." -loretta lynn
"to try to maximize the relationship of listening to a record through promotion is like experiencing driving a car by reading about stimulus programs." -bonnie 'prince' billy
"too much cheesecake too soon! old money's better than new" -roxy music
"my mother used to tell me about vibrations. to think that invisible feelings, invisible vibrations existed scared me to death." -brian wilson
"i could even find it in my heart to love mike love." -belle & sebastian
"i'm going to boogie my scruples away." -lowell george
"i'm a lunatic, and you are so super cool." - george jones
"i'm good and i'm bad and i'm happy and i'm sad and i'm lazy" -willie nelson
"i drive a rolls-royce, cause it's good for my voice." -t.rex
"i mean every letter in the words in the sentences of my quotes." -lil' wayne
"lyrics choochoo from my mouth like locomotion." - pato banton
"i'm dealing in rock and roll. i'm not a bonafide human being." -phil spector
"phil approached me with a bottle of kosher red wine in one hand and a .45 in the other, put his arm around my shoulder and shoved the revolver into my neck and said, 'leonard, i love you.' i said, 'i hope you do, phil.'" -leonard cohen
"they'd whisper at each other and look at phil and whisper at each other. finally this lady, tanked, comes over to phil and says, 'alright, sonny, what's your problem?' and he said, 'premature ejaculation, what's yours?'" -tom wolfe
"i bite my nails and if that fails i go get myself stoned, but when i do i think of you and head myself back home." -gram parsons
"i would say groucho marx, to name one thing, and willie mays, and the second movement of the jupiter symphony, and louis armstrong's recording of potatohead blues, swedish movies, naturally. sentimental education by flaubert, marlon brando, frank sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by cezanne, the crabs at sam wo's, tracy's face." -woody allen
brian eno songs that will make good book titles for my 10-volume memoir, in order: here he comes, baby's on fire, golden hours, brutal ardour, taking tiger mountain, events in dense fog, through hollow lands, some of them are old, everything merges with the night, dead finks don't talk
ry cooder albums that every man should own: into the purple valley, boomer's story, paradise and lunch
"really, we don't want people twiddling their goatees over our stuff." -radiohead
"i love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. and mother. and god." -johnny cash
"the moon is clear, the sky is bright, i'm happy as the horse's shite." -the pogues
"i hope that you all out there, young, old, tall, short, fat or thin, quick or slow, no matter what kind or color or shape or person you are, if you like to make music, why, go ahead. -pete seeger
"chuck berry isn't merely the greatest of the rock and rollers, or rather, there's nothing mere about it. say rather that unless we can somehow recycle the concept of the great artist so that it supports chuck berry as well as it does marcel proust, we might as well trash it." -robert christgau
mashable says about us: "expect the unexpected with this awesome gem. groovy." and 33 1/3: "nice to have someone steer me in a worthwhile direction"
there’s something wonderfully and just impossibly cool about the music that was made right before i was born in november 1984. the guitars don’t only have sheen, they preen; the bass lines are pelvic; the drums cuff and snap; and the vocals, of course, were all recorded in denim jackets on chaise longues.
the monochrome set’s singles–fat fun, ten donts for honeymooners, love goes down the drain, silicon carne, mr. bizarro, surfin sw12, apocalypso, fiasco bongo, big ben bongo, andiamo, fallout, and so much more–weren’t just weirdly sung, ferociously played and gauntly arranged, they were gorgeously named and exceedingly unsuccessful.
the front sleeve of monochrome set’s third album, love zombies (which includes tracks with names like the man with the black moustache and the weird, wild and wonderful world of tony potts) says, “an unashamed look at their weird lives, their wild loves, in a jazz-haunted, desire-tormented world,” which would be everything you’d need to read about monochrome set if it weren’t for the back sleeve, which says: “once this record is in the house, two’s company and four is a party. roll back the carpet, switch out the light, and dance in the glow of the firelight as the monochrome set provide your very own music far from the maddening crowd of the dance halls.”
#74: monochrome set - eine symphonie des grauens (1979)
jesus fucking christ. the observer’s managing editor, tom mcgeveran, whose knowledge of incredibly cool british post-punk bands (usually that no one has ever heard of) is shockingly deep, just introduced me to something called the monochrome set. they wear sunglasses, sound like lou reed without wimpiness, and name their songs for german expressionist silent horror films.
here’s the band playing somewhere in minnesota in 1979, before they ever had an album out. i think this is the kind of music that tom mcgeveran and tom verlaine and tom waits (and maybe the ghost of serge gainsbourg?) listen to when they hang around chewing the fat, thinking about pompadours, arguing about the moral imperative and string theory, not answering the phone calls of doting models, and just generally being awesome. also they all smoke winstons.
