Violante Placido Quotes

I always give the encore over to chaos, so people can yell out requests and I can hack my way through a song that I don't really know anymore.

'A Little Nightmare Music' is the first show we created. It's about all the nightmares that can happen in the span of a concert. When things go wrong - when the lights go out or a cellphone rings - that's when an audience suddenly comes alive, wondering what's going to happen next. Things going wrong often leads to something good.

There have been a couple of times I've started the song in the wrong key. We stop the song, we all laugh together and we start the song again, and we go for it.

When I was doing 'A Disappearing Number' in Plymouth, we had to go on an hour and a half late, and I still hadn't written an end, so we had to make one up, and then we had to go out literally with our pants round our ankles.

You can play a shoestring if you're sincere.

Live music is better.

I think I was just bored one summer afternoon, and I decided to post a little video of me singing and playing guitar out of tune.

When I'm playing with the band or playing with some projects or some of my own stuff it's about the musical approach. That would be the more turntablist approach to things of where it's strictly about music.

The interesting thing about improvisation is you're making something up in front of the audience. Now music helps you out a little bit because you have an instrument that'll separate you from the audience.

Phish is such a good band; they just make stuff up as a jam band.

Set lists are tough because you come up with this structure of how the songs are going to go from one to the next, but at the same time, you have to be spontaneous and take requests and change the set list at the drop of a hat.

Some people only work to recorded music because it's so reliable and exactly the same every time, which is exactly why I don't.

This is why improvisational music and comedy is so inspiring: You are seeing something being born, and that energy, there is no substitute for. These songs, most of them, are about a minute old when you hear them.

There's nothing like live radio. I like the challenge. Throw it my way. Let me go!

Wu-Tang has only done, like, three rehearsals throughout our whole career.

I love the guitar because you can bring it everywhere, and you can start a jam wherever you are.

If there was a wrong note, it didn't matter as long as it was rocking.

Life is so mundane, isn't it? It's great to hear a guitarist getting into it and the rhythmic section blasting, even if it's all meaningless.

Conceptually, I am open to mistakes - errors, actually. I do play lots of wrong notes while I am making some music, and a mistake or a wrong note is like a gift for me: 'Oh, wow, an unknown sound or an unknown harmony. I didn't know about this.'

That's what it is-it's jazz. It's just jazz. That's what the whole thing is about to me. It's about what's happening right now in this context. This conversation is jazz to a certain extent. It's improvisation. What appeals to me about music is the improvization. That's what I don't like about the media-they're not living it.

Jazz music is the power of now.

Performing as a musician is a lot different than performing as an actor. As an actor, you can hide behind the character in the play, and there's a director and other actors. When you're a musician, you're right there. It's sort of like being a comedian. You're giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.