Don Alias famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

If they [the crowd at The Apollo Theater] don't like you, they will let you know. When you didn't have any talent, they would let you know about it -- and not kindly. There'd be things like "Get off the stage!" and certain expletives we won't say here. It was a rough audience.
-- Don Alias

#Apollo #Crowds #Talent
I grew up learning this stuff on the streets of New York. My brother and I used to play in the subway for money.
-- Don Alias

#Brother #New York #Growing Up
I grew up in New York. We were all diversified, as far as music was concerned. I grew up liking just about everything. So I tried to incorporate that into my playing, although the original school where I came from was Afro-Cuban music. But I liked all kinds of music -- I tried to bring that into everything.
-- Don Alias

#New York #School #Afros
Mom did not want me to have anything to do with playing music. Being from a middle-class Black family in that particular era, everybody wanted you to have a profession -- a doctor, a lawyer, and so forth. So she sent me to school to study medicine.
-- Don Alias

#Mom #Growing Up #School
Then, on my way to California, I decided to stop in New York to do some research. I couldn't leave, because that's where the music was!
-- Don Alias

#New York #California #Research
We're talking about an extremely prolific poet and songwriter and lyricist. That stuff comes off the top of her head. She [Joni Mitchell] will write exactly what she lives. If she puts some money in the soda machine, she'll write about putting money in the soda machine. "Dry Cleaner from Des Moines," on the Shadows & Light album, was about sitting next to a dry cleaner from Des Moines, playing a slot machine.
-- Don Alias

#Writing #Talking #Light
She [Joni Mitchell] wanted to have that (jazz) element in her music. Of course, when she heard Jaco's [Jaco Pastorius'] music and met him, that floored her -- really grabbed her. She decided that Wayne Shorter was really conducive to her music. She would speak metaphorically about things. "I want this to sound like a taxicab driver, or a taxi in New York," or "I want this to sound like a telephone ringing." She would speak to musicians like that, and we really tuned into what she would want our music to be.
-- Don Alias

#New York #Elements #Want

The nearest approach I have ever seen to the symmetry of ancient sculpture was among the Arab tribes of Ethiopia. Our Saxon race can supply the athlete, but not the Apollo.
Apollo without Dionysus may indeed be a well-informed, good citizen but he's a dull fellow. He may even be 'cultured,' in the sense one often gets from traditionalist writings in education. . . . But without Dionysus he will never make and remake a culture.
Err Houston, we've had a problem. [pause] We've had a main B bus undervolt.
After a prosperous, but to me very wearisome, voyage, we came at last into port. Immediately on landing I got together my few effects; and, squeezing myself through the crowd, went into the nearest and humblest inn which first met my gaze.
Those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.
I wanted to be with the men I admired rather than the Scottish Arts Council crowd, so I spent a lot of time in graveyards. You get less trouble from the dead.
Dorothy is th cool type of temperament who quite frequently thinks that two is a crowd.
We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.
Talent is an accident of genes - and a responsibility.
There is no such thing as talent. There is pressure.

Don Alias famous quotes

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