We live in an age of music for people who don't like music. The record industry discovered some time ago that there aren't that many people who actually like music. For a lot of people, music's annoying, or at the very least they don't need it. They discovered if they could sell music to a lot of those people, they could sell a lot more records.

T Bone Burnett

Categorized in : Needs People Age

The more perfect music we have, the more attractive the peculiarities and anomalies of human performance become. Perfection is a second rate idea.

T Bone Burnett

anomalies perfect ideas

We live in an age lit by lightnin'; after the flash, we're blind again.

T Bone Burnett

flash blind age

When the arts are eliminated, children get bored and tired of school. When the arts are included, children's imaginations are allowed to run wild.

T Bone Burnett

music running art

Risk is what separates the artist from the artisan.

T Bone Burnett

artisans risk artist

If it is true that we have a personal relationship with God, then that's enough for me.

T Bone Burnett

personal-relationships relationship-with-god enough

The essence of show business is, if you see a tight-rope walker go across a tight rope, everybody claps. But, if you see him wobble, everybody gasps.

T Bone Burnett

rope essence shows

Technology changes nothing.

T Bone Burnett

technology

I got out of high school, bought a recording studio and started operating it as an engineer and a producer.

T Bone Burnett

recording-studio producers school

You know, the thing that struck me about Civil War music was how bloody it was; it was full of hatred. There was incredible vitriol in it.

T Bone Burnett

hatred hippie war

In other words, I'd say the whole story of Bob Dylan is one man's search for God. The turns and the steps he takes to find God are his business. I think he went to a study group at the Vineyard, and it created a lot of excitement.

T Bone Burnett

study-group men thinking

It's also ironic that in the old days of tape and tape hiss and vinyl records and surface noise, we were always trying to get records louder and louder to overcome that.

T Bone Burnett

ironic always-trying overcoming

I naturally wanted to be saved, so when I came home I told my mom I wanted to be confirmed. That's the way I related to it, being raised an Episcopalian. I went to Dallas and got confirmed.

T Bone Burnett

dallas mom home

Honesty is the most subversive of all disguises.

T Bone Burnett

subversive disguise honesty

Everything around a writer, or musician in the record business, probably everything in all the United States or in all of western civilization, is about competition.

T Bone Burnett

competition pregnancy civilization

My advice for young people is that, if you want to be a musician, the thing to do is practice eight hours a day.

T Bone Burnett

eight practice people

Probably the deepest use of music and of art is to create conscience.

T Bone Burnett

art-is use art

Music, for centuries and centuries, was used to teach everything. It was used to teach language, mathematics, history. The news was music. Everything traveled by song. It was used to teach ethics. It was used to create conscience, probably more than anything.

T Bone Burnett

ethics news song

People make art on the sides of buildings, and they'll make art on the sides of trains. They'll make art wherever they decide to make art. The technology that people are working with now will be replaced in 10 years, so that's not where your future is, if you're a musician.

T Bone Burnett

technology years art

Let the business take care of itself. If you get involved in the business, every hour that you're involved in business is an hour that you're not practicing. And every hour that you're not practicing is another hour further away from where you want to be.

T Bone Burnett

hours care want

[Bob] Dylan began to incorporate things into that scene that were controversial then. He got shouted at in Newport when he played electric guitar, for instance. There was a certain purity that was sought among those people.

T Bone Burnett

bob guitar people