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David Grubbs

(1967) Composer

21 quotes in 136 categories

David Grubbs is a composer.

Quick Facts About David Grubbs

Born: September 21, 1967
Profession: Composer

About David Grubbs

[Wikidata] American musician... | [Wikipedia] David Grubbs is an American composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist. He was a founding member of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol. He has also played in Codeine, The Red Krayola, Bitch Magnet and The Wingdale Community Singers.

Quotes by David Grubbs

My experience that undergirds that observation comes from punk, where people might have scraped together the money to be in the studio…

Money

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I recall improvisational drummer and composer Michael Evans telling me a story of someone who had the opportunity to meet Cage and…

Composer

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For me, it's good to have those dissimilar modes of songwriting sit side-by-side on a record, because they yield such different results.

Different

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The danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of…

Albums

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What a strange thing - that musicians grant permission to places like Ubuweb, and then because it's free, it'll probably be listened…

Music

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If the records that I make have one thing in common, it's that there is little recapitulation, and the idea is that…

Change

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In eighteenth-century England, there was a practice of hiring a picturesque hermit who would inhabit the beautiful ruin on your estate. To…

Beautiful

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The word 'archive' seems so reassuring, but I have a lot ofconcern over the longevity of documentary materials.

Longevity

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I don't write poetry for the page because my inclination in that area is satisfied by songwriting. "Ornamental Hermit" was a comparatively…

Areas

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The instrumental pieces are compositions, certainly, although that's not the language that I instinctively use. They're not scored, and arrangements are often…

Arrangements

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When I read John Cage's book Silence, I was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. For me, records were a mode of time…

Backwards

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The word "archive" seems so reassuring, but I'm not sure about these things that are now being called archives. Is anything lost…

Mean

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As there are more online archives of improvised music, it becomes more like the daily practice of playing it. It lessens the…

Masterpiece

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Chance in music doesn't have to involve the I Ching or rolling dice or throwing yarrow stalks. It can involve an out-of-tune…

Awkward

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Otherwise the history just gets completely flattened out, and people imagine that everything was always available and accessible. One of the things…

Different

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Records have always been the most extraordinary form of time travel for me, and that's why it matters to know when something…

Audience

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There's a book of interviews with John Cage by Joan Retallack called Musicage that was finished the summer that he died, in…

Book

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There's part of me that is a strict materialist.

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I found myself thinking about the distance between the 60s and today through certain moments. Like the Henry Flynt interview with Ubuweb…

Distance

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Kenny Goldsmith from Ubuweb describes himself as an amateur archivist, and people can download files from Ubuweb - it's not a streaming…

Donation

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The question of art songs always came up with Gastr del Sol. I think Jim O'Rourke had it right in being clear…

Art

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