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David Grubbs Biography

David Grubbs (born September 21, 1967), composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist, 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.

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David Grubbs Quotes

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, Dissimilar, Modes, Record, Records, Yield

The instrumental pieces are compositions, certainly, although that's not the language that I instinctively use. They're not scored, and arrangements are often arrived at collaboratively. I always choose to play with people whose input I desire.

Desire, Instrumental, People, Play

The danger of these collaborations across disciplines is in having too strict of a division of labor - in my case, of getting stuck doing the music. When I make an album, I write music, I write lyrics, I come up with the visual design, etc. I get to do all of that stuff.

Case, Discipline, Division Of Labor, Labor, Write, Writing

I recall improvisational drummer and composer Michael Evans telling me a story of someone who had the opportunity to meet Cage and give him a record, and John Cage just smiled and said, "You know I have nothing to play this on?"

Give, Giving, Just Smile, Michael, Opportunity, Said

Otherwise the history just gets completely flattened out, and people imagine that everything was always available and accessible. One of the things that struck me was the way in which the landscape of experimental music seemed different at different points in time, on the basis of where one was situated geographically, if one had access to live performances, and what was released at a particular time.

Different, Imagine, People, Things, Time

The question of art songs always came up with Gastr del Sol. I think Jim O'Rourke had it right in being clear that there's a tradition of art song - Ives being the touchstone for the two of us - and what we do doesn't belong to it. It wasn't important to advance those kinds of distinctions, but clearly he thought it was fanciful for anyone to speak of what we were doing as being in that tradition.

Art, Belong, Clear, Song, Think, Thinking

I found myself thinking about the distance between the 60s and today through certain moments. Like the Henry Flynt interview with Ubuweb founder Kenny Goldsmith, where he talks about how he was scarred by how proud John Cage was to be ignorant of popular music. Goldsmith says, "Nobody thinks twice nowadays about listening to everything!" Something that had seemed so uniquely, radically syncretistic in Flynt's day seems much more commonplace now.

Distance, Ignorant, Music, Seemed, Thinking, Thinks

I don't write poetry for the page because my inclination in that area is satisfied by songwriting. "Ornamental Hermit" was a comparatively effortless song to write, which is rare for me.

Area, Page, Pages, Song, Songwriting, Writing

Records have always been the most extraordinary form of time travel for me, and that's why it matters to know when something was circulated, and if it had an audience of five or 50,000.

Audience, Circulated, Extraordinary, Matters, Time Travel

As there are more online archives of improvised music, it becomes more like the daily practice of playing it. It lessens the idea of there being masterpieces of improvised music through benchmark recordings.

Archives, Benchmark, Idea, Masterpiece, Online, Playing

When I read John Cage's book Silence, I was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky. For me, records were a mode of time travel and geographic travel, interfacing with a much larger world. So it seemed antiquated and backwards that Cage would be so down on them.

Book, Growing Up, John, Louisville, Silence, World

The word "archive" seems so reassuring, but I'm not sure about these things that are now being called archives. Is anything lost by the fact that the word has come to mean so many more things.

Archive, Archives, Mean, Not Sure, Reassuring, Things

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

Materialist, Part, Strict

David Grubbs Biography

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