And sometimes I actually start to think human life is just as cheap to corporate America as animal life, so long as there are big profits to be made.
I've sort of decided that I can settle for being just the artist, arranger, writer and part-time engineer. That seems like enough to do.
The one thing I will say for digital, and you won't hear me say that many complimentary things about it, is that it's cheap. It pretty much enables anybody to record as long as you can deal with the sound.
I played in a couple of really crummy bands, including one in the dorm I was in at MIT, for a year or two.
All Boston songs are fairly difficult to translate to the stage. None of them are especially easy to play or sing. A lot of them, of course, have very involved arrangements with lots of different sounds and sections that are difficult to play and sing. The prospect of doing any Boston song live is always an endeavor in itself.
I heard 'More Than A Feeling' for the first time when somebody came running into my office in the engineering department and said, 'Your song's on the radio in the drafting department!'
The studio work is the nasty, tedious, hard and nerve-wracking part, interrupted by moments of exhilaration. Playing live is the chance to actually have some fun and get on a stage.
I was a fixer, a builder - an inventor - ever since I can remember.
If you listen to my tapes, you'd hear 14 different ways to arrange the rhythm guitar behind the harmony vocal, and then 14 different ways with a different vocal. You'd have to really be a music lover to sit through that and find it entertaining. I enjoy it, but I'm easy to please.
I'm a total rink rat. I can do the toe loop, the lutz, a flip, and the Scholz. That's one I invented. It's like me - you jump, you rotate in the wrong direction, and you land on the wrong foot.
Virtually every magazine, newspaper, TV station and cable channel is owned by a big corporation, and they've squashed stories that they don't want the public to know about.
'Higher Power' was the result of a personal experience: a friend of mine who went through the process of addiction and recovery. It's a very, very tough thing - very easy to become addicted and very, very hard to become a recovering addict.
