One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you're allowed to fail.
Interpretation
Small audiences provide a safe space for failure and growth.
David Byrne highlights the importance of performing in intimate settings where artists can experiment and learn from their mistakes without the pressure of large audiences. This experience fosters personal and professional growth, enabling artists to refine their craft and build confidence before facing larger crowds.
In practice
In a workshop about performance art, you could say, 'As David Byrne said, one of the benefits of playing to small audiences is that you're allowed to fail, which is where growth happens.'
Forces that you might think are utterly unrelated to creativity can have a big impact. Technology, obviously, but environment, too. Even financial structures can affect the actual content of a song. The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.
When things get so absurd and so stupid and so ridiculous that you just can't bear it, you cannot help but turn everything into a joke.
I certainly agree that putting everything into little genres is counterproductive. You're not going to get too many surprises if you only focus on the stuff that fits inside the box that you know.
You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.
Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it's peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it's not always the best thing.
I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.
I think you've got to pay the price for anything that's worthwhile, and success is paying the price. You've got to pay the price to win, you've got to pay the price to stay on top, and you 've got to pay the price to get there.
I have inherited two of the most important brands in hip-hop, Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella. Reid and Universal Music Group have given me the opportunity to manage the companies I have contributed to my whole career. I feel this is a giant step for me and the entire artist community.
Goals achieved with little effort are seldom worthwhile or lasting.
A ball player has to be kept hungry to become a big leaguer. That's why no boy from a rich family has ever made the big leagues.
Anyone who has played the game professionally, you're always taught that the ball is the most important, most precious thing, so when the ball hits the ground, it's always a mad scramble. It's amazing how many times there is a fumble, and the person who recovers it initially doesn't walk away with the ball.
The best team I played in was the Brazilian one in 2002; we felt that we could always score. It was a team without any vanity - or individuals.
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