Don Alias Quotes

"We're talking about an extremely prolific poet and songwriter and lyricist. That stuff comes off the top of her head. She [Joni Mitchell] will write exactly what she lives. If she puts some money in the soda machine, she'll write about putting money in the soda machine. "Dry Cleaner from Des Moines," on the Shadows & Light album, was about sitting next to a dry cleaner from Des Moines, playing a slot machine." - Don Alias

source: digitalinterviews.com

Allen Ginsberg Quotes

"From it's inception Beat poetry was hailed as "something NEW" and "like all good spontaneous jazz, newness is acceptable and expected - by hip people who listen." But the newness of jazz has in it the echoes of J. S. Bach." - Allen Ginsberg

source: On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg (by Allen Ginsberg)

Jack Kerouac Quotes

"... and up on the stand [Charlie] Bird Parker with solemn eyes who'd been busted fairly recently and had now returned to a kind of bop dead Frisco but had just discovered or been told about the Red Drum, the great new generation gang wailing and gathering there, so here he was on the stand, examinign them with his eyes as he blew his now-settled-down-into-regulated-design "crazy" notes ... whom I saw distinctly digging Mardou several times also myself directly into my eye looking to search if really I was that great writer I thought myself to be as if he knew my thoughts and ambitions or remembered me from other night clubs and other coasts, other Chicagos - not a challenging look but the king and founder of the bop generation at least the sound of it in digging his audience digging the eyes, the secret eyes him-watching, as he just pursed his lips and let great lungs and immortal fingers work, his eyes separate and interested and humane, the kindest jazz musician there could be while being and therefore naturally the greatest - watching Marldou and me in the infancy of our love and probably wondering why, or knowing it wouldn't last, or seeing who it was would be hurt..." - Jack Kerouac

source: The Subterraneans (by Jack Kerouac)

Billy Collins Quotes

"At home, the jazz station plays all day, so sometimes it becomes indistinct, like the sound of rain, birds in the background, the surf of traffic. But today I heard a voice announce that Eric Dolphy, 36 when he died, has now been dead for 36 years. I wonder - did anyone sense something when another Eric Dolphy lifetime was added to the span of his life, when we all took another full Dolphy step forward in time, flipped over the Eric Dolphy yardstick once again? It would have been so subtle -
like the sensation you might feel as you passed through the moment at the exact center of your life or as you crossed the equator at night in a boat. I never gave it another thought, but could that have been the little shift I sensed a while ago as I walked down in the rain to get the mail?" — Billy Collins

source: "Tipping Point"

Joe Strummer Quotes

"As the floods of God wash away sin city, they say it was written in the page of the Lord. But I was looking for that great jazz note that destroyed the walls of Jericho, the winds of fear, whip away the sickness." - Joe Strummer

source: The Clash - The Sound of the Sinners

Bob Kaufman Quotes

"Streets paved with opal sadness, Lead me counterclockwise, to pockets of joy, And jazz." — Bob Kaufman

source: Cranial Guitar

Thomas Pynchon Quotes

"I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night." — Thomas Pynchon

source: V.

Jack Kerouac Quotes

"Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety - leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world." - Jack Kerouac

source: Jack Kerouac, On the Road, Part 3, Ch. 10

Jack Kerouac Quotes

"Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America." - Jack Kerouac

source: Jack Kerouac, 'On the Road', Part 3, Ch. 4

Cecil Taylor Quotes

"Where are you Bud? ... Lightning ... now a lone rain falling thru doors empty of room-Jazz Naked Fire Gesture, Dancing protoplasm Absorbs." - Cecil Taylor