Frith Quotes & Sayings

Some say that the Black Rabbit hates us and wants our destruction. But the truth is - or so they taught me - that he, too, serves Lord Frith and does no more than his appointed task — Richard Adams

Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave
/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,
/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross. — John Milton

I think that one of the things that influences me most as a composer is to what extent I can deconstruct and reconstruct the material that I'm working with. — Fred Frith

The totality of a record is usually beyond ones ability to imagine when you start working on it, but the component parts are, usually, fairly clear one way or another. — Fred Frith

One of the things I particularly enjoyed doing was taking raw sound from locations during the film, like the candy machine, and writing pieces of music to go with them, which is totally unnecessary within the context of the film, because they have their own logic. — Fred Frith

a baby boy was born on January 30, 1882. "At a quarter to nine — Margaret Frith

Methinks I am like a man, who having struck on many shoals, and having narrowly escap'd shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous circumstances. — David Hume

You know you're a writer when you wish you could meet your characters and hang out with them. — Kerry Frith

If you write songs you have an idea how they're going to sound. — Fred Frith

Chris Cutler was kind enough to offer his company as an umbrella, so now I can have all my back catalogue under one roof as it were, and it has the same feeling as with Daniel; this is a matter between friends rather than businessmen. — Fred Frith

As an improviser I'm now pretty comfortable with trios, so I'm thinking of working up to quartets. — Fred Frith

Everything comes to you when you ready. If it did not come to you then know that you not yet ready, build yourself to it.
Ana Maria Frith, from: Limitless: Change Your Life — Ana M Frith

I remember playing football dressed in peculiar costumes with some friends in France and laughing so hard we couldn't even stand up, let alone kick the ball. — Fred Frith

Love and help others unconditionally without expectation you are creating in effect, this creation will multiply for you in a million ways.
Ana Maria Frith, Limitless: Change Your Life — Ana M Frith

Oh, Frith help me!" said Fiver, trembling. "I can smell him from here. He terrifies me." "Oh, Fiver, don't be absurd! He just smells the same as the rest of them." "He smells like barley rained down and left to rot in the fields. He smells like a wounded mole that can't get underground." "He smells like a big, fat rabbit to me, with a lot of carrots inside. But I'll come with you. — Richard Adams

What's always exciting is when you hear something amazing when you least expected it. Every now and then I'll hear something for the first time that forces me to re-examine my frames of reference, and re-consider musical parameters in general, and that's wonderful . And what's even more wonderful in a way, is when you hear something that you know, and already think you have an opinion about, and then suddenly discover that it isn't what you thought it was, but something quite different, which makes it just as surprising as if you'd never heard it before. That's REALLY great! — Fred Frith

Not necessarily in one concert, but they're all there to be used if you want to use them. — Fred Frith

My solo music - I get up onstage, I improvise and it's my improvisation. When I get up onstage with Fred Frith and Mike Patton, then we're improvising together. Then it's not my music; it's our music. — John Zorn

BE LIMITLESS,
CHANGE YOUR LIFE,
UNFOLD YOUR POTENTIAL,
BECOME YOUR OWN LIGHT,
ABILITY OF POSSIBILITY.

Ana Maria Frith, Limitless Change Your Life Book — Ana M Frith

I started getting interested in the notes that I could hear being generated when I hammered on while playing a classical guitar. — Fred Frith

You may think it's a wonderful thing to be saved by Lord Frith in his power. How many rabbits has that happened to, I wonder? But I tell you, it was far more frightening than being chased by the Efrafans. — Richard Adams

We played some gigs in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I really felt the group was really a band in the sense of something I could write for. — Fred Frith

You could say that everything the musicians have learned and known over the years, all of their technical resources, are in a dialogue with the things they are discovering every time, as if it was the first time. — Fred Frith

Well, I think music for kids is never anything but experimental is it? — Fred Frith

I don't know if I'm striving for anything that I can put into words. — Fred Frith

There's terrible evil in the world."
It comes from men," said Holly. "All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals. — Richard Adams

Rock, for all the power of its individual dreams, is still confined by its mass cultural form. Its history, like the history of America itself, is a history of class struggle--the struggle for fun. — Simon Frith

Improvised music involves a lot of intuition and I like developing intuition. — Fred Frith

We went through this business of me writing out all the parts for these old songs from Gravity and Speechless and we'd been performing that, but we don't do that any more. — Fred Frith

I think things changed as a result of a certain perception of our politics. When we went through our zealous, self-righteous period it didn't exactly win us any friends. — Fred Frith

I write with a mouse, because it has no psychological associations or memories or habits associated with it. — Fred Frith

And so many of the kinds of labels you get stuck with don't really tell the story; Progressive, Art Rock, Noise Music, Downtown - it ends up being a struggle to stay out of debates that other people are having around you. — Fred Frith

Some things don't wind up sounding like you'd expect, which is just as well. — Fred Frith

There's an awful lot of resources that can be drawn upon in an improvised music concert. — Fred Frith

If you mean do I use the guitar when I'm sitting at home writing stuff, then basically no, never. All I would ever write would be stuff that my fingers easily fall into. — Fred Frith

Frith meant us to get back," replied Holly. "That's the real reason why we're here. — Richard Adams

We play melodic music, we play songs, we play all kinds of things and when you improvise you don't just shut out different languages, you use all the languages that you have. — Fred Frith

God had saved him from the fish cellar and that could only mean one thing. He had more work to do. (John Frith, p.64) — Brenda Rickman Vantrease

There are always things to examine. What's great is not feeling that I have to refuse any of them. Maybe no good from a PR perspective, but from the point of view of everyday life, it keeps things interesting. — Fred Frith

Maybe we should go by tube', he said.
A taxi'll come', she said. 'I'm in no hurry'.
She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman has said, very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct - they can't resist. Infaillible.
So Eva stood close to Romer in the doorway of the shop on Frith Street as he shooted and waved at the passing cars moving down the dark street, hoping one of them might be a taxi.
We're out of luck', he said, turning, to find Eva standing very close to him, her face lifted.
I'm in no hurry', she said.
He reached for her and kissed her. — William Boyd

It's like learning a language; you can't speak a language fluently until you find out who you are in that language, and that has as much to do with your body as it does with vocabulary and grammar. — Fred Frith