Radio Quotes - page 46
One is reminded of the actor, playing the role of a villain in a traveling theatrical troupe, who, at a particularly tense moment in the play, was shot by an excited cowpuncher in the audience. But this kind of confusion does not seem to be confined to unsophisticated theatergoers. [...] Paul Muni, after playing the part of Clarence Darrow in Inherit the Wind, was invited to address the American Bar Association; Ralph Bellamy, after playing the role of Frankin D. Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello, was invited by several colleges to speak on Roosevelt. Also, there are those astonishing patriots who rushed to the recruiting offices to help defend the nation when, on October 30, 1938, the United States was "invaded" by an "army from Mars" in a radio dramatization.
S. I. Hayakawa
My sister Lisa had an apartment over by the university and said that I could come stay with her as long as I didn't bring my Joni Mitchell record. My mother offered to drive me over, and after a few bong hits I took her up on it. It was a fifteen-minute trip across town, and on the way we listened to the rebroadcast of a radio call-in show in which people phoned the host to describe the various birds gathered around their backyard feeders. Normally the show came on in the morning, and it seemed strange to listen to it at night. The birds in question had gone to bed hours ago and probably had no idea they were still being talked about.
David Sedaris
In the year 1984 Forbes magazine, a leading periodical for high finance and big business, drew up a list of the wealthiest individuals in the United States. The top 400 people had assets totaling $60 billion. At the bottom of the population there were 60 million people who had no assets at all. Around the same time, the economist Lester Thurow estimated that 482 very wealthy individuals controlled (without necessarily owning) over $2,000 billion ($2 trillion). Consider the influence of such a very rich class-with its inevitable control of press, radio, television, and education-on the thinking of the nation.
Howard Zinn
There isn't anything weird about my music. Weird is a skeleton in the closet, wearing a rubber mask with warts all over its nose, and all that kind of shit. That's not what I do. The thing that makes my music unusual is that people only hear one kind of music all the time over the radio. It's wallpaper to their lives. Audile wallpaper. There's one acceptable beat and there are three acceptable chord progressions. There are five acceptable words: baby, love, tears, yat yat. Just because I don't deal in those terms doesn't mean I'm weird. So tell these people: I ain't weird; I'm rational. I'm a person who can choose to write stuff like that, or choose to write stuff that includes all the notes on the piano played at once, followed by a cement truck driving over the piano, followed by a small atomic explosion. Nothing weird about that as long as you do it in a meaningful way.
Frank Zappa
And this is an America where people like you and me have no place. And you don't have to take my word for it, turn on Christian broadcasting, listen to Christian radio. Listen to what they say about people like us. It's not a matter that we have an opinion they disagree with. It's not a matter of them de-legitimizing us, which they are. It's a matter of them demonizing us, of talking us - describing us as militant secular humanists, moral relativists, both of which terms I would not use to describe myself, as a kind of counter-militant ideology that is anti-Christian and that essentially propelled by Satan that they must destroy... And that's what these people are about.
Chris Hedges
Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev, the editors of Pravda, Izvestiia, the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn't called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.
Umberto Eco
This rivality was really building from the people of the newspapers and the fans. But I think it was very good for both of us, because the publicity was so big and it created a very big interest about me and Maria and was very good in the end. But I don't know why they put this kind of rivality, because the voice was very different. She was really something unusual. And I remember that I was very young artist too, and I stayed near the radio every time that I know that there was something on radio by Maria. The most fantastic thing was the possibility for her to sing the soprano coloratura with this big voice! This was something really special. Fantastic absolutely!
Maria Callas
JB: We had 200 Russians lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively, which was... and you know we'd been told to reach the airfield and take a hold of it. And if we had a foothold there then it would make life much easier for the NATO forces in Pristina. So there was a political reason to take hold of this. And the practical consequences of that political reason would be then aggression against the Russians.
Interviewer: Might have been World War III.
JB: Absolutely. And that's why we were querying our instruction from an American general. Fortunately, up on the radio came Gen Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III, and told us why don't we sugar off down the road, you know, encircle the airfield instead.
James Blunt
A Reverend Donald Wildman in Mississippi heard something on the radio that he didn't like. Well, Reverend, did anyone ever tell you there are two knobs on the radio? Two. Knobs. On the radio. Of course, I'm sure the reverend isn't that comfortable with anything that has two knobs on it. But hey, reverend, there are two knobs on the radio! One of them turns the radio off, and the other one changes the station! Imagine that, reverend, you can actually change the station! It's called freedom of choice, and it's one of the principles this country was founded upon. Look it up in the library, reverend, if you have any of them left when you've finished burning all the books.
George Carlin
The pressure for war is high and mounting. The people are opposed to it, but the Administration seems to have ‘the bit in its teeth' and is hell-bent on its way to war. Most of the Jewish interests in the country are behind war, and they control a huge part of our press and radio and most of our motion pictures. There are the ‘intellectuals' and the ‘Anglophiles,' and the British agents who are allowed free rein, the international financial interests, and many others.
Charles Lindbergh
Radio One won't play my fucking single ("What God Wants") because they know it's no good. They know it's not as good as Erasure or Janet fucking Jackson. They know that the British public shouldn't be listening to it. It makes my blood boil! If you're not 17 with a baseball hat on back to front, they don't want to know."
Roger Waters
I'd love to sing with Jeff Buckley. He is currently making his first album, and if it's anything like a radio session I heard by him, it should be amazing. He's written this song called ‘Grace,' which literally makes the hair on my neck stand on end. I was sweating like a fucking June bride when I first heard him. Music has never done that to me before.
Jeff Buckley
On Monday, the Chronicle ran a long piece on Herb Caen, by Herb Caen. My first reaction was, "My God, he's dead." After all, the last Caen piece to run that long and that far away from the Macy's ad was his exquisite obituary for Benny Goodman - social and personal history that read like being gathered around the radio. And it would make sense to assign Caen to his own obituary, as he is the reigning master of the art and known to meet his deadline no matter what the obstacle. These are inappropriately morbid thoughts on the occasion of Caen's 50th anniversary of writing daily columns. It's a joyous occasion because it means this unnervingly youthful 70-year-old genius has only about 50 more years of columns to do before the Chronicle is on its feet again. Then, maybe, they'll give him a vacation without making him write about it. I hope the Royal holds up.
Herb Caen
