2/14/2009

Ray A Drop Of Golden Sun


"Music needs to make sense, needs to have order. From what some people consider the lowest stuff -- a cat in the middle of a cotton field shouting the blues -- to what's considered the highest -- a symphony or an opera -- it has to be structured...

...Blowing out notes in whichever way, whenever you please, paying no mind to the chord changes -- well, that doesn't hold me, doesn't make me want to listen. Far as I'm concerned, music should be beautiful, and the most beautiful aspect of music is its simplicity."

from Brother Ray
by Ray Charles & David Ritz

2/10/2009

Join The Club


"At this point in my life I had long since lost respect for the law. I had already seen too much shit -- in the name of the law -- which made me sick to my stomach. I don't see the police as black or white. I see them as the law. And it was the law who I once saw, earlier in my career, pull a guy from his car in a parking lot outside a dance hall and scream in his face, "Nigger, didn't you see that goddamn stoplight back there?" When the man attempted to answer, the law slapped him upside the head with their billy clubs and said, "Keep your mouth shut while we're talking, nigger." That was the law. It's one thing to watch a bunch of hoodlums acting that way. It's another when the law is doing it."

from "Brother Ray"
by Ray Charles & David Ritz