For my birthday this year, my girlfriends - who knew I'd just inherited my dad's turntable - gave me a carton of albums like 'Blue Kentucky Girl,' by Emmylou Harris, and 'Off the Wall,' by Michael Jackson. It's all stuff we grew up with. I mean, you can't have a music collection without Prince's 'Purple Rain' - it just can't be done!
If the music in a groove fits with what you're playing, then play it; if not, then you can play it backwards. If that doesn't work, you try it at a different speed. If it really doesn't work you just break it. The whole ritual to put a record on a turntable just to listen to it, I don't do that too often.
I grew up in East Germany, and we were short on technology. So my father was really proud to be the owner of a turntable.
It's glorious to be able to go onto the Internet and hear any kind of music anywhere, from anywhere, and get it instantly. But there's also something glorious about having a record with a sleeve and looking at the artwork, putting it on the turntable and playing it, there's still something romantic to me about that.
All the records I've made have pretty much been big club turntable records. You need to feel the rhythm.
You're successful if you can get one person to pick it up and put it on the turntable and go, Wow, thanks for writing that!
I liked comedy as a kid. When I was a kid, I'd go to sleep to, like, Bill Cosby albums every night. I'd listen to 'Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow... Right!' and 'Wonderfulness,' which are two of his most famous albums. Then the next night, I'd flip them over, 'cause it was the old stackable turntable.
The turntable is now an instrument at the Smithsonian.
There's individual turntable setups devoted to piano, bass, drums and a set for soloing as well. We like to try and explore the gamut of what a turntable can do.
A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable.