Orphans dead parents lonely children at Christmas morose spoken word recordings everything you love about the holidays. Move the turkey over so you can fit your head in the oven.

I love the excess of Christmas. The shopping season that begins in September the bad pop star recordings of Christmas carols the decorations that don't know when to come down.

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe having surveyed a few boxes full of letters diaries bank statements and photographs that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

Songs really are like a form of time travel because they really have moved forward in a bubble. Everyone who's connected with it the studio's gone the musicians are gone and the only thing that's left is this recording which was only about a three-minute period maybe 70 years ago.

Well especially now I come to realize - and then - I would do my schooling which was three hours with a tutor and right after that I would go to the recording studio and record and I'd record for hours and hours until it's time to go to sleep.

We won a contest at the teen fair in Vancouver and the first prize was a recording contract and we recorded at a radio station on the stairway and we did a record and it got put out.

I think that technology has both introduced new sounds but also allowed an increasingly painterly approach to recording music as you can now paint over what you've done and more and more refine an existing performance.

I've been so entwined with technology since I was about 15 recording myself and multitracking and producing things on my own.

But some great records are are being made with today's technology and there are still great artists among us. Likewise there are artists today who are so reliant on modern technology they wouldn't have emerged when recording was more organic.

You can alter movie singing so much because you go into the recording studio and just technology for recording has gotten so good you can hold out a note and they can combine a note from take 2 and a note from take 8.