For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms - you can get away with using four mikes.

Sometimes one of us will have a riff or a bass line from home but it really gels when we come together. We really have a strong special chemistry that we take advantage of when we get together.

For live you need a microphone for the snare and the high hat, the kick drum, a nice stereo overhead and one for the toms - you can get away with using four mikes.

Playing well with others is important - not being too flashy, just keeping good time and of course coming up with cool beats. A good snare drum, kick drum, high hat. Just getting good at the hand feet coordination.

Drums all have their own particulars - each drum has a place where they sound the best - where they ring out and resonate the best, and the head surface isn't too loose or too tight, mainly so you get a good rebound off of the head.

We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians.

Its very sort of spontaneous and organic, not a preconceived sort of jamming. Now we record everything, cause sometimes you'll forget, you know, 'what was that thing again?' So we record everything.

I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.

I met the guys through a friend of a friend, and their former drummer had quit. I wasn't too familiar with the Chili Peppers before that, so I joined at the end of 88' and we finished recording Mother's Milk at the end of 89', next thing I know I'm in Spin with a sock.

I took a private lesson, but it didn't really work out, so I went back to playing along with records. That's really the thing that got me into playing a lot - getting excited about playing along with my favorite bands like Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

I had sort of exhausted all the avenues playing in Detroit. So again, through the stewardship of my brother, I ended up in California and went to the Musicians Institute in L.A. I wanted to get better as a player.

Playing along with records is key. And as far as equipment goes it has gotten so much more affordable and the drum sets are of great quality. I play Pearl; their Export Series is great for a beginner.

Flea and Anthony are into funk, like old school Meters and stuff like that.

Edible names are what drives me as a musician. My next band will be called the Hot Dogs.

Family time is really important to me.

Going up north with the redwoods and driving along the coast, it's got everything, man. It's got the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. It's beautiful.

I just love to play and I get a chance to play with other musicians and I jump on it.

I just played at a club in L.A. called the Baked Potato. It fits like 90 people. It's like playing somewhere in a basement in, like, Indiana or somewhere where all your friends show up. It's really fun and there's a very different energy to that than to play to 50,000 at a Tokyo baseball stadium.

I just try to approach and serve the music in the way that I think is right for the band I'm in at the time.

I'm a little more of a lead instrument in the Meatbats.

I'm a musician. It's what I do! I wouldn't be too good at anything else.

Jazz can be so serious, no sense of humor.

People who come up to me are drummers or fans of the band. I don't get it too much, but I'll be somewhere and someone will have me take a picture or something.

That's really the thing that got me into playing a lot - getting excited about playing along with my favorite bands like Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.

The Chili Peppers do a lot of improvising, but it's within the framework of song structures. The Meatbats is from a purely instrumental standpoint. But when you hear the term 'instrumental music' you think it's real serious stuff and everybody's playing a million notes and it's about playing fast. That's not what we do.

The Meatbats are a throwback band.

There's something about the rawness of the live thing, there's no rhythm guitars behind the solo, nothing other than what you hear the people playing at that moment. It's exciting, it's about the performance.

Drums all have their own particulars each drum has a place where they sound the best where they ring out and resonate the best and the head surface isnt too loose or too tight mainly so you get a good rebound off of the head.

Smile like you've got nothing to prove.

If a book I've committed myself to review turns out to be 'disappointing' I make an effort to present it objectively to the reader, including a good number of excerpts from the text, so that the reader might form his or her own opinion independent of my own.

First of all, we haven't always welcomed immigrants.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they're good or there because they're lucky.

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. Theres no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about anymore than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks.

Prayer is so complicated.

It's impossible to make a record when you're ill because it affects how you listen to things. You can't make decisions. It all sounds terrible.

Admittedly, a homosexual can be conditioned to react sexually to a woman, or to an old boot for that matter. In fact, both homo - and heterosexual experimental subjects have been conditioned to react sexually to an old boot, and you can save a lot of money that way.

Lives are saved when those potential killers are confronted by a police officer, a strong police presence and actual, honest-to-goodness, up-close 'What are you guys doing on this corner at 1 o'clock in the morning' policing. We need to be careful it doesn't drift away from us in the age of viral videos, or there will be profound consequences.

When you're the youngest and the only boy, you get spoilt but you get told you're spoilt so you don't get to enjoy it very much. I was the only man in the house because my parents divorced and my dad moved away when I was 13.

The billionaire who sits on his money and doesnt do anything for the common good Im not interested in that person.

We're predators; we don't eat meat because it's handy, we eat meat because we have a taste for blood.

Ask the river, where it comes from? You will get no answer. Ask the river, where is it going? You will get no answer, because the river lives inside this very moment; neither in the past nor in the future, in this very moment only!

I don't need to see the old school to remember it and the teachers there. They changed the way that I've always looked at life and learning.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

You can be gorgeous at thirty charming at forty and irresistible for the rest of your life.

Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.

Gentleness and kindness will make our homes a paradise upon earth.

To build a digital media company, you have to focus equally on content and technology. In content, you have to focus equally on the written word and video.

I've carved out a career for myself really as a writer.

As an illustrator you need to understand the human body - but having looked at and understood nature, you must develop an ability to look away and capture the balance between what you've seen and what you imagine.