George Zimmerman is a foot soldier in a rapidly privatizing country. He is a new centurion of 21st-century America. Law enforcement is tied down by the strictures of, well, the law. There is only ‘so much they can do’ to take care of the ‘problem.’
If I had to live my life in anticipation of what others thought of me, little would get done.
Castle Face Records, run by The Oh Sees main man, Johnny Dwyer is always worth checking in with.
Football is at least as ‘gay’ as rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and the film ‘300.’
I think Perry Ferrell put independent music on a very good path with Lollapalooza.
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
I am a veteran of the War on Christmas. I am just emerging from a battlefield strewn with dead trees and torn shreds of brightly colored wrapping paper.
In Israel, there’s a lot to learn from anyone, because to live there you’ve got to deal with the truth. Things happen real fast. Your day goes from cool to catastrophic in one second. Israelis know that the cafe you’re in could blow up, or the shopping mall, and they rock that.
Rarely do I do film press because I’m so low on the food chain of the movie, and for me it’s just this thing I did for four weeks before the next tour started.
My laptop seems to know where I am, even if I don’t. My cellphone asks me if I want directions to anywhere from the spot I am standing in. I buy a record online and Amazon.com sends me letters, telling me that people who bought what I bought also bought these other records.
My optimism wears heavy boots and is loud.
I was happy to find out that when on tour, Dolly Parton doesn’t use hotels but stays on her bus every night, to the point of having her buses shipped from Austria to Australia so she can tour the way she sees fit. I used one of her buses once – an honor.
I have to do things for myself, and if those standards are set high, then it’s up to me to pass or fail.
Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would think you were in Riyadh. Years from now, perhaps we can lose the equality part, the same-sex part and call it what it is – marriage.
I can only write about personal stuff, about my point of view.
This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.
This is my 25th year of being on stage. A lot of people who I kind of toed up to the starting line with are no longer in this position. I feel very, very lucky.
Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.
When you are young, there is so much ahead of you, it’s like the Saharan desert. You can’t even see across it.
Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.
I don’t know if music has ever achieved anything past appealing to the people that it appeals to. If a song could stop a war, then Bob Marley and Bob Dylan songs would have stopped one or two.
There’s no rule that you have to like Henry Rollins the musician or the actor.
Giving a good performance, giving it all is what it’s all about. I love to perform.
I think politicians get hamstrung by the nature of politics when the private sector can really do great things.
To this day, my haircut is the number two clippers, which I apply to myself every month.
I try to get myself up and moving as early as possible. Optimum is to be on the treadmill while it is still dark outside.
In the city of Pyongyang, you don’t have to look very far to see an image of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung. They love the guy. He is responsible for the wonder that is North Korea.
Too bad that Paul Ryan confessed to being a fan of Rage Against The Machine. By doing so, he not only begged for a bucketing by many of their fans but actually got one from the band’s guitar player, Tom Morello.
I would like go to Palestine and interview people there about what their lives are like; same thing in Iran.
Never once have I thought that Social Security would be something that would ever be available to me.
Even though I am not hungry when I get up, I try to eat to get me ready for the day. Within an hour of getting up.
Nothing brings people together more, then mutual hatred.
With a book, there’s no volume to turn up. You’re very naked with a book.
When a young non-white male is stopped and searched at the whim of a police officer, his idea of personal space, privacy and self esteem are shattered, to say nothing of his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment protections. The damage goes deep quickly and stays. Stop & frisk, as well as a tactic, is also an incitement.
If you want to go the scorched-earth, Obamacare-is-like-slavery route and choose to stay uninsured, you will have the Palinesque guts, the Cruzian fortitude to wave off the ambulance that will appear to scoop you up should something bad happen to you, right?
Someone like Ashlee Simpson, she lip-synchs on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ gets totally called out la Milli Vanilli, and no one really cares that much. It doesn’t make me hate Ashlee; she’s just taking instructions.
Seven-11 is the pulse-beat of America. I think that Bruce Springsteen should do a song about a 7-11 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, but write it in such a way that American’s youth can identify and slurp along with the Boss. Hail the Boss! Hail 7-11!
I plan to be a part of Haiti’s reconstruction and future.
I never thought I was right for TV or that TV was right for me.
I need to do things on my own, need to be left alone.
I’m most in my element on tour, with a gig that day, like today. I’m on the road where I am supposed to be. I will be where I’m supposed to be at nighttime, on stage, in front of people, doing my thing.
It’s why real men just go out in the woods and howl. I must do it and get paid.
Sometimes when you meet a musician you are a fan of, and he or she isn’t the friendliest person, you walk away from the experience wondering if you will ever be able to listen to their music again.
When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn’t really matter to me. I don’t go to the wrap party. I don’t go to the premiere.
I would like to become a better photographer. I’m working on that.
Juan Williams is a very sharp guy.
You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.
I don’t know if you have ever seen the Woody Allen film ‘Annie Hall,’ but it is, in a way, to Los Angeles and ‘Hollywood’ what ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ is to many musicians.
I’m actually on the Twitter like all those crazy young kids are, and if I’m going to do an in-store appearance or I post something on my website, I tweet these followers, a word I don’t like so much, and over 50,000 people go, like, ‘Okay, I got it.’
It is only our humanity that can deliver us from the brutality of our achievements.
In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
Music keeps you young. Having music in your life keeps you open to things.
I mean I appreciate fan mail and that the people like what I am doing but I can’t answer it. If I would answer 25 letters a day I would be just a guy answering mail and not an artist anymore.
Why do you think the old stories tell of men who set out on great journeys to impress the gods? Because trying to impress people just isn’t worth the time and effort.
Michele Bachmann is always a great person to go to for an opinion about anything. She has a very active and interesting mind.
The Wacken festival started more than 20 years ago with just a few hundred people in attendance. Tickets now sell out before the lineup is announced.
Songs sung under duress are often very powerful.
The ecstatic insanity of romantic pursuit can be so enhanced by music that entire romantic conquests, victories and ruinous, crushing defeats can be tied to songs to such a degree that it’s almost unbearable to listen to them again, as they bring back the memories so vividly.
In winter, I plot and plan. In spring, I move.
There is no way you are going to be forgiven for blowing up a village and killing a bunch of people.
If I hear, ‘Be afraid of Tehran,’ I’m like, ‘I’d better go to Tehran.’
One of the nice things about a favorite pop song is that it’s an unconditional truce on judgment and musical snobbery. You like the song because you just do, and there need not be any further criticism.
For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.
I don’t believe it mattered to Timothy McVeigh who was president or who his congressional representative was when he blew up the Murrah Building in 1995.
If you listen to the way I speak and watch the way I conduct myself – there’s nothing about me that’s rock n’ roll. It’s like, ‘Hello, I’m in a rock n’ roll band’. ‘No, you’re a narc.’
It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.
My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long – the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out.
You might as well enjoy the day – you never know when and how painfully it could all end.
I have lived in public as a somewhat recognizable person since I was a teenager. Emails I answer end up posted on sites; pictures of me and someone I just met, taken by a cellphone, literally number in the thousands and are easily accessed.
