It is just that I don’t want a wife and I don’t want kids.
I’m disappointed by bands left and right, every day.
The first Van Halen album makes Johnny Rotten out to be what he really was and still is: a hairdresser.
Young African-American males: Stop existing. It could get you killed.
Texas is as odd as it is vast.
The only thing worse than the Pastor Terry Jones scheduled Koran burning is the fact that he canceled the proposed event.
I am an optimist because I want to change things for the better and I know that blood has to be spilled and disharmony and cruelty are necessary to do that.
As so much music is listened to via MP3 download, many will never experience the joy of analog playback, and for them, I feel sorry. They are missing out.
If I’m jetlagging, and I’ve missed some meals, and it gets to that point in a movie that you’re supposed to cry, I’ll let my defences down from around my inherent standing level of cynicism, and I’ll cry.
Chris Christie is New Jersey’s concern, not America’s.
You could split hairs and bring up words like ‘doo-wop’ and terms like ‘soul’ or ‘R&B’, but I think pop music is what you want it to be – that’s why it’s pop.
If there is one set of laws, one Constitution for every citizen, its protections hopefully applied equally to all, then why do the results seem to differ so radically? What do you call that? Look around – you’re living in it.
If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establishing shot, the 13th the crowd pleaser and the 14th the ultimate hero scene.
For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16, and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that.
You must never lower yourself to being a person you don’t like.
When you start to doubt yourself the real world will eat you alive.
There’s tons of junk food for your mind on the Internet. You can sit there for three or 10 or 20 hours a day getting in online arguments with other people who also choose to waste their time.
There is a lot to say about what Bikini Kill and other ‘riot grrrl’ bands were able to achieve when they first set out. They were not some momentary, convulsive, creative spasm of independent music. There was a very real, relevant point of view being expressed.
Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communicating ideas with impact.
I’m not a very good writer. I’m working at it.
Now and then, someone is able to look at an empty space, conclude it would be a great place to start a revolution, and bravely go forward.
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I’m willing to bet one of my arms right now that as long as there’s electricity, Ramones music is going to be relevant.
Between the Dinosaur Jr. albums and his recent solo albums, ‘Several Shades of Why’ and ‘Heavy Blanket,’ J Mascis is emerging as one of the last men from all that ’80s indie madness, still writing songs that you want to listen to over and over.
I am on until I am dead, like a light bulb.
I never thought about getting any tattoos removed.
Technically speaking, there is no music whatsoever on a CD. Lots of information, but no music.
We are misery-making machines! Homo sapiens has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is humankind’s collective GDP.
I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Some wonder how and why. I never do.
I don’t believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn’t matter – it’s only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you.
Adolescence is a plague on the senses.
In the summer of 1991, I was on the first Lollapalooza tour. Nightly, I would watch Jane’s Addiction singer Perry Farrell go out in front of a sea of people and within minutes have all of them in the palm of his hand. I have never seen anything like it since.
It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.
When I read that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared – a state-of-the-art Boeing 777, said to be an incredibly safe way to travel – I waited patiently for the chance to learn what happened.
There is not one single police officer in America that I am not afraid of and not one that I would trust to tell the truth or obey the laws they are sworn to uphold. I do not believe they protect me in any way.
I have come to the conclusion that it’s a waste of time to have too much pride in anything. Perhaps it’s good to have a sense of duty, a jealous zeal to protect or improve, but pride ultimately is only that which stands vulnerable to offense and degradation.
It’s hard to get people at a record company to talk about music. They don’t seem to want to talk about music, it’s all marketing, and that’s part of a record, you gotta get it out there, people have gotta hear it, but you could do it in a way that’s not repulsive.
It is instilled in thousands of American males from an early age that one of their requirements is to be able to both dish out and take a lot of pain. They are taught the rules of this road in gyms, rings, backyards and fields all over America.
You can’t get your head around something if you’re yelling.
Without an education, you won’t have a future.
I think a lot of Americans have never been all that hungry. They’ve never had war on their shore, and they’ve never suffered the way other cultures have suffered. I’m not saying we should go suffer. Not at all. I’m saying we should be more aware of how other cultures exist.
I just travel the world with my backpack and my cameras and a bunch of Clif bars.
My motto is, ‘Never quit.’
I’m not interested in censorship. I like the First Amendment very much.
Those who seek to profit by division don’t stand a chance.
Texas is a hotbed of insanely good bands and musicians.
I have been an XL fan of Devo since I was in high school in the 1970s. Their records only sound better with time.
Motivation has always been a fascinating factor when considering a touring artist, especially when the years stack up. What keeps one out there year after year?
Being in New York is an almost overwhelming experience. While Washington, D.C., is my favorite American city, I regard New York City as the most amazing city in the world. No other comes close. It is an incredible, inexhaustible engine.
‘SMiLE’ is perhaps the Beach Boys’ most legendary album. It was recorded in 1966 and 1967 but only saw a formal release in 2011. That’s a long time to wait for what was said to be Brian Wilson’s masterpiece.
I am an employment hyena. I am happy to make a meal of what the lions leave behind.
There is no place in the world like Australia. Not even its beautiful neighbor New Zealand.
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.
Questioning anything and everything, to me, is punk rock.
Luckily for me, I genuinely like my audience. They really are a good bunch.
I think it is incumbent on anyone who can to lift human dignity to the highest possible levels, maintaining one’s own and helping to raise that of others.
Smart people make good choices. They dig science and say ‘no’ to the invasion of sovereign nations for the pleasure of corporations.
In my many trips to South Africa, I have met and spoken to a lot of people there, and they all seem to find apartheid as repellent as you would.
I believe that contentment or any sustained period of joy that doesn’t inspire thought that leads to action almost immediately is useless.
Every year, August lashes out in volcanic fury, rising with the din of morning traffic, its great metallic wings smashing against the ground, heating the air with ever-increasing intensity.
Everyone who knows me knows that I’m a hopeless romantic who listens to love ballads and doo-wop songs all the time.
If I’m in L.A. for longer than 20 days, I’m looking for work, because I don’t do vacations.
I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated. I was up early watching television and watched the announcement. I didn’t understand what the word ‘assassinated’ meant.
I think that humans have a huge capacity to carry pain and sadness. There are things that haunt us our entire lives; we are unable to let them go. The good times seem almost effervescent and dreamlike in comparison with the times that didn’t go so well.
Most Americans are very cool people.
Live music is the cure for what ails ya.
We humans are hard to deal with. We are a loud, complex and demanding bunch. Often, we are best dealt with from a safe distance and for only brief periods of time. This could be why a lot of marriages fail.
If an American company has a drop of patriotic blood coursing through its system, then surely it would set up in America and employ Americans, right?
I wasn’t playing the music, the music was playing me… and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn’t wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud… You cannot fool an audience.
