Our Band Could Be Your Life Quotes

“Rock'n'roll is a teenage sport, meant to be played by teenagers of all ages--they could be 15, 25 or 35. It all boils down to whether they've got the love in their hearts, that beautiful teenage spirit... -Calvin Johnson”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991

“Los Angeles wasn’t a sun-splashed utopia anymore—it was an alienated, smog-choked sprawl rife with racial and class tensions, recession, and stifling boredom.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“Music can inspire people to wake up and say, ‘Somebody’s lying.’ This is the point I’d like to make with my music,” Watt told Rolling Stone in 1985. “Make you think about what’s expected of you, of your friends. What’s expected of you by your boss. Challenge those expectations. And your own expectations. Man, you should challenge your own ideas about the world every day.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“Being a teen was a metaphorical state that could be prolonged indefinitely, a way of being in which one was unspoiled, blameless, enthusiastic, and sincere.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“you could perform together because you were coming from the same places in your heart. You may not make the same music, but you feel about music the same way.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“He’d realized the importance of that, of making sure everybody was in on every decision and being on the same page aesthetically with him—and behind the sentiment of the song.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“they wouldn’t do interviews with magazines they themselves wouldn’t read; they would play only all-ages shows and tickets would be $5.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“Personal purifying is the beginning of everything,” MacKaye said. “Once you get your own shit together, once you get your own mind together, it makes life for you and the people around you so much more agreeable and understandable as opposed to constant fucking problems.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“constant friction between what you see, and what you want to achieve and things that you know are right. That rub is what creates the pain and the emotion and then there’s the hope that maybe you can overcome it, make it happen. It’s the same politically and personally—to me it’s all one issue because the same problems keep coming up over and over again—lack of commitment, lack of caring.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“believe in music in that way—if you want something to happen, you write a song about it.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“Rock in general is about that emotional release,”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“We do want to provide a physical and emotional release, but we also want to create an atmosphere where people are encouraged to think for themselves rather than accept what they’ve been told.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“for instance. “When we say ‘World Domination,’ ” Pavitt explained, “we’re saying, ‘Fuck you, we’re from Seattle, and we don’t care if the media machines are in L.A., we’re going to create our own.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“To me, it was just a matter of, if you want to do something, the only thing that’s going to keep you from doing it is giving up,” Leary says. “Because we were proof of that. If you just don’t quit, you will succeed—that is the bottom line.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“It’s just that when you’re playing in standard tuning all the time,” Moore explained, “you’re sounding pretty… standard.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“Says Sullivan, “Those guys used to get together in the van and put their hands all together and then Paul would say, ‘Where are we going?’ And the band would go, ‘To the middle!’ And he’d go, ‘Which middle?’ And they’d go, ‘The very middle!’ ” But it was all false modesty. The Replacements, it seemed, secretly believed in themselves and yet adopted a loser persona to insulate themselves against failure.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“We don’t have to convince the world that we’re suffering to convince them that we’re artists,” Hart said, jabbing at Black Flag’s angst-ridden style. “There are those that choose to take that course. There’s nothing wrong with being happy.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“MacKaye never told anyone to get off the stage. Sometimes this encouraged a rapid and irreversible descent into chaos, but usually it just meant a steady stream of stage divers and kids who just wanted a few seconds of attention while they did some silly dance for their buddies. Anarchy, it seemed, could work.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“I’m not religious about God,” Boon agreed, “I’m religious about Man.” “We believe in average guys,” said Watt. “What happens is, the system makes them all fuckheads.” “And I want to try to snap them out of that,” said Boon. “That’s why I write these songs, OK?”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“Boon and Watt had the bad—or perhaps good—fortune to come of age during one of rock’s most abject periods. “That Seventies stuff, the Journey, Boston, Foreigner stuff, it was lame,” Watt says. “If it weren’t for those type of bands we never would have had the nerve to be a band. But I guess you need bad things to make good things. It’s like with farming—if you want to grow a good crop, you need a lot of manure.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“I MUST CREATE A SYSTEM OR BE ENSLAVED BY ANOTHER MAN’S.” —WILLIAM BLAKE”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“The Internet allows DIY to range far beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“But maybe the next Seattle will be both nowhere and everywhere—maybe it will be on the Internet.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“For a while, there effectively was no underground. “I thought that was the end of what you might call punk rock,” says Peter Prescott, “because punk rock is unique and individual and is not for everybody. So almost by definition it can’t be popular.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“punk rock is unique and individual and is not for everybody. So almost by definition it can’t be popular.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“seemed that the DIY ethos that gave birth to the indie rock movement was threatening to become its undoing. Now everyone was doing it themselves—and a lot of it was mediocre. And like an oversize herd of deer, there was simply too much of it for all to thrive.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“The conversations changed after ’91,” says Guy Picciotto. “Before, people talked about ideas and music. And then after that, people talked about money and deals.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“I saw a lot of friends and acquaintances turn their bands which were previously something that they did out of passion into a shot at a small business,” Steve Albini told the venerable zine Punk Planet. “In the course of doing it, they ended up hating their bands in a way that I used to hate my job, because it became something they had to do: it was an obligation.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“that was the record that extended what so many people had felt and been a part of, and extended it to people who had never thought those thoughts before, or thought to be a part of something like that before.”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991

“The funny thing was the album was a fairly complete compendium of the music the industry had been largely ignoring for the previous ten years, synthesizing underground bands like Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr, the Pixies, Scratch Acid, the Melvins, and others. But it made that sound palatable to the mainstream with strong melodies and slick production”
― Michael Azerrad, Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991