Punk Rock

Punk Rock is about freedom, it’s not about your chart position, and I’ll sing any fucking song I want.

– Patti Smith (The Defiant Ones, Ep1)

Band Vs Music

… I realized that the mistake was that I thought I wanted to be in a band. What I should have been thinking about was wanting to play music.

– Ian MacKaye

All of it

The thing is, there is room for all of it. There’s room for trashy pop music, there’s room for electronics. I mean, when people say: “I don’t like this this kind of music, I don’t like that kind of music”. Well fine. You don’t have to listen to it, but there’s still no reason why it shouldn’t exist. There’s room for all of it.

– Michael Beinhorn – The Significance of Pre-Production. PLaP.

Heavier! Faster! Noisier!

Punk rock and metal is a slippery slope … You start with something like the Ramones and go, Wow, now I want something faster! And then you get to DRI and it’s, Wow, I want something noisier! And then you get to Voivod and it’s, I want something crazier! And pretty soon you wind up listening to white noise and thinking it’s the greatest thing ever!

– Dave Grohl; Mojo Interview

Sellout

I’ve done football commercials; I’ve done everything; commercial and noncommercial: My attitude has been that they’re both the same. Why is it better to get a check every week from a university than to get royalties? Of course I’m a sellout. What else would I be?

– Phil Glass; New York Times.

Minimal

… build things to suit your taste. There’s endless options out there; start with minimal pieces of gear and learn it. Give yourself time. If you start off in an endless search for newer pieces of gear, better pieces of gear, things to add, “this is cool”, you lose the focus you have when you’re working with a minimalistic setup. Once you learn that, and you work very hard to get variety in your work using a limited source of options, that’s when you really refine your skill.

– Kim Rosen – PLAP Interview, July 2019.