DAVE PIRNER

Music is not a contest, it's not a competition, so giving out trophies seems a little bit like the sporting world I left behind when I was a kid.

I was just a punk-rock kid who never played acoustic guitar.

Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do - and this is a romantic concept on my part - is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments that are out there.

Once you start trying to sell creativity, you're always going to run into the problem that the people selling it aren't as creative as the people making it, and the people making it don't know how to talk business with the people trying to sell it.

I see my life flashing before me when I see people in the audience singing along to something I wrote in the '80s, and they're maybe standing next to someone who knows the more recent stuff.

It surprises me that more people don't take a look in the mirror a little more often and assess their own relationships.

As funny as it sounds, the best thing I got out of making a solo record was to realize how much I love being in a band.

I'm a severe graphic novels junkie. People ask me about it, and I say I like the graphic novels. Comic books are for kids, and graphic novels are for adults. But you can't really separate the two.

I don't know... it's just too much fun to wonder about what life would be without gravity. I just started thinking about outer space more as an adult than I probably ever did as a kid. That was also inspiring, the concept of being stuck to the earth.

I'm not 17 anymore. I still have some of the same sort of anger, but I have a sense of humor about it... a sense of being constructive with that anger.

I'm a severe graphic novels junkie. People ask me about it, and I say I like the graphic novels. Comic books are for kids, and graphic novels are for adults. But you can't really separate the two.

As funny as it sounds, the best thing I got out of making a solo record was to realize how much I love being in a band.

I see my life flashing before me when I see people in the audience singing along to something I wrote in the '80s, and they're maybe standing next to someone who knows the more recent stuff.

It surprises me that more people don't take a look in the mirror a little more often and assess their own relationships.

Music is not a contest, it's not a competition, so giving out trophies seems a little bit like the sporting world I left behind when I was a kid.

I was just a punk-rock kid who never played acoustic guitar.

I don't know... it's just too much fun to wonder about what life would be without gravity. I just started thinking about outer space more as an adult than I probably ever did as a kid. That was also inspiring, the concept of being stuck to the earth.

I'm not 17 anymore. I still have some of the same sort of anger, but I have a sense of humor about it... a sense of being constructive with that anger.

Here in New Orleans, what a lot of the musical families do - and this is a romantic concept on my part - is they teach their kids to tap dance first. Then after tap dance, you learn piano, and after piano, you get to pick between all the instruments that are out there.

Once you start trying to sell creativity, you're always going to run into the problem that the people selling it aren't as creative as the people making it, and the people making it don't know how to talk business with the people trying to sell it.