Roland Orzabal Quotes

Punk helped musical fringes get attention. Stuff like Nirvana could never have happened without it.

There are always young bands playing in their garages. A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.

I'm the mold that grunge was grown in.

You gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.

The whole slacker generation totally didn't apply to us musically.

I loved all that riot-grrl scene and Nation of Ulysses and Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear. I loved it. It was the moment sort of first growing up where bands had stopped looking like roadies.

I got into Nirvana, and it was my sort of awakening into the idea that music could be like rough and crazy and local. And so I started to realize that there were bands playing in my town, Anacortes.

When I came up in a band - not just in a band, but a kind of underground DIY community - there was such a clear cut distinction between what pop was and what not pop was in very simplistic terms.

Back in 1981, the chances of a punk-rock girl band from L.A. doing what we did was completely nil.

Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television.

The Butcherettes are led by a female singer, and they're sort of wild.

When I was in college in Philly, there was a lot of post-punks... hardcore... like, rock. Sixties, retro, proto-Strokes kind of bands.

Punk rock really came out of N.Y. as a philosophy before the groups were ever recorded. I had a kind-of intellectual interest in the idea of creating a new scene that could be a grassroots thing.

I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren't very political, at all.

I feel like I'm a rock artist. I don't feel like I'm a pop artist. And I'm alt rock. I'm indie rock. I'm punk rock. Because it comes from the pots and pans. It's a lot of me, but I've got multiple personalities.

A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.

I'm definitely a cult artist.

When I was a kid, I was into hardcore music. The scene in New York was tiny. Every person hanging out was in a band and played at the A7 Club. There was not much rehearsing or anything. Just doing.

The alternative scene, for a couple years now, has been taken seriously and that's a cool thing. I don't think it's exploded or anything, but I think it's pretty cool that it still exists, it's still affecting people.

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.

I think punk rock, especially for me, was a big middle finger to this whole talent thing.

Where there is young people and vitality, you're going to find punk rock.

I spent my teens in northern California listening to KALX, KUSF, and KFJC, finding people that changed my life.

We've been allowed to operate unmolested on the fringes of the music scene, really. That's where we enjoy it most.

In the high-stakes and elitist world of music collecting and fandom, we operate from an ab ovo perspective. The seed, the first incarnation - that is the most pure, the most lauded. Minutemen trumps Firehose, Throwing Muses beats Belly, Joy Division over New Order, Operation Ivy ruled Rancid, Undertones instead of That Petrol Emotion.