Anthony Fantano Quotes

The key thing about LCD Soundsystem is that people always wanted this band to exist. For years, it was glaringly obvious that a band like this should exist, and people were impatiently waiting for them to show up.

When Talking Heads started, we called ourselves Thinking Man's Dance Music.

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.

I grew up listening to a lot of Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Devo, all that stuff.

I really loved the hardcore alternative vibe Prince had on 'Dirty Mind.'

Leading into 'The Hurting,' what changed our view of music was Gary Numan.

I guess you could call my music progressive, pop, rock.

I mean, you could have said Elvis Presley was new wave when it happened. I heard Willy DeVille and Tom Petty and to me they were new wave really because they were new.

When I was little, people like Talking Heads were on the radio. There was something geeky yet groundbreaking about them.

I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.

It's very schizophrenic because I like a lot of very straight pop, like Small Faces, Stones, Kinks; and on the other hand, I like a lot of avant garde things.

Absolute 80's is three hours of mainstream 80's music. I also do New Wave Nation that is more cutting edge. It is more punk stuff from the 70's to the 90's.

I started dating JD Samson from Le Tigre, and suddenly I was listening to more up-tempo music and old dance music, like ESG and Gang of Four, and I thought, 'Wow. This is fun.'

I'm really kind of a little bit romantic for the lost era. There's a lot of us that are - kind like James Murphy, same thing - we feel like it's this magic era that happened before us. And it wasn't even necessarily disco.

You know the 80s music is something that no one wants to admit liking, but once then start playing everyone is into it.

Bands such as LiLiPUT and Essential Logic were just as unorthodox as Gang of Four or Wire, even taking their sounds a step further with shrieking vocals and saxophone.

On 'Kaputt,' singer-songwriter Dan Bejar reevaluates his band's sound and drifts away from the David Bowie comparisons that have plagued even his best albums.

When I was working with David Cassidy at the Rio, I made an album of updated versions of some 1970s disco tunes. I had a blast.

I'm a huge stadium rock fan, but I'm also a fan of everything from Massive Attack to Peter Gabriel, U2, the Police, Radiohead, and Coldplay.

Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great.

I'm a New Wave baby, so I got very stimulated by foreign film.

For me, growing up in New York, it started with Elvis Costello and the Clash and then got into louder things like Bad Brains and Stimulators, because those were, like, the local bands. Then I started getting into bands from England like the Slits. I remember seeing Gang of Four at Irving Plaza; that was a really big show for me.

Prince turned experimental music into pop music. 'When Doves Cry,' the whole 'Purple Rain' soundtrack - he was inspired by the Cocteau Twins and new wave pop and brought it into R&B when he first started, and then it became this cool, next-level, kind of hard-to-digest music. Which is what I felt 'House of Balloons' was.

Holy Joy were a cult '80s band led by the wonderful songwriting genius that is Johny Brown.

I loved 'Solid Gold!'