Stephen Malkmus Quotes

Baltimore, I love that city.

I love Baltimore. It is a city with a giant heart and has remained one of my favorite places to keep returning to on tour. It is unique and beautiful, and you can't mistake it for anywhere else in the world - Baltimore is one hundred percent Baltimore.

I love Baltimore.

Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience.

Baltimore is a great place.

I'm from Baltimore.

Baltimore is wonderful. Super-weird city.

My time in Baltimore was awesome, every bit of it.

I grew up in Baltimore.

Bath was hardly known for its rock'n roll. We weren't part of the London scene or the New Romantics or any of that.

When Blur first started and we were playing Manchester the Hacienda was the place to go. That was where a lot of exciting stuff was happening and London was pretty dead.

Devo and The Cramps didn't get big until they went to New York City. Chrissie Hynde didn't get big until she moved to London. When I was growing up, there wasn't even a place to play - just one little bar. If we wanted to have a gig, then we had to drive 45 minutes up to Cleveland.

There's so much music in Austin, and it's all so different.

I grew up in Baltimore. And yes, I am a big sports fan, especially when it comes to my local teams.

There I met Gordon Jackson and Dave Meredith who were playing in local bands.

I can't wait to start something up myself that is actually about giving unsigned bands the exposure they deserve, especially when they travel so far to play the smallest gig they've ever played in their lives.

People say 'The Wire's bleak, y'know, but I see it as a love letter to Baltimore, and it's one written in a very strange and complex way.

I kinda learned to sing singing to Echo and the Bunnymen songs and Smiths songs: Morrissey would be a big favorite.

We're from Athens, Alabama. That's my town. People think it's Muscle Shoals, but they have no idea. It's a quiet, sleepy little town, about 45 minutes from Muscle Shoals. It's really hard to be a band in Athens; there are no venues.

No, I'm sure that there's a lot of L.A. bands out there.

There's a whole apparatus for indie bands now, but back in the eighties it was just getting built. The early people really took it on the chin.

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.

It's nice to see bands you could see at a bar finally get a chance.

Signing to a major, there weren't many bands from our sphere that were doing it. I mean, obviously R.E.M. had done it, and Husker Du and the Replacements had done it, and maybe Soul Asylum, but that was probably about it. Those four bands were pretty much the only ones from that milieu that had signed to a major.

Washington D.C. and the entire DMV area are very dope places because they're such musically-inclined areas.