Matty Mullins Quotes

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

Pup, who's like the most amazing, they're keeping rock 'n' roll and punk alive.

I still love it. I love lots of other music, too, and always have, but punk's the soundtrack of my youth. I think you never escape the music you're listening to and seeing when you're seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old.

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.

A lot of people get into alternative music as part of their identity. It's something that isn't the mainstream, that their brothers and sisters don't know about, and that their parents don't like. It's something they can have as their own.

PUP introduced me to so much more amazing music. They really shaped my sound.

Back in Kuwait, I had started listening to a lot of English language music: western music, I would say - Kate Bush and Radiohead - and I loved Chet Baker, Etna James, a lot of singers and a lot of bands.

I got into James Blake quite early, like when I was early teen, and that was really important for me.

I really liked punk music and experimental music that my brother was taking me to go see in the city, when I was probably, like, 13 years old. I was seeing a lot of teenagers making 'weird' music, and I think that was probably a big part of the reason that I actually started to play myself.

It really wasn't until I realized that country music had a whole underworld of songwriters that I dug into it.

I used to be into Bjork and PJ Harvey, and they used to blow my mind. But there hasn't been a pop star blowing anybody's mind.

I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.

My style is part of the music I like, the bands I see, the people I surround myself with, the places I go to.

I remember the first time I received a cassette tape of a band called The Clash. I became an instant fan of the Clash and then bought their albums after that and went to their concerts and gave them my money... but I first got it for free.

The last time I really got into new music that wasn't heavy metal was probably like... TV on the Radio? I think that was it. That's the last time.

At first, I was only interested in music, but I spent so much time in the clubs and seeing fashions change. So naturally, I developed an interest in it.

There hasn't been anything real since grunge. That was the last movement led by music or an art form.

I like the way Billy Idol sings. Mommy turned me on to him.

I was first influenced by a friend in fifth grade when he brought a Walkman to school and was listening to 'Paradise City' by Guns 'N Roses, which he had concealed within his hoodie. He put the headphones over my ears and I was completely blown away by what I heard. I'll never forget that.

Record covers helped me discover a lot of music that I wasn't aware of.

And obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music.

I think the first CD I actually went into a store to pick out myself was a Good Charlotte album... I went through a tomboy punk phase in the fourth grade.

Minor Threat was an important band, believe me that it was important it in my life, but it belongs to an era that no longer exists. I'm not nostalgic. I think music today is much more important, because something can be done about it.

If you ask me, rockabilly has had a raw deal for far too long. People never shunned the blues or jazz the way they do rockabilly. But it's the original punk-rock, and it changed the way people looked at music for ever.

I listen to all kinds of music. I love underground, new music that's popping.