Derf Quotes

When I was 16, I used to hang out at the Nambucca pub in North London and see The Libertines play live.

Our album 'Show No Mercy' came out in late '83, and we did three or four shows in San Francisco after the release. That was our first experience with stage-divers, crowd-surfing, people walking on people across an entire crowd.

We think of the Warped Tour as kind of like everyone's big birthday party.

If I were to give advice to someone that just started a band and how to get someone's attention, you've gotta have a central hub. For us, it was Columbus, Ohio.

I came to New York for the first time with Peter Buck at age 19. We spent a week living out of a van on the street in front of a club in the West 60s called Hurrah. It's where Pylon played. I saw Klaus Nomi play there. And Michael Gira's band before he did Swans-they all wore cowboy boots and were so cool and had great hair. I was so jealous.

I saw the Ramones, early on at a country-rock palace in Denver. They were opening for some record-company band, so the local music establishment, and I emphasize the word "establishment," was there in force, and the handful of us who knew the Ramones were up in front. And half the fun was, you know, not only were the Ramones the most powerful band I had ever seen at that point, but they made it look so simple - that anyone could do it, hell, even I could do it. This is what I should be doing.

The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.

My first job in NYC was playing a gig in the early nineties at CBGBs.

Performing is a profound experience, at least for me. It's not as if I sit down and play 'Fire and Rain' by myself, just to hear it again. But to offer it up... the energy that it somehow summons live takes me right back, and I do get a reconnection to the emotions.

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 stage is the best experience in the world. It's a great compliment to be able to share the music, because people can hear my album but they don't get to make the connection in the same way as when it's one-to-one.

Trying to get my music performed live by bar bands was a self defeating experience. It really just distracted me from what I should've been doing all along, writing and recording.

I like to go hear jazz late-night up in Harlem.

There wasn't a lot of live music that you could hear where I came from, which was a small town in southeast Missouri.

I am lucky to live in Austin, so I can enjoy the live music.

I love going to concerts, so that whole environment is something that intrigues me anyway.

It's easy listening to a record, but a live performance is so personal and real.

I have no experience performing that music live in front of an audience. So that remains to be seen. I'm very excited to see what that's going to be like.

In the '80s, we played the Roxy and the Whiskey with our bands.

Music was such an important part of everyone's life in the '60s and '70s, but everywhere you played, the music was dreadful.

I'm the first to admit that we were totally dependent on a particular place and time... for us, seeing Minor Threat at the CBGB hardcore matinee was just as necessary a force in our lives as the Treacherous Three at Club Negril or the Funky Four + One More at the Rock Lounge.

There are lots of Joy Division songs that are so powerful when played live, some of which we did either never play or played very rarely.

When I play a gig and look out at the audience, you're literally looking at a sea of Joy Division T-shirts.

Most people have just heard Joy Division on record. And Joy Division on record was completely different than it was live.

Go out and support your local rock n' roll band.