Rob Sheffield Quotes

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

Sonic Youth could never really get it together acoustically - quite frankly, it wasn't something we were really that interested in.

I've been into Sonic Youth since junior high school. I think I kind of have ADD, so it's good music for ADD because it just throws you in different directions all the time. I really like Kim Gordon's voice and Thurston Moore's voice, and I like the guitars going off on tangents.

If someone says 'grunge' or 'punk,' you know what the sound is, but if you say 'No Wave,' it's kind of mysterious. That was the most interesting part and should have been the most inspirational thing about it... here's this collective sonic insanity, and none of it sounds anything alike.

I was real into Devo, Pavement, Captain Beefheart, and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

That is one of the things about going on tour, that I get to work with some really talented people and it allows me to be able to listen to them as well - and just have fun on stage.

We were like psychedelic folk combined with Sonic Youth's noise.

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.

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.

Yeah, I really like that band Deerhunter a lot.

Obviously, Sonic Youth has been a huge part of my life for many, many years, and I love all those guys dearly.

Sonic Youth was not a singer-songwriter band. It was an electric collective. And, whatever else people's perceptions of Sonic Youth were, it was always about putting together a time-based composition - and that is exactly what songwriting is, in its classic form.

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

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.

I'm no Robert Christgau or Chuck Klosterman, but I would say that Landlady is like if Harry Nilsson was produced by Brian Eno. Or, if David Byrne fronted Wilco. Those are my two hoity-toity musical epigrams.

Sonic Youth is one of my favorite bands.

I just love seeing my audience live, and I also love to see my peers perform because it inspires me to be a better performer as well.

My sound is, at its core, a mix of things. Definitely an imperfect mix, but one that incorporates elements of the music I love - a bit of indie rock, super rhythmic rapping, and lots of synths.

'Blackheart' is purely falling into the electronic world and pushing the envelope.

I can rock along with the best of them.

Don't get me wrong - I'm still way into the metal, but I've been listening to different things like Radiohead, Portishead, Bjork, and Queens of the Stone Age.

I've always enjoyed playing. If all it meant were to just stand there and play my axe and sing, I could have gone on forever.

Tightly embracing guitar effects and tape loops, Mission of Burma made sound an important commodity in rock 'n' roll, and its members carried that tradition into their first album after a 19-year hiatus, 2004's 'ONoffON.'

I really like Cold Cave.

I also think something that makes the whole live performance fun for me is that I love my music.