Terry Gross Quotes

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

Dropkick Murphys get me going, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana... plus, all the regular hip-hop stuff.

Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock.

For all its reverb and defiant noise, the sound of Black Tambourine barely reached past the borders of Washington, D.C., in the early '90s.

Back in the day, I was definitely a child of alternative radio.

I got into Nirvana, and it was my sort of awakening into the idea that music could be like rough and crazy and local. And so I started to realize that there were bands playing in my town, Anacortes.

If you go back and listen to the album 'Name' was on, there were a lot of garage songs on it.

Punk helped musical fringes get attention. Stuff like Nirvana could never have happened without it.

I'm into indie music. I think indie is going to bring back the spirit in music. There was a time when it was all about accommodating the music business, the music was getting tasteless, but the spirit is back.

Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that.

You had bands like D.O.A., or Black Flag, and a whole network opened up to trailblazer a counter culture movement. I'm more interested in the less sensational type of stories.

There was a thing during those times in the '80s where it was like Sex Pistols then Nirvana and nothing in between.

We were perceived as a post-grunge band.

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.

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean, traditionally.

Doolittle was a major influence on the Seattle grunge scene, which emerged in the early 1990s.

You don't hear it on the radio. There's something about the voices in Sleater-Kinney that's a little too challenging to ever be on the inside.

I'm always into rock n' roll and indie rock.

I like alternative music, so I like to hear new bands.

With Sleater-Kinney, we have a lot of earnest fans, and we were an earnest band.

One overlooked great 1980s rock n' roll band, maybe punk rock - they were on SST Records, same label as Black Flag - is this band called the Leaving Trains.

It's not like I set out to be 'the indie guy.'

All the music I listened to in high school that I loved and that moved me wasn't the same music other kids were listening to in school. I got into punk rock and new wave, then dub and hip-hop.

We were fans of Green Day and Nirvana or whatever, but the bands we really loved were Chicago bands that didn't really sound anything like Alkaline Trio.

I enjoy independent music, even more than Bollywood.