Rob Sheffield Quotes

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

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

Despite being an ocean apart, New York's ESG and France's Lizzy Mercier Descloux were shooting for roughly the same idea: disco beats with a rough and energetic presentation.

Like, Mission Of Burma to me always sounded almost like they were part of the British Arty New Wave. I kind of like that. I like not being able to tell the difference.

Absolute 80's is three hours of mainstream 80's music. I also do New Wave Nation that is more cutting edge. It is more punk stuff from the 70's to the 90's.

I grew up listening to a lot of Kraftwerk, Gary Numan, Devo, all that stuff.

I started dating JD Samson from Le Tigre, and suddenly I was listening to more up-tempo music and old dance music, like ESG and Gang of Four, and I thought, 'Wow. This is fun.'

I really loved the hardcore alternative vibe Prince had on 'Dirty Mind.'

Leading into 'The Hurting,' what changed our view of music was Gary Numan.

I mean, you could have said Elvis Presley was new wave when it happened. I heard Willy DeVille and Tom Petty and to me they were new wave really because they were new.

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.

I'm a huge fan of Eighties music.

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.

My favorite music is '80s music which drives people around me crazy. I really love it.

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.

I'm a huge stadium rock fan, but I'm also a fan of everything from Massive Attack to Peter Gabriel, U2, the Police, Radiohead, and Coldplay.

Electroclash is good because it's stayed underground.

The first music I ever got into was the '80s alternative bands that my brother listened to, like The Cure and The Smiths and R.E.M. and Fugazi. I can remember specifically saying The Cure was my favorite band back in second grade.

I'm really kind of a little bit romantic for the lost era. There's a lot of us that are - kind like James Murphy, same thing - we feel like it's this magic era that happened before us. And it wasn't even necessarily disco.

New Order has always been a hybrid band. We always mixed guitar, bass, drums with electronic.

I'm a fan of leaving people hungry; I don't like leaving people satisfied.

I really like Cold Cave.

I loved the whole New Romantic, New Wave thing... New Order, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Blancmange, Yazoo.

Friendly Fires were dull, and I wouldn't really sit down and listen to Hot Chip.