Walter Becker Quotes

I never wrote music for the mainstream.

There are always young bands playing in their garages. A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.

You gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.

A lot of punk rock is not going to be in the mainstream. It's below the radar. The beauty of it is that you're not supposed to always know. It's subterranean.

So, we just kind of created our own thing and that's part of the beauty of Athens: is that it's so off the map and there's no way you could ever be the East Village or an L.A. scene or a San Francisco scene, that it just became its own thing.

I'm not so interested in being indie just for the sake of being indie.

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

I never identified with 'indie,' I don't like that word.

All the serious bands, all the punks, came from Bristol.

My music isn't mainstream music.

When I came up in a band - not just in a band, but a kind of underground DIY community - there was such a clear cut distinction between what pop was and what not pop was in very simplistic terms.

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

We're not really an underground band anymore, and we're not a mainstream band, either.

When we first started, we were a band from Athens and that was so off the map.

The whole slacker generation totally didn't apply to us musically.

As a DJ, it's my job to break new music. And instead of it just being the stuff that's coming from the major labels or the big pop records, I've always gravitated to something that's just different, you know?

I'm definitely a cult artist.

I'm not making music for people who like Disney shows. I make music for people who like music.

This music isn't Top 40, we really stand out from anyone.

The alternative scene, for a couple years now, has been taken seriously and that's a cool thing. I don't think it's exploded or anything, but I think it's pretty cool that it still exists, it's still affecting people.

I'm really into the indie-music scene and listen to a lot of De La Soul.

There's a whole apparatus for indie bands now, but back in the eighties it was just getting built. The early people really took it on the chin.

Mixtapes have always been a guerrilla-style means of moving music.

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.

Definitely, when you get into something where bands are playing for 30,000 people, it's not like the post-punk, U.S. independent scene.