Stana Katic Quotes

I really want to do a book on the history of the no-wave music scene in New York, how it extended out and formed lots of other things. It was such a great visual culture.

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

I was a club kid. I was on the cover of 'New York' magazine and discovered like that.

For half a century, the Sunset Strip was the asphalt timeline of American popular music. My most distinct memory, from more years ago than I'll confess to, is waiting for a table at the Olde World, which occupied a wedge of territory at Sunset and Holloway Drive, where the daiquiris became more vicious the longer you sat in the sun.

Hip-hop's always reached out to kids. If you look at the last 10 big albums it might seem ironic. But when I look at the history of this music it's always had a lot of positivity.

The first time that I came to New York to work properly was the mid-'80s, but I was doing eight shows a week. You have no life. Going to a punk rock club - or whatever the music was at that time - would not have been on my agenda.

Because of the fashion, the young people don't have any access to the history of music, unless people like me revive it. There are very few people to revive it, because you can't earn any money doing it.

When I got old enough to go to night clubs to hear that music at the age of 15.

If you're trying to get to the underworld of Berlin, it's not suits and ties; it's rock and roll.

We got our first significant pieces of press in the 'New York Rocker' from early gigs at CBGB.

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.

Punk-rock records came out and you bought whatever you could find. But Devo didn't happen for another three years. Sex Pistols didn't tour the States until '78. At that time, for me, it was really about CBGB, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and Television.

CBGB represents a lot to New York City and to underground rock and to new wave and post-punk and whatever. But, you know, it's like tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or something.

I love the New York that was. The end for me was Studio 54. I don't go out at night anymore.

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

I think people look at dance music and see it as kind of a bad thing, and bad people hang out in nightclubs, but it never felt that way for me. Growing up in Chicago, music was the thing that saved me, that kept me on the straight and narrow.

My parents were worried about me, certainly when I became so deeply interested in music and people like the New York Dolls who, at the time, were very peculiar indeed.

Punk is not just the sound, the music. Punk is a lifestyle.

I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.

You're surrounded by electronic music in New York. I mean New York is one of the few places in North America where electronic music is the prevalent form.

Punk is not really a style of music. It was more like a state of mind.

I still have dreams about CBGB's. I still miss the place.

I met Tupac through Queen Latifah in New York at this party that we were at, at a place downtown called Big City Diner.

Where there is young people and vitality, you're going to find punk rock.

For us, punk rock and even hardcore music was something we did because we didn't fit in in high school. We had nowhere to go, so we went to shows.