There's no single movement out there. It's not like in the '60s, when Revolver came out and that's just it for the next year.
When I talk about music in Memphis, it's a place you can go if you are a beginning artist or anywhere in your career, and you can incubate.
Today, you're either very big or you're playing stadiums or you're not playing anymore. You're either popular where everybody will go to a 20,000 seat arena to see you or they won't go to see you at all.
And I wound up in New Orleans for all those years and it was a great place, really a catalyst creatively.
I actually think that Republican administrations are better for music. The Reagan era was such a great era for punk and indie rock.
I think Baltimore is a wonderful artistic community with a lot of great musicians. It's kind of like a little secret for musicians.
I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.
I met Mos Def around that time but I didn't hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18.
When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.
I grew up in Southern California, so there is just a part of me that is a Hollywood rocker.
What's weird is the Hot Boys and the whole New Orleans Cash Money thing had a really big impact on the Bay when that was popping off. I don't all the way understand it. I mean, I know that they were big everywhere and had a lot of commercial success in the mid to late '90s, but they were really, really felt in the Bay Area.
In the Troubadour days, it was all those songwriters that I hung around with all the time, so I could get songs and find out what was going on. So we all knew each other, and we just carried each other's word around.
Rock n' roll doesn't change. All the idiocies and pretension continue.
It really does help everyone when there are some big bands leading the charge.
Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.
When I heard Monk in person in 1955, he was playing with a quartet in a small club. The place was full of musicians, but there was no public at all.
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.
I'd say that 98 percent of the bands we've played with through the years have either broken up or are stuck in some kind of '80s revival now.
I remember when I was coming up, the music stores where you could get guitar strings was where I got my records from. Now the place where you get your records from is where you can get your DJ mats and your mixers.
I've always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the '80s it was a surprise to me.
Blues artists now try and stay in a box. Back in the day at all the clubs you would see James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Isley Brothers, Little Richard and Etta James all play the same venues. It was a mix of funk, soul, blues and rock 'n' roll.
To a degree, rock fans like to live vicariously and they like that, music fans in general, but when indie music sort of came into prominence in the early '90s, a lot of it was TV-driven, too, where if you saw the first Nirvana video, you're looking at three guys that look like people you go to school with.
I actually don't go to shows anymore. Rock concerts have lost their appeal for me.
Enuff Z'nuff is one of the most underrated bands in the world!
It was all about music, about getting your friends to come and see you play. I don't see that same intimacy happening very much today.
