'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.
That's just the way the world's going - everything has to be so instantly commercial that it kills anything that's a little bit underground instantly.
I've always been ahead of the curve when it came to trying new stuff in the underground scene.
Girl they love me like I'm Prince, like the new kid with the crown. Bunch of underground kings, thought you knew how we get down.
Will punk rock ever die? Pal, if you have to ask it's dead to you.
When I was in high school, if my favorite band got too popular, I'd watch carefully.
A cult classic is one that has been fully embraced by an alternative audience, not the popular audience.
When I was growing up, I fetishised New York City. It was the land of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, it was where Leonard Cohen wrote 'Chelsea Hotel', it was CBGBs and all the punk rock clubs. Artists and musicians lived there, and it was cheap and dangerous.
I don't want to stay underground for just the cool people.
It is a different world, the underground. When you hit mainstream, you hit a saturation level and that turns some people off. When you are on more low-key stuff, it works to your advantage and it creates a buzz on the streets. At that point, the sky is the limit.
I started out playing in clubs. I always like existing under ground and over ground at the same time.
I'm trying to take drag back to its down-and-dirty roots where people get offended at first, and then they're like, 'Oh my God, this crazy queen.'
When I first used to tour, guys would come up and say, 'Where's the fight club in my area?' and I would say, 'There isn't one.' And they'd say, 'No, no, you can tell me, you can tell me.'
You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life.
When I started playing in bands, we had to be apologetic for what we did. We had to be apologetic because the mainstream was so bad.
The opportunity to re-imagine a favorite cult-classic from my high school years is an honor. Toxie is an underground icon. My favorite kind.
I remember performing on a punk stage with no mic in the middle of a mosh pit. My act was called "How to Be a Domestic Goddess."
Kerouac was the cowboy that inspired the whole Beat Generation, and highlighted and put the spotlight on all of these minds that didn't really know what they were doing at the time, but accomplished something much bigger than what they ever foresaw.
The thing about hip-hop is that it's from the underground, ideas from the underbelly, from people who have mostly been locked out, who have not been recognized.
I'm a geek who loves fashion. There's been a reinvention of the word geek. It means being passionate about anything that's under the radar or sort of frowned upon, like Comic-Con.
Even Andy Warhol had a copy of '666.'
I mean, maybe I'm alternative in that my stuff's not mainstream, doesn't want to be mainstream, could never be mainstream.
There is always the underground rapper people enjoy, and you want to see him come up. That's kind of how it is in wrestling.
I always liked the content of a Common but the commercial viability of a Lil Jon. And I would say, 'Why don't those worlds ever come together?' So for me, it was like, 'Let's do that.'
The big change was reggae and hip-hop, which came along after Split Enz had started. When Bob Marley first visited New Zealand, he lit a fuse that is still burning very brightly. The Maori people particularly honor reggae music in a very big way. So there is a strong reggae scene and a strong hip-hop scene, especially among Samoans. There's still plenty of quirky stuff around. No one expects to make much money here, so it definitely does encourage an underground sense.
