Quotes from Michael Azerrad

Dukowski replied. "The easy solution isn't a solution, it's the fucking problem. It's too easy to have someone tell you what to do. It is harder to make your own decision. We put a certain amount of trust into the people that come to see us.

We do want to provide a physical and emotional release, but we also want to create an atmosphere where people are encouraged to think for themselves rather than accept what they've been told.

this world will not survive.

MacKaye never varied his equipment: a Gibson SG guitar and a Marshall amplifier. "Even though I know that there's a lot of options, I'm not interested in options," he says. "I'm interested in how far I can take this simple equation, which is an amp, a cord, and a guitar, and how much I can do with it.

Punk was not something to grow out of; it was something to grow with—it was a valid, sustainable way to live one's life. "That's when I started to focus on the idea of what we were doing as being real, of being a working model of a real community, an alternative community that could continue to exist outside of the mainstream—and legitimately, and self-supporting," says MacKaye.

His words didn't take stands, just described feelings that a lot of his audience felt, too. There were no strident political exhortations, no hipper-than-thou posturing.

We never had a manager. We never had a booking agent. We never had a lawyer. We booked our own tours, paid our own bills, made our own mistakes and never had anybody shield us from either the truth or the consequences.

We'd pull into a town," Haynes said, "and we didn't know where the clubs were. We'd literally pull over somebody and say, 'Hey, where do the queers hang out? Where's the college area?

People in concert crowds were not used to being noticed and singled out by a band—it was as if the television set had started talking back to them.

Leary and Haynes published a fanzine called Strange V.D., which featured the most horrendous medical photographs they could find accompained by captions describing fictitious diseases like "taco leg" and "pine cone butt.

says Ginn. "I never considered it rough. I considered it not having money, but I always think, if you're asleep on a floor, how can you tell the difference anyway—you're asleep.

I love staying with people," says MacKaye. "I love doing the driving. I love having to load equipment. The experiences are things that a lot of people never have.

People realized there was a way to do it in a very underground, low-key way that still counted and was still important," says Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo. "People got this idea that ultimately what mattered was the quality of what you were doing and how much importance you gave to it, regardless of how widespread it became or how many records it sold.

In their music the Minutemen told stories, postulated theories, held debates, aired grievances, and celebrated victories—and did it in a direct, intimate way that flattered the intelligence as well as the soul.

Singing is an inclusive thing. It gives somebody something to do at a concert—they feel like they're a part of it…. When I see people singing, it makes me feel like I'm getting something back.

We don't have to convince the world that we're suffering to convince them that we're artists," Hart said, jabbing at Black Flag's angst-ridden style. "There are those that choose to take that course. There's nothing wrong with being happy.

What we were doing wasn't about being really good musicians," Lewis says. "It always seemed to me it was about making a song. We're just making a song.

Rock in general is about that emotional release

This is what I am trying to do across the board," says MacKaye. "If you're going to see me play music, that's the way it will manifest. If you came over to my house, you'd see the way I live. If I make you dinner, you'll see the food I eat.

It's just that when you're playing in standard tuning all the time," Moore explained, "you're sounding pretty… standard.

Picciotto recalled when he was a teenager writing to obscure English punk bands like Rudimentary Peni, Dead Wretched, and Blitz. "Those fuckers wrote us back, and it blew my mind," recalls Picciotto. "It was so cool to feel that connection. I've always kept that in mind. If someone writes you, you send them a letter back. It's just a cool thing to do.

We write songs rather than riffs with statements." "That was maybe the beginning of thinking, 'Aw, I don't know if we fit into this,' " says Mars. "So let's have a hootenanny here, let's settle down and have a hoedown and loosen it up and have some fun.

A lot of the success of indie bands was based on this kind of macho revolutionary stance or macho alcoholic stance or whatever. And we didn't have that kind of presentation.

we don't write songs, we write rivers