Quotes from Michael Azerrad

So they decided to make their own culture

the urge to rock apparently outstripped the ability to do so.

Why are we in a band again?' We just were driven to do it for some reason, I don't know why. Just because we had nothing better to do.

The most punk rock thing about J's stuff was how much he mixed all his influences

they weren't kids anymore—they were pushing thirty; even more important, Lunsford had become a proud papa in 1990. "I had to say, 'What are my primary commitments?' " he says. "Being in a seriously touring rock & roll band is difficult to do as a parent.

It certainly made for music that relied less on melody and conventional song structure and more on mood and texture.

plain and simple fact was there were far more hippies in the Sixties than there were punks in the Seventies and Eighties. "That's the reason this revolution took so long to complete a cycle that should have been done in three years

No one could explain why a punk would ever follow any mainstream rule about how many songs you could put on a single.

The funny thing was the album was a fairly complete compendium of the music the industry had been largely ignoring for the previous ten years, synthesizing underground bands like Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr, the Pixies, Scratch Acid, the Melvins, and others. But it made that sound palatable to the mainstream with strong melodies and slick production

When I was a kid, I hated the mask of adulthood. And I was threatened by it.

that was the record that extended what so many people had felt and been a part of, and extended it to people who had never thought those thoughts before, or thought to be a part of something like that before.

I guess what I felt like was it wasn't my domain. I didn't know enough about politics to really sing about them. And I didn't know enough about the world to really sing about it. But I knew enough about my world to sing about it.

I saw a lot of friends and acquaintances turn their bands which were previously something that they did out of passion into a shot at a small business," Steve Albini told the venerable zine Punk Planet. "In the course of doing it, they ended up hating their bands in a way that I used to hate my job, because it became something they had to do: it was an obligation.

The whole point is if you deal with yourself and people you can exert influence upon," said Preslar, "then maybe you can put those people in a mentality that will be beneficial to everybody else later on.

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.

Literally every one of MacKaye's lyrics was addressed to some unidentified second person.

Like the music itself, the lyrics were very concise and unambiguous

That's where I started to discover that I had an ego," says Barlow. "I just became so involved with writing my own songs and really getting into my own sound of things. Just getting totally self-involved. It was pretty great.

That's where I started to discover that I had an ego," says Barlow. "I just became so involved with writing my own songs and really getting into my own sound of things. Just getting totally self-involved. It was pretty great. So when I played for Dinosaur, I was able to play for Dinosaur—do my thing and be quiet.

The conversations changed after '91," says Guy Picciotto. "Before, people talked about ideas and music. And then after that, people talked about money and deals.

Beat Happening know that the deep moments in our lives don't extract profundities from us; rather, it is clichés that are the endless, involuntary spew of the lover's discourse.

seemed that the DIY ethos that gave birth to the indie rock movement was threatening to become its undoing. Now everyone was doing it themselves—and a lot of it was mediocre. And like an oversize herd of deer, there was simply too much of it for all to thrive.

Renouncing sex, drugs, and drink was renouncing the unattainable rock & roll myth, making music relevant for real people—you couldn't pursue the rock & roll lifestyle and then get up in the morning and go to school or work.

Everybody likes the idea that there's this burgeoning, happening scene somewhere in the world.