Quotes from Michael Azerrad

Says Sullivan, "Those guys used to get together in the van and put their hands all together and then Paul would say, 'Where are we going?' And the band would go, 'To the middle!' And he'd go, 'Which middle?' And they'd go, 'The very middle!' " But it was all false modesty. The Replacements, it seemed, secretly believed in themselves and yet adopted a loser persona to insulate themselves against failure.

MacKaye never told anyone to get off the stage. Sometimes this encouraged a rapid and irreversible descent into chaos, but usually it just meant a steady stream of stage divers and kids who just wanted a few seconds of attention while they did some silly dance for their buddies. Anarchy, it seemed, could work.

Boon and Watt had the bad—or perhaps good—fortune to come of age during one of rock's most abject periods. "That Seventies stuff, the Journey, Boston, Foreigner stuff, it was lame," Watt says. "If it weren't for those type of bands we never would have had the nerve to be a band. But I guess you need bad things to make good things. It's like with farming—if you want to grow a good crop, you need a lot of manure.

I'm not religious about God," Boon agreed, "I'm religious about Man." "We believe in average guys," said Watt. "What happens is, the system makes them all fuckheads." "And I want to try to snap them out of that," said Boon. "That's why I write these songs, OK?

With their less-than-rudimentary musicianship, Beat Happening might have been making a conceptual point, but it was also the best they could manage.

Punk rock was an idea, not a musical style.

With their less-than-rudimentary musicianship, Beat Happening might have been making a conceptual point, but it was also the best they could manage. The way the music harked back to sounds from throughout the rock & roll timeline said much more about the inherent characteristics of rock music than it did about the breadth of the band's record collection

Melody meant almost nothing. Aggression, rhythm, and texture were all.

The loser," as TAD guitarist Kurt Danielson explained to the Rocket, "is the existential hero of the Nineties.

Melody meant almost nothing. Aggression, rhythm, and texture were all. The key was noise.

And because I don't like sports, and because I don't like disco dancing, and because I don't take drugs, and because I don't drink, and I don't beat my head into the floor, and I don't have a wife to beat, I have Big Black.

believe in music in that way—if you want something to happen, you write a song about it.

To me, it was just a matter of, if you want to do something, the only thing that's going to keep you from doing it is giving up," Leary says. "Because we were proof of that. If you just don't quit, you will succeed—that is the bottom line.

also think sometimes he'd say something just to piss somebody off, even if it wasn't exactly what he thought, just to fuck with somebody. And if that person wasn't bright enough to catch on that they were just being fucked with, then they might go away thinking that yeah, he is a racist or he is a homophobe.

There can be no light without generating heat," adds Durango. "And confrontation generates heat and light.

he knew in his heart he was not a prejudiced person. "So once that's given, once you know what you think, there's no reason to be ginger about what you say," he said. "A lot of people, they're very careful not to say things that might offend certain people or do anything that might be misinterpreted. But what they don't realize is that the point of all this is to change the way you live your life, not the way you speak.

the old idea that a rock band can be a vital, inspiring part of a community of people looking to improve society.

He wasn't afraid of being laughed at—but he wasn't being comical

constant friction between what you see, and what you want to achieve and things that you know are right. That rub is what creates the pain and the emotion and then there's the hope that maybe you can overcome it, make it happen. It's the same politically and personally—to me it's all one issue because the same problems keep coming up over and over again—lack of commitment, lack of caring.