Motivation has always been a fascinating factor when considering a touring artist, especially when the years stack up. What keeps one out there year after year?
— Henry Rollins
The history of apartheid-era South Africa is incredibly sad and at times infuriatingly incomprehensible.
One person's roar is another's whine, just as one person's music is another's unendurable noise.
In my bright, utopian future world, they will hand out college educations like cups of water at the end of the L.A. Marathon.
In blues music, there's a lot of borrowing, so it's often difficult to identify the originator of a song.
The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short.
August in sub-Saharan Los Angeles is one of the great and awful tests of one's endurance, sanity and stamina.
Dinosaur Jr. in their live capacity are a band that put me in a state of such overwhelming rock that it often takes quite a while to come down.
The number of people who are actual supporters of Mr. Romney could very well be less than the Donner Party, whose members they sadly resemble in many ways.
Being unique is never easy, and often, by the time culture catches up with you, there are only a few people who notice.
Citizens United didn't work. Hey, Koch brothers, Karl Rove, Shellgame Adelson: Democracy trumps money sometimes.
We humans are hard to deal with. We are a loud, complex and demanding bunch. Often, we are best dealt with from a safe distance and for only brief periods of time. This could be why a lot of marriages fail.
Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.
Some people see Black Friday as a much-needed break for their wallet. I see it as retail outlets showing the customers the full weight of their contempt. The frenzy to buy cheap crap from China, the human downgrade of people fighting with each other over items they can probably live without, to me, is an insult.
Imagine a 15-year-old kid saying, 'I have two moms - it's cool.' I don't fear that at all.
I consider any gun that can chamber a round and send a projectile down its barrel at a high rate of speed into my body - causing me injury or death - to be an assault weapon.
When you hear about what someone else is going through, and you are unable to distance yourself from it or in any way muzzle your empathy and are inspired to actually do something, these are moments to learn from.
As performers grow older, I reckon there are two ways they can go. They can either be up there, playing more deeply from their guts than ever, or they can be phoning it in so crassly that it leaves a lump in your throat as you leave the venue at the end of the show.
Youths write me and tell me that their band will go nowhere because of all the bad bands in the world. I tell them there has always been awful music and that no great band ever wasted any time complaining, they just got it done. Their ropey ranting is just a way to get out of the hard work of making music that will do some lasting damage.
I think it's fantastic when the young enrage their elders. I really do believe that if it's too loud, you are indeed too old, and that if it has been standing for too long, it needs a thorough inspection.
When you're kept out of the adult world, it's a blessing in disguise.
America is a country born from semi-mythologized blood, glory and acts of selfless patriotic sacrifice.
The Wacken festival started more than 20 years ago with just a few hundred people in attendance. Tickets now sell out before the lineup is announced.
Too bad that Paul Ryan confessed to being a fan of Rage Against The Machine. By doing so, he not only begged for a bucketing by many of their fans but actually got one from the band's guitar player, Tom Morello.
I wonder what it's like to be from a state that is spread across a few islands way out in the Pacific Ocean, only added to the United States in 1959. Not only that but to be the birthplace of America's first black president? Pretty cool, I bet.
At times, I feel America is something that I can actually put my arms around, more than a land mass and a Constitution, something far more containable and understandable. I don't exactly know what it is, but at these times I feel completely woven into it.
One of the most prevalent and undermentioned genres of music is what is known as noise. You can find it all over the world happening in basements, small venues and even some festivals. Often blown off or belittled by critics, the form for the most part goes unheard and unnoticed.
Enough Americans saw fit to give president Obama a second term. I don't think there will be many people keeping their Romney/Ryan bumper stickers on their cars.
What does New York sound like? For me, the Charlie Parker at the Royal Roost recordings on the Savoy label are the total embodiment of the New York music experience.
Sometimes when you meet a musician you are a fan of, and he or she isn't the friendliest person, you walk away from the experience wondering if you will ever be able to listen to their music again.
Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.
Kids need parents who love and support them unconditionally, full stop.
One of the most insane environments I have ever spent time in is a gun range. There we are, all in a line, armed to the teeth, firing away.
People like Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and M. L. K. are larger than life to me. I find myself staring at photographs of Lincoln almost in disbelief that he was a man who walked the earth and not merely some fiction writer's creation.
My first introduction to African music was by my mother, who bought the 'Pata Pata' album by the great Miriam Makeba when it came out. Now that is an album. What a voice.
Death metal uses a lot of white face paint and black hair dye to make its point. I quite enjoy this genre for its intensity, extremism and underlying irony: You have to be alive to play it and listen to it.
Smart people make good choices. They dig science and say 'no' to the invasion of sovereign nations for the pleasure of corporations.
Jazz music is as American as it gets, and so is the U.S. Postal Service. A Miles Davis stamp is a perfect marriage of two great American institutions.
Ramones music has a Pavlovian effect on me - the song starts, and the world blurs around the sound.
As a young person growing up in Washington, D.C., summers were hot, humid and relentless. My friends and I grew more restless and adventurous with every passing year.
Between the Dinosaur Jr. albums and his recent solo albums, 'Several Shades of Why' and 'Heavy Blanket,' J Mascis is emerging as one of the last men from all that '80s indie madness, still writing songs that you want to listen to over and over.
The more I learn about Mr. Romney, the less there is to admire.
If some band sucks, you're going to have to find out about it for yourself, because I don't have the interest in issuing warnings.
Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now - not remotely.
Life is weird, great and dangerous.
When I am in Africa, I always have the feeling that it's where everything started. When I am in New York, I know it is where everything ended up.
I always found the Chicago audience to be a smart, fast-moving, violent and cheerful lot, and it's always good to be back.
If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establishing shot, the 13th the crowd pleaser and the 14th the ultimate hero scene.
Marriage equality is a term so ridiculous on its face that when you hear it mentioned, you would think you were in Riyadh. Years from now, perhaps we can lose the equality part, the same-sex part and call it what it is - marriage.
More guns equaling more safety is a slippery slope, and what makes it so is human blood.
