Michael Azerrad · 522 pages
Rating: (11.4K votes)
“Rock'n'roll is a teenage sport, meant to be played by teenagers of all ages--they could be 15, 25 or 35. It all boils down to whether they've got the love in their hearts, that beautiful teenage spirit... -Calvin Johnson”
― Michael Azerrad, quote from Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991
“Los Angeles wasn’t a sun-splashed utopia anymore—it was an alienated, smog-choked sprawl rife with racial and class tensions, recession, and stifling boredom.”
― Michael Azerrad, quote from Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991
“Music can inspire people to wake up and say, ‘Somebody’s lying.’ This is the point I’d like to make with my music,” Watt told Rolling Stone in 1985. “Make you think about what’s expected of you, of your friends. What’s expected of you by your boss. Challenge those expectations. And your own expectations. Man, you should challenge your own ideas about the world every day.”
― Michael Azerrad, quote from Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991
“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.”
― Michael Azerrad, quote from Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991
“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?”
― Michael Azerrad, quote from Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991
Michael Azerrad
Born place: The United States
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“Now this isn't meant to make anyone feel like college is a waste of time, because for so many people it's not. But don't go because you feel like you have to. If your heart isn't in it, then why spend four years of your life stuck somewhere you don't want to be?”
― Shane Dawson, quote from It Gets Worse: A Collection of Essays
“General, may I take a nap? General, I need a papaya! General, my claws are tired! General, look, a butterfly! SOMEBODY IS GETTING STABBED IN THE FACE IF YOU DON’T SHUT UP.”
― Tui T. Sutherland, quote from The Dark Secret
“People in general know not what wickedness there is in this pretended word of God. Brought up in habits of superstition, they take it for granted that the Bible is true, and that it is good; they permit themselves not to doubt of it, and they carry the ideas they form of the benevolence of the Almighty to the book which they have been taught to believe was written by his authority. Good heavens! it is quite another thing, it is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy.”
― Thomas Paine, quote from The Age of Reason
“What had his life meant? All his success, all the tournaments he'd won...they were like dust and ashes. Meaningless. Without Gisela, his life was meaningless.”
― Melanie Dickerson, quote from The Captive Maiden
“Then she wondered, not for the first time, about the differences between wizards and witches. The main difference, she thought, was that wizards used books and staffs to create spells, big spells about big stuff, and they were men. While witches - always women - dealt with everyday stuff. Big stuff too, she reminded herself firmly. What could be bigger than births and deaths? but why shouldn't this boy want to be a witch? She had chosen to be a witch, so why couldn't he make the same choice? With a start, she realized it was her choice that counted here too. If she was going to be a sort of head witch, she should be able to decide this. She didn't have to ask any other witches. It could be her decision. Her responsibility. Perhaps a first step toward doing things differently?”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Shepherd's Crown
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