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
“-Svøp nu, Freyja, vindtøiet om dig - vi skal ake, vi to til Jotunheimer!
-Meget mandgalen kan du mig kalde, om jeg aker med dig til Jotunheimer!”
― quote from The Poetic Edda
“To get at parts of the vine high off the ground, men frantic to get every possible drop of rubber would sometimes tear down the whole vine, slice it into sections, and squeeze the rubber out. Although the Congo state issued strict orders against killing the vines this way, it also applied the chicotte to men who didn't bring in enough rubber. The chicotte prevailed. One witness saw Africans who had to dig up roots in order to find enough rubber to meet their quotas.”
― Adam Hochschild, quote from King Leopold's Ghost
“...saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, “I’m not no queer,” and Jack jumped in with “Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody’s business but ours.”
― Annie Proulx, quote from Brokeback Mountain
“You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute.”
― Jay McInerney, quote from Bright Lights, Big City
“Even divorce, she thought, cannot erase all the bonds forged by years of marriage. Long after the papers are signed, decrees notarized, the ties still remain. And the most powerful tie of all is written in a child's flesh and blood.”
― Tess Gerritsen, quote from Body Double
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