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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“Their wagon crawled along over gently rolling humps and swells, generally following the dusty valley floor between and around a maze of overlapping ridges. Thin pine and oak forests covered the lower slopes but never quite reached the red-rock ridgetops. Nor were there many trees down in the dry valleys of prairie grass and sage, where the occasional stunted, wind-rustled corn patch of a mestizo farm huddled against the road, or the mangy dogs of a native village ran out to pester the horses. But even in the afternoon when the road began to climb, winding through gaps in the craggy mountains toward the town of Arteaga, Caleb noted that it was a much better and smoother road than the one from Agua Nueva.”
― Dale Cramer, quote from Paradise Valley
“I wished for my fairy godmother, the good witch of the north, or some other bitch with a wand to glide in here and zap these arrow-shooting assholes.”
― Jocelynn Drake, quote from Nightwalker
“Well, that’s not something you see every day. Go tell your father that Grandma needs the grenades.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from Midnight Blue-Light Special
“Anos de viagens com a minha mãe ensinaram-se que a comida é o passaporte universal. Quaisquer que sejam as barreiras de lingua, cultura ou geografia, a comida atravessa todas as fronteiras.”
― Joanne Harris, quote from Peaches for Father Francis
“When you see a duck in a pond, the part you see is peaceful, quiet, and serene. But under the surface, his legs are kicking away, churning water. That’s me.”
― John Locke, quote from Promise You Won't Tell?
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