You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples' acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.

I see a lot of people doing an "'80s thing" who weren't even born until the '90s.

My entire education in music was in reading interviews with bands like Stereolab and finding out about Brazilian music or a Romanian composer. You expose yourself to what people you look up to admire.

Unfortunately it's hard for me to be a fanboy for anything these days just because I see so much music. And it's not a namedropping thing, but there's just not that many people in this certain small little genre world we live in that I don't know or am not acquainted with. And I like them all; I get along with pretty much everyone. It wouldn't be unusual to see a thousand collaborations at some point.

As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.

When you listen to the Anthology of American Folk Music, or anything like that - a compilation of garage bands from the Northeast in the early '60s - you're not necessarily listening to the band and thinking about the lead singer, or the story of the group, or the context or the mythology of the group. You're just listening to the song and whether or not it has a hook.

I've got this thing where I always kind of diss the older stuff and favor the newer stuff. I mean, it's not just my thing; every artist or musician is like that, I guess.