Just as not all popular albums are wonderful, not all wonderful albums are popular.

There's no glamour in Nirvana, no glamour at all, in fact.

Ten percent of the American population thinks that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Those are the people that have not learned the skill of filtering information from the vast barrage of inaccurate information that we're all faced with everyday. I think that's a very 21st century skill.

I just wanted to tell the story of a bunch of musicians who had never had their story told before. There's no preaching or theorizing.

I'll leave it to other people to evaluate the legacy of my book, but I'm very moved when musicians tell me that they've been inspired by my book.

When you're writing, you're only a brain and some fingers, but drumming, you're involving all four limbs, and you're hearing stuff and you're converting your ideas into physical motions, getting physical feedback from things you are touching - it's pretty cool. It's a really a nice contrast to writing.

I'm always very careful to make the distinction between music criticism and music journalism. A lot of people don't. But criticism doesn't require reporting. You can write criticism at home in your underwear. On the other hand, journalism takes legwork - you have to get out there and see things and talk to people.