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.

You didn't have to be a huge rock star; you just had to do well enough to continue doing what you wanted to do. It wasn't about hitting the jackpot, it was about sustainability.

As a journalist, I'm not supposed to be the subject, but as an author, I'm fair game - another ingredient in the media soup.

I would roll out of bed and immediately start working, and keep working until it was so late at night that I couldn't stay awake anymore. Then I'd go to sleep and wake up the next morning and do the same thing all over again. I did that every day for three years.

Naturally, no one knows more about music than musicians. They talk about their own work all the time, but they rarely get to talk about other people's music.

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.

Now that the generation that grew up on '80s indie-rock has attained influential positions in the culture, that music is the new yardstick. And that will shift yet again some day.