The most surprising and rewarding chapter to write was the Butthole Surfers chapter. I'd always thought of them as a bunch of drug-addled reprobates - which maybe they were - but it turned out to be more complicated than that.

People shared everything: information, equipment, their floors, whatever. There was strength in unity.

In eras past, mainstream culture was blandly, blindly complacent, so underground music was angry and dissatisfied. But now, mainstream culture isn’t complacent, it’s stupid and angry; underground culture reacts by becoming smarter, more serene. That’s not wimpy—it’s powerful and productive.

I really believe in the power of music - and I mean literally the power of musical tones - to rearrange the way you can think.

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.

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.

There's a whole apparatus for indie bands now, but back in the eighties it was just getting built. The early people really took it on the chin.