I don't find most people to be as politically engaged as I am. I do find people that appreciate eye-opening events and words, and who want to learn more about what's going on. I do find people with a lot of opinions. And I get a lot of people who come up to me and give us props for what we do.

In America, there's more of the question, should music be political or should it just be for entertainment purposes, whereas around the world that's not even an issue. I think people just assume that music should be everything.

I think as consumers Europeans are a lot more artist loyal irrespective of the genre of music or the type of project or the collaborative effort, and Americans are more media-loyal, because they need to be fed that media to know what's going on, because we're so inundated with promotion and marketing and everything that's going on - advertising.

If you're using live bass versus orchestral bass, you've got to make sure that you're not stepping on the toes of the other elements, so you've got to balance it out.

If you allow for a purely capitalistic society, without any type of regulation at all, you will get one monopoly that will eat all of the smaller fish and own everything, and then you'll have zero capitalism, zero competition - it would just be one giant company.

Harout Pamboukjian is one of the biggest Armenian folk singers in the world. In the '70s, he was making these records that were really Zeppelin-influenced.

Political statements are usually more direct, and it works with the upbeat music as well, for some reason, the directness of your statements.