Quotes About Bands

I think there are plenty of good bands out there, but the great bands aren't affected by what's going on around them, trends and all that and competing with other bands and wanting to be the biggest, we find that happens a lot. Bands look at other bands and think: that's what I want, you know? I think that remaining.

I was in punk rock bands, heavy metal bands, world music bands, jazz groups, any type of music that would take me. I just love music.

The only thing I say I consciously do is I definitely make an effort to work on different styles of music: not working on too many post-rock bands, or too many heavy bands, or too many folk bands, or just whatever. I have no desire to be known as somebody that just works on a single style of music and would rather avoid it, actually.

I've always been a fan of the band setting. I've always been a believer in bands, and I've always been in bands. That's where my comfort zone is. So to stand outside of that, that was never my intention or goal. I never had the dream of, 'I'm gonna go into all these bands as a spring board for my solo work.' But life takes you on different journeys sometimes. I ended up playing a bunch of songs and some of them I really liked.

I started out, in the mid-'70s, taking photographs of rock bands that I liked but not because I really wanted to photograph them. Initially, I was pretending to be a photographer, simply so that I could go up to the front of the crowd and be a bit closer to the bands. But, I found I was gradually developing an interest in the photos I took.

Pearl Jam is a band I have a lot of respect for. Nirvana and Sonic Youth I feel the same way about. Mumford & Sons, My Morning Jacket, Wilco, Givers, and Foo Fighters are just some of my favorites. I respect bands that give me something of themselves that I can feel. ("Posing" bands turn me off generally speaking.) It all has to do with a feeling I have about them. That is what music is to me, a feeling. It's similar with people too.

I think the majority of the people in the band still play in other bands, because we're not that active. But for me, it's the only thing I want to do and it's the only thing I'm focused on. I've always played in a couple of different bands at once, but now I'm only interested in the Dead Child stuff.

I can't understand how some bands are criticized for doing something different and other bands are rewarded for doing things different. At the end of the day, I throw my hands up in the air and say, "F**k it." I've come to accept that no matter what we do, there's going to be somebody out there on the Internet that says it's a piece of s**t and somebody who says they really like it. That's happened with every single album we've put out.

Too many bands practice in their garage, play a couple of shows locally, and expect opportunities to appear from the sky. Bands have to push, work, grind, and struggle to make it happen on their own.

Had I lived in Norman and those bands hadn't existed, who knows where I'd be, I might be doing something awful; I might be a doctor, or a physicist or something. Having those kinds of experiences at 12...the Chainsaw Kittens had a flamboyant homosexual lead singer, and the Flaming Lips were obviously very weird. I had only listened to the radio before that - things like Willie Nelson - so having people say, "These are the bands around here that you should listen to," I was like "Ok, I guess this is what normal music sounds like." That definitely changed things.

I started out playing big bands shows and different things. I was with several different small bands and groups, doing comedy and singing, emceeing, and I got a break with a very big star of the late fifties whose name was Tommy Sands.

I think you can realise that a lot of people in bands - well - I guess you kinda wanna... There's a lot less mystique in playing in a rock band today, than in the 60's or 70's. I don't think there's any bands that I can think of, that have this rock god myth that like Led Zeppelin had.

I definitely grew up on a lot of American bands. I didn't really know that there were any decent Australian bands until I was around 20.

All the bands I've played with have had dynamic front men.

I'm not sure I'm going to be that type of artist but I do love cultural icons. Like Solange has been really great at that. Releasing her album end of last year and being really strong in their sound, bands like Little Dragon, artists like James Blake. You know their music when you hear them. They have a really particular sound and it's really cultural and people copy that sound. You hear it in other songs and you're like 'That's a James Blake tune'.

I like Adele, Mika, Natacha Atlas and a beautiful old record, 'An Evening with Belafonte/Mouskouri,' starring Harry Belafonte and Nana Mouskouri. What they have in common is they all have incredible voices. I am very much into voices. I would say I'm a fan of voices, not of sound. I'm a fan of singers, not of bands.

In a world of bands called Limp Bizkit and Hoobastank, Electric Sheep rolls off the tongue like a Shakespearean love sonnet. Leave me alone.

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn't see any rock & roll bands.

I know that bands that haven't put out a record for 10 years are playing to 20,000 people a night. But that's not the achievement.

I can imagine for some bands the ability to make your sound and make your identity known could be challenging.

This is my own little rock theory: In my mind, Nirvana slayed the hair bands. They shot the top off the poodles.

We went to see Lenny Kravitz last summer in Austin and he was awesome. His show was just awesome. I mean, like, when you see some of these great bands, you sit there and think, man, if only we were that tight, you know?

Don't believe bands who say it's all about the fans and they want to give their music away for free. The result is they will continue to live in their mother's basement.

Christian music has taken a turn towards worship music, which has turned into a lot of bands and those types of sounds. That's great. God is using that stuff and it's great.

A lot of bands mature, which means they get square; they start delivering messages. Hey, you got a message, use Western Union.

There's no real template to follow these days for what a band should and shouldn't be - bands are just becoming these weird little Internet avatars that you either follow or download or interact with in some removed way.

It was a scene in the sense that we were all close and we all knew each other before the different bands had really formed. We used to rehearse in the same place.

I do question a band's longevity, because most of my favorite bands only made one or two good albums. After that, I didn't care about them anymore. Sometimes I wonder if people feel the same thing about us. The way I look at it is, if we can continue to inspire ourselves and write really beautiful music that we're proud of, I don't think there's any intention to stop.

You know, I have a really tough time finding new bands.

A missive to all you metal bands, the world is totally over the rock thing. Rock is deader than it's ever been.

Oh, Brethren, it is sickening work to think of your cushioned seats, your chants, your anthems, your choirs, your organs, your gowns, and your bands, and I know not what besides, all made to be instruments of religious luxury, if not of pious dissipation, while ye need far more to be stirred up and incited to holy ardor for the propagation of the truth as it is in Jesus.

I have a lot of compact discs. I need them for radio play and convenience. Many bands and artists I am a fan of don't always release their work on vinyl, so I take what they feel like giving me.

Even as a kid, if I would come across something cool in the record store, that would be how I found out about bands. It's kind of the same way these days. In a way even less because there are no record stores to go to anymore.

High school and college were my punk, formative years. I was playing hardcore, learning to be a musician. In bands, you tour, but you're paid nothing; you're playing to 50 people in a basement, sleeping in a van, and you love it.

When I think of nu-metal, I think of Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot and even Chevelle - those types of bands.

It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life.

I've run all the bands I've been in. A great front man needs that other person. It's not enough to have a guy with a cute face standing behind a microphone. I see it like the classic romantic relationships with men and women, where the woman lets the man think he's running it. It's a classic matriarchal trait, and that's always been part of my personality.

I'm not talking about what came later [after the American underground punk scene], indie music, or whatever you want to call it, but the music that came before that - that's an important story. So many interviews with musicians get the time or context wrong. You have these older bands, usually men, who tell stories about "Oh, we got into this huge fight, this guy punched that guy," that's the wrong sort of story. My view of the time is truly pioneering.

I think the hardest part of being in the band and trying to make it is waiting, you know? I think, to be fair, if we would have gotten a big break early on, it would have been wasted on us. All of that perseverance you often learn by failing. We went from barely being able to book anywhere to being nominated for Grammys. It's a snowball effect that happens to a lot of bands. I think the hardest part is having a side job: bussing tables, bartending, and waiting tables to make ends meet. Sometimes they are really worth doing, because one day things might actually work out in your favor.

I only performed a song so I could not write an essay. I just enjoyed being around bands, and around musicians, and, I didn't want to be the girl who followed the band around. I love singing, I love performing, but it's never been this goal.

My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade.

Musically, I have more things in common with tons of bands that have no female members.

I liked anything that was a little bit weird, a little bit different. I always went for the psychotic, weird, 'dingey' bands.

After all, in today's music scene every band seems to steal from other bands.

I tend to listen to the artists that originally inspired me to start playing music in the first place, because there is a multitude of wisdom that can be gained by bands like Black Sabbath, Depeche Mode, Pink Floyd and the Cure. I think if we were to pay close attention to what's on the radio right now then we'd lose our identity entirely.

I try to use other songs or bands as reference points - it seems like the easiest way to get across what are really differences of taste or opinion. If you know what kind of music somebody loves, then you can kind of figure out why they do what they do.

I think in its own small way, it did push people to be more accepting of different kinds of music. It definitely made music more egalitarian in terms of, it took away the shame of the goofy bands that you liked.

There are lot of bands that have too many songs, I think.