A Quote by Ian MacKaye
As far as the bands that are reforming now, it's always nice to see old friends and hear some of those great songs, but it's just not our thing.
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Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public.
I used to write songs that mimicked other songs that I would hear as a kid, cos I was 12 years old when I was writing those, right. And you hear a radio so all I'd write about was [sings] "hey girl, look at you", you know what I mean. I think that even doing that made it easier for me to write non-personal songs because, from a kid, I never wrote personal songs, they were always like mimicking. And now I'm just trying to understand my writing and where it's coming from.
And the thing about me is, I have a lot of mellow songs, because they're the easiest for me to write. I wanted to try to make some more upbeat songs, so, I ended up gravitating toward writing songs with friends, which was a great learning process, and also we came up with great songs. Those are the songs that came out the most naturally.
I was just obsessed with bands like Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, Everclear - those were shows I was going to. A lot of those bands definitely inspired me. Those bands' songs are powerful enough that they can last forever.
I've got friends in bands who seem like they're always on tour, even still. It may be in some people's blood. I'm sure some bands do it just to earn a living or for the experience.
It's always great to see old friends, especially those I have not been able to see in 15 months.
I guess the negative thing that happens to me is that I'm old now. They said there was a generation I was too young for and now some will say there's probably 10 generations I'm too old for. They'll say, isn't he dead or retired or whatever? Or it just becomes fashionable to say "Oh he's not funny anymore," which, I don't know, maybe to them I'm not. I'm more likely to hear that now than I am to hear that I'm unacceptably risqué.
There are bands that I got into when I was 15, when I was mad at my dad and just wanted to be different. I don't think I'd give those bands half a chance now. But I hold some kind of nostalgia for them that I won't let go. Bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag.
Korn is great friends of ours, so to be on tour with friends is usually our number one. We've been very blessed to meet a lot of great bands, successful bands, that we can go tour with.
There's always a group of songs that I'm working at. Some of them are 10 years old, and some of them are just a few weeks old. I'm always trying to adjust these songs to some position where I can bring them to completion.
We, as a band, are going to try to do a remix pack for some of our latest songs and do as much as we can. Every single that we release gets that. That's the thing that we enjoy. You meet a lot of talented producers and DJs, you revisit friends and ask them if they want to do a remix, that's one of the beauties in it right now: hearing different versions of our versions and just being able to put those out, as well.
If girls are ever going to start to be in bands as the norm rather than as the exception. They need to see people up there that have just started playing. That's something that had gotten lost. I think that's why there are so many great girl punk rock bands now. It's like you have to make up your own rules because the old rules don't apply. You just have to start with what you have.
L.A. is definitely a Marmite sort of place for me. I used to hate it, but now I love it. I think it really helps if you know the places and the restaurants and the nice bars to go to and if you have friends there. I've got some friends over there now, and they're not all actors, which is quite refreshing, and now I have a great time there.
Friends of friends had bands in college or in their early 20s and had a moment where they had some kind of interest from a record label or manager. It's always interesting how people handle those decisions and those moments.
I don't really like over-explaining the songs. Everyone constantly asks what the songs are about, and I think the thing is that the songs definitely all have stories in them; it's just nice to let people decide what they are. I think it's important that people hear it themselves rather than having me annotate it.
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.
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