A Quote by Kathy Valentine

Every now and then, a lot of bands doing the same kind of music will organically sprout up at once. — © Kathy Valentine
Every now and then, a lot of bands doing the same kind of music will organically sprout up at once.
I think there's a lot more freedom in doing the solo thing. It's almost like switching bands every time I do an album. Once this fourth one is out, I think it's going to be apparent that every record is not going to be the same.
There's a difference between music that's original and music that's retro. A lot of bands now are kind of retro 70s whether it's Kraut-rock or... I've heard people suggest that we're kind of retro 80s.
When I was growing up, I wasn't in bands, and had really no intention of ever doing music. I went out to California for college, and kind of on a whim started making music really as a joke, and over the course of the next five years started playing a lot of shows, and music became this really integral part of my identity.
I was making stickers for guys' bands. I was in the front row photographing bands, booking bands, doing all of the kind of backstage stuff, and I didn't even think for a second I could do it, and then I saw Babes in Toyland, and all that changed.
Will Arnett and I were never in the same room, but once I saw early animation we started writing music for that and then he just kind of did his little rap over top, some of it was free form and some of it I made up, we all just kind of contributed to it.
Before YouTube, I was playing in restaurants and doing open mics - every once in a while, I'd throw an original in there. And then YouTube kind of just opened doors for me, so once I felt like I had an audience to share music with, I began to share my original music.
I just wanted to do a music show, with the whole realm of music from Ella Fitzgerald to rock bands like Cream to Kenny Rogers. We had a lot of country, but we did every kind of music. The Monkees were on, and so was Johnny Cash.
When I got my record deal at Atlantic, at the time, 'indie' wasn't a style of music: it was a kind of label. And I think, eventually, the bands that ended up on those labels began to be branded as 'indie bands,' and then it became a genre.
I started writing songs for youth theater and stuff, and so it's really writing music for the stage that started me out, but then I eventually went to music college and did a two-year course in contemporary music and then just played in endless bands, cover bands, jazz bands.
Most of the press I end up doing now asks, "Make a playlist for us... What are your top ten current bands?" I'm like, "I don't even know one band!" It's kind of awful. I would love to get more new music. I'm just not that amazing with the Internet and things.
I hope we can keep doing it this way - making music and art that are pure products of our influences while not really having to let the whole celebrity side of it get in the way. Then maybe more virtual bands will come out and do the same thing.
We have to do what I would call anomalies: we have to look for strange things that show up once in a while. They don't show up all the time. We have to be scanning the horizon, and doing that, once in a while something will show up that makes a lot of sense, and then you act on it.
Now bands have to sing live, now people watch who sings on the record, now people want to hear the real music and not just plastic bands anymore. So I think we changed the music business to a better, more honest way.
Venues are all the same, all feel the same, these generic blank spaces. I like artists like Lightning Bolt-bands that go in and kind of change things every time, play on the floor, set up in the middle of the room. They go in and they reinvent the space every time, which I feel is like the kind of thing that should just be happening.
In the 80s there weren't so many bands around and nowadays there are a lot more bands around. I think sometimes there are too many bands. But there are a lot of interesting young bands around. They are not really playing the classic metal stuff, that's up to the old bands.
Imagine a music business where all the music press talked about, all day long, was cover bands of old rock and pop groups. Beatles cover bands, Rolling Stones cover bands, The Who cover bands, Led Zeppelin cover bands. Cover bands, cover bands, everywhere you go.
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