Indie Rock Quotes

I have a car in Nebraska. When I bought it, they gave me a satellite radio, and there's an 'indie-rock' station. It's just nothing I'm interested in.

I guess my music taste is pretty predictable: I like new indie rock stuff, older stuff.

I was trained at classical piano as a youngster back in PA. To rebel, I bought a drum set and played in some rock & roll bands. In college I picked up a guitar and became obsessed with practicing which led to playing guitar in indie rock bands in the mid 90's. Which led me to Los Angeles.

I really do listen to all types of music, not only rock, but everything from good pop music - which is usually older pop music - to RB and indie rock. I love indie rock more than a lot of the commercial stuff that you'd expect.

I didn't grow up with indie rock - I mean, I listened to bands that are considered indie rock, but I think that term is dead and uninteresting.

A lot of the music I listen to is indie rock. It's not on the radio.

Indie rock is very healthy, there's a lot of diversity and a lot of creativity, but it does not have the revolutionary spirit of the late-70s punk scene in regards to design and politics and fashion and stuff like that.

In indie rock, there's the phenomenon of: "Oh, this guy seems totally normal, but he's actually crazy." There's more of that out there than you'd think.

Generally I try to read anything but indie rock journalism or anything about music at all, especially in the summer.

In high school I was in a band called Goodfight, but it was more me running around on stage. It was very punk inspired. Then I started to get into indie-rock and older music and decided I wanted to write my own stuff. I quit the band. Around 16 or 17, I started recording myself at home on keyboard and piano.

I put on the Hank Williams and the Patsy Cline and the Rosemary Clooney on vinyl - I'm not trying to be some cool indie-rock person, I just love the way it sounds - and throw on a T-shirt and jeans. In Texas, we practically come out of the womb in jeans.

I like the glamorous indie rock look, like The Libertines. But you know, without the heroin needle sticking out of my arm.

Hip-hop is mostly what I listen to, other than jazz. I've given up on pop music and indie rock.

When I was a kid, you listened to a certain genre. Now it's like, "I love indie rock, I love hip-hop, jazz, funk." Also, we knew it couldn't be the same thing each year.

I'm like the Fugitive, running from the one-armed indie-rock community!

There was no indie rock band in the 90s at the level of, like, Grizzly Bear. I listen to their records and it's crazy how good they sound. That really freaks me out.

I played in rock bands in college and then right out of college I moved over to Europe and lived in Ireland for about four years playing in indie rock bands. I love and miss being in a band, I still am in a band but pursuing that as a career I definitely missed it but I felt like that ship had sailed.

Licensing is how indie rock people make a living these days, so whatever about that. But I want good films and good placement for the songs because I want to be exclusive. I don't want to just sign it away because I don't want songs to lose meaning, but I'm also...I don't care [that] Wilco sold songs to Volkswagen. That's great. They probably drive Volkswagens.

I do get the sense sometimes that if I draw things too nice, maybe I won't be indie-rock enough anymore.

In the beginning I was just a makeup artist and I never really pictured myself doing anything else. But now that I have so many doors open, I kind of want to be that indie rock Paris Hilton - but with actual intelligence - she's just stupid.

I'm so disconnected from an indie-rock community that I am the hermit people used to guess I was.

Even the indie rock world - which is supposed to be about truth and independence from corporate mindfulness or something - is totally subject to the paraphernalia of celebrity.

It's just weird that indie rock heads and so on are connecting to my music.

You kind of have to be like " What have you been working the last five years for? Why are you complaining?" It's essentially me talking myself out of being a crybaby indie rock butthead.

If I like hardcore straight-edge punk music, gentle psychedelic folk music, gangster rap, indie-rock with a lot of guitar pedals, and I find inspiration from all these things in different songs of mine, shouldn't I be allowed to make any of this kind of music that I want? And it's the same for the comic books, why should I only make autobiographical stories? Or only political stories? Or only superhero stories? Or only comedy stories? I am a bit creatively desperate, when I sit with a pen and paper I am desperate for ANY idea that makes me excited, I don't care what kind of idea it is!

Indie rock is just as susceptible - if not more susceptible - to all the gross things about people becoming total ass clowns in music, and only worrying about money and image. I'm not interested in being a part of that.

One of the best moments of any Liars show is hearing the crowd squawk 'We're doomed! We're doomed!' on cue during 'We Fenced Other Houses with the Bones of Our Own.' Maybe not the most uplifting audience sing-along in the indie rock world, but one of the most reliably entertaining.

We create music to express ourselves and when the world relates, that's a beautiful thing. We're all trading off each other's culture, so no matter what lines you put--country indie rock, rap, we're all somehow gonna find a way to come together.

To begin with, the key principle of American indie rock wasn't a circumscribed musical style; it was the punk ethos of DIY, or do-it-yourself.  The equation was simple:  If punk was rebellious and DIY was rebellious, then doing it yourself was punk.  'Punk was about more than just starting a band,' former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt once said, 'it was about starting a label, it was about touring, it was about taking control.  It was like songwriting; you just do it.  You want a record, you pay the pressing plant.  That's what it was all about.'

What's cool about indie rock is that one band can do effectively the same thing as another band, and one band nails it, and the other one doesn't. I like that elusiveness.

But, then again, I wouldn't call myself an indie-rock supporter even if there are some really good bands out there and there will always be some real good new bands.

I've always found that whatever you say about indie rock, it is the most inclusive genre or title for anything. It doesn't pin you down too much, like other labels would. It's just newer, it has less baggage.

This indie rock stuff, I mean I like it, too - it pushes all my buttons: sex appeal, dissonance. It's emotive, disenchanted.

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

In small towns, bored teenagers turn their eyes longingly to the exciting doings in the big cities, pining for urban amenities like hipster bars and farmers' markets and indie-rock festivals. Like everyone else, they want the vibrant and they will not be denied.

The second 'Postal Service' album is threatening to become the 'Chinese Democracy' of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won't.

The idea of having an indie rock "career" while living in a remote backwater like Seattle was too ridiculous to contemplate. It was simply about having adventures, one day at a time, one song at a time.

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.