Stephen Malkmus Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Music rhythms are mathematical patterns. When you hear a song and your body starts moving with it, your body is doing math. The kids in their parents' garage practicing to be a band may not realize it, but they're also practicing math.
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Legislators should demand that we not go through the entire pension reform debate just to apply a band-aid when this patient needs a quadruple bypass.
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I go into military communities and do fundraisers and that kind of thing with the band, because I know that the music can help do a lot of things. It can bring communities together, it can raise awareness... and it entertains.
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With a rock band, you play the same things over and over and over.
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Obviously any band, any group, someday is not going to be together anymore. That's the truth.
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Steven Adler and I played football in the street when we were 12. I remember rehearsing in my bedroom with my first band, and some kid climbed over the fence of my backyard and peeked his head in the window to see who was rocking. It was Slash.
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There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.
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I learned a lot from playing those late-night, 1-to-4 A.M. gigs with my band, and playing when no one was listening.
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Quite often, little germs of ideas have come from something that I've observed or someone's told me. The process of it becoming fiction is expanding and extending it: stretching the rubber band of reality.
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I was going to record a solo album when I was 15 on a four-track. I started working on it, but then Fall Out Boy happened. The band was awesome and took me in a totally different direction. I don't regret it at all, but the band delayed the record I had been planning.
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The one album I can't live without is called 'Cumbolo' by a band called Culture. Every song on their album is deep, but there's one in particular called 'This Train.' I have a tattoo of the lyrics on my left arm.
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If I'm performing with a DJ, it's all on me to draw the energy. I like the camaraderie of a band.
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I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I'm learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup - guitars, drums, bass - will stay fresh forever. I don't know. I'm still into it.
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When I was a kid, and it was time to go to college, I thought, 'College is for people who don't have the street smarts to make it on their own - get in a band, get in a van, and get rockin'.
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The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, had awaked to claim his own. The stars were right again, and what an age-old cult had failed to do by design, a band of innocent sailors had done by accident. After vigintillions of years great Cthulhu was loose again, and ravening for delight.
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Alice In Chains’ Jerry Cantrell Revisits the Band’s Five Records. Noisey (June 7, 2018).
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When I was a kid, I used to listen to my Emerson radio late at night under the covers. I started by listening to jazz in the late 1940s and then vocal harmony groups like the Four Freshmen, the Modernaires and the Hi-Lo's. I loved Stan Kenton's big band - with those dark chords and musicians who could swing cool with individual sounds.
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I'm just really happy, because I think we're a great band, and I really like great bands.
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If a rock band throws a TV set out of a hotel window, it's seen as anti-Establishment.
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I used to soak my mitts in a bucket of water for about two days. Then I'd put a couple of baseballs in the pocket and wrap it up with a rubber band. Today you don't have to do that, because catchers' mitts are more like first baseman's gloves.
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I ain't heard anyone play like I do in my band and I am very happy about that.
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When you listen to the Anthology of American Folk Music, or anything like that - a compilation of garage bands from the Northeast in the early '60s - you're not necessarily listening to the band and thinking about the lead singer, or the story of the group, or the context or the mythology of the group. You're just listening to the song and whether or not it has a hook.
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I've experienced racism and run-ins with the law, and it's a real thing, and it happens where I grew up. It's something that not a lot of people want to talk about. I feel like I have a duty, and I wouldn't be honest or true to myself if I didn't speak about it.
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I thought The Doors were the greatest band for a while.
