Stephen Malkmus Quotes
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In the early '90s, it felt like there was space - there was like an empty feel. There was nobody really doing this. Maybe the Pixies were, a little bit. Their lyrics were also disjointed, more psychosexual or something. That's part of youth, too, maybe, that you just feel like you're doing something different.
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I think the focus of the media changes. At the moment the more electronic stuff like trip-hop was the flavor of the month, just a little while ago. It all depends on the angle, from which point of view you see it.
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When you do a cover it's a way to get attention clicking on something. At the Quiet Music Festival, The Jicks did this Nirvana song, very unrehearsed and not important, but then all the websites were like, "They covered Nirvana!" People like covers of famous people.
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I'm thinking, I'm singing like Ozzy Osbourne, but I don't sound like him enough, ever.
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If a voice is just too nice, without an edge, it kinda all flows by. You forget it. You don't listen to the lyrics.
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I don't really know where the songs are coming from often. Many of the best things I made up were just off the top of my head.
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I think most musicians know if they make the same record twice, even if they say they don't.
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I'm not dying for everyone to hear everything we do. Forty minutes every two years is sensible.
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Lou Reed is something like a personal favorite of mine, but you could always put me into that drawer of singers who can't really sing, who speak their songs.
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I didn't really like confessional poetry or things. They seemed sort of dated to me, or just corny.
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You don't realize that when you're young, and you're surprised there's a lot of people at your gig - you just think it's general British-press hype.
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When I was a kid I really liked the guitarist of The Doors Robby Krieger. He plays blues, but he plays a lot of melodic things. He plays scales that are kind of unusual, and some bent notes.
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Men are men and women are women, but the men are dumber than the women, usually.
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I'm sort of socially inept, so music is my way to connect to people. It's a means of socializing and having a life. Otherwise I wouldn't bother. I would just make home recordings and play them for myself. And that's not really healthy.
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I want to do some different kind of songs, but say I want to do riffs, but I don't come up with any riffs that I really think are great. Then I can't do a riff album. I'm more of a song, melody person.
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I just imagine that every song in and of itself is great, but when you add them all up, it's too much of me maybe.
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With some songs, I have written narratives or I've tried to carry it through, but generally the things that were more genius, as far as I was concerned, were not that.
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Something taken off the page can sound great, I guess. Usually it doesn't. It seems like lately Pitchfork is trying to champion lyric writers more.
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But we're still rehearsing and planning to make a new album next year. We have some really good new songs that we've already been playing on that last tour that we just finished.
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I know the world doesn't need maybe another of a particular type of song - the same thing again - but you can't help yourself. And some people like it, but you kind of know in your heart that it's a lesser version of what you've done before. But maybe it has a good tempo, or it feels fresh, but it's still not.
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There's something in life that's cool, it's relatively cheap, and fun, and populist. Even when it's elitist.
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Traditionally, when we lived here in Portland, we have a record player in the living room, and there's lots of stuff playing, all different kinds of music. I don't listen to any of those Internet radio things. I have iTunes on my thing, but I've never bought a single thing on it. Except for "Call Me Maybe," for the kids or whatever. Carly Rae Jepsen.
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As a frontman I'm going to wear leather pants and get blowjobs in the studio. That would be nice. They are definitely not cool, but I like them. I don't listen to them, but I like them when I hear them on the radio, normally.
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We Paverment were definitely unafraid of playing wrong notes and singing wrong things. We could be fearlessly bad!