Stephen Malkmus Quotes
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I feel the most natural thing is for music to come that way because it's sort of like poetry. Though I do think with poets that I like, like Charles Olson or Ezra Pound, they were rewriting constantly, until the poem becomes a diamond.But with music I don't really feel that way.
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Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.
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Everyone wants to be loved, generally. If you released a record and nobody said anything, if you didn't get any feedback from people you don't know, i.e. the press, you'd be sort of upset. To me, any press is good press.
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Berlin is just an affordable European city that's supposed to be cool. There's nothing too deep about it.
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It's hard to think back. I didn't even know I was going to do it, make actual records. But I was always making up songs, once I figured out that you could do it. I think it's pretty much the same, but there's less urge to get it moving out there. There was a time when it seemed like it was really super important to the audience and now it's just medium-important for people to like us. But that's okay.
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I'm just kind of a hippie. Age is not that relevant to the music.
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What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, "Wow, what's this all about?" You can't really picture what these people look like - is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?
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Usually the lyrics go from one word to the next word - there's no finish line. The music was that way, too.
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I still hate the Eagles…. There’s levels of evil in it to me.
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Basically, no one else gives me any opinions on lyrics. I don't ask for them. If they did, I would listen.
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It's sort of irritating now - people always ask me, "You're a dad, and how's fatherhood?" If Bob Dylan or Neil Young had a kid, it didn't seem like it made them a different person. It didn't make you old right away.
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I never decided to start singing, to be a singer.
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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.
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With lyrics for me, it's usually musically-based. It's not really poetry- or writer-based. It's rock-based. It doesn't mean that I'm aping rock lyrics, but I'm writing from a music standpoint. I'm thinking more of music heroes, if they're in my mind. Not William Blake or John Ashbury. Sometimes maybe I thought of him a little bit. Or Wallace Stevens. I don't even really fully understand either of them.
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I hated it so much as a child. I just didn't like it when punk bands went metal, it really bothered me. It was happening left and right in the 1980s. It started I think with D.C. bands - G.I., Soul Side, they went metal. Right at that time, R.E.M. was coming out, these more kinda feminine bands, and I was more drawn to that than to go metal. And you remember MTV, with the bad metal. But even Metallica, it just wasn't my direction.
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When a band means a lot to you, you build the fantasy more than the reality. Always.
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When I see four young kids in a band, I think, That looks really fun, no matter how shitty they are. You develop your own thing, and get excited about your band name. It's all so harmless.
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What producers did was mostly recording in the studio, so it never changed our sound just that much.
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It's easy to be negatively funny about personalities in the media. It's just kind of a cheap laugh.
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Some people, they've had a lot of fun, even if it was dumb fun and a shitty body of work.
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It's just a compulsion to create something new and stay busy. I don't know how to do anything else. It was never exactly right. Those records came out in spite of their flaws. And because of their flaws they were good.
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You know, it's people's lives, so as you get a little older, your own life narrative, I guess, invades a little more. It's not like we're traveling in separate buses to each show. It's a labor of love, so we just do it because we like it. Maybe someone's gonna move, or not want to go on a tour for some reason - that could happen, I guess.
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I've lost my writing skills since college. I couldn't write a book. It would take a long time.
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I think it's just entertainment for people that are interested in the form. To sing along to and be psyched by.