“He’s just a big schlub from Detroit. He’s fat and he’s got a mustache. I wouldn’t shit in Lester’s nose.”
Lou Reed, in a jab at Lester Bangs after the rock critic referred to his transvestite (but possibly transsexual) lover Rachel as “the bearded lady” in a column — in an interview with “Zig Zag” magazine, circa 1973.
“Purely strange, a mother lode of unholy awe. If the album ‘Berlin’ was melted down in a vat and reshaped into human form, it would be this creature.”
Lester Bangs, from Jim DeRogatis’ biography of Bangs, “Let It Blurt,” describing Bangs’ impression of Rachel, a transvestite (but possibly transsexual) Lou Reed was dating and who was in tow when Bangs interviewed Reed at the Detroit Hilton in 1973. More info and photos of Rachel and Lou here.
“It isn’t necessary to imagine the world ending in fire and ice — there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”
Frank Zappa, in his 1989 autobiography, “The Real Frank Zappa Book”
“Cutting ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ out of the market just as it was reaching its audience, EMI, the Sex Pistols’ first label, dropped them after the televised ‘fuck’ that made Declan McManus’ day, recalled the records, and melted them down. … The press contrived a moral panic to sell papers, but the panic seemed real soon enough: the Sex Pistols were denounced in Parliament as a threat to the British way of life, by socialists as fascist, by fascists as communist. … The group itself had become contraband. In late 1975, when the Sex Pistols first appeared, crashing another band’s concert and impersonating the opening act, the plug was pulled after ten minutes; now to play in public they were forced to turn up in secret, under a false name. The very emptiness of the terrain they had cleared — the multiplication of new voices from below, the intensification of abuse from above, both sides fighting for possession of that suddenly cleared ground — had pushed them toward self-destruction, into the silence of all nihilist noise.”
Greil Marcus, discussing the Sex Pistols in his 1989 book, “Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century”
“People say, ‘Nirvana killed heavy metal,’ and they didn’t. If you had any type of music scene that is so weak that another band can come on playing a different type of music and kill your scene, then your scene wasn’t good enough in the first place.”
Riki Rachtman, host of “Headbangers Ball” when Nirvana members Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic showed up for an interview in November 1991, in a 2011 interview. It’s notorious in that Cobain wore a bright yellow gown and was obviously under the influence, and the appearance for many symbolizes the death of “hair metal,” i.e. pop metal — of which Def Leppard is a perfect representative. Read the interview here. Watch the “Headbangers Ball” segment here.
“I’m tired of men who aren’t professional or even accomplished musicians continually offering to ‘help me out’ (without being asked), as if i did this by accident and i’m gonna flounder without them. … I’m sad that my desire to be treated as an equal and as a human being is interpreted as hatred of men, rather than a request to be included and respected.”
Excerpts from a blog post/rant by Grimes (the stage name of Claire Boucher), viewable in full on her Tumblr
“The glam rockers and all the other poseur rockers cause problems. They cause problems in rock ‘n’ roll, and I’m here to solve them. … I’ve seen the shit. I’ve pissed the shit. I take the shit, and I’m tired of it. Too many clowns are in charge. It’s time for some heads to roll.”
The Mentors’ frontman El Duce, drunk off his ass and perhaps having flashbacks, from the second issue of the “Answer Me!” zine in 1992. The Mentors was a 1980s-era shock-rock outfit, self-described as the inventor of “rape rock”
“I’d read a piece in the Village Voice by a lesbian who was talking about a dildo. She had the feeling that she could be male when she wanted to — you could just strap it on or take it off at will and you’re a different gender. When I first thought of “Detachable,” that was the idea. But when I was writing it, that didn’t seem workable, so it didn’t go that way. It occurred to me that if your penis were detachable, it would probably get lost. So the song isn’t actually about it being detachable, it’s about it being lost. But “Lost Penis” is not really a good name for a song.”
John S. Hall, King Missile frontman, on how he came up with the lyrics for “Detachable Penis,” in a February band interview with Spin you can read in full here
President Camacho
“We, the undersigned, would like the Obama administration to recognize the need for a new national anthem, one that even a decade after its creation, is still hot and fresh out the kitchen. America has changed since Francis Scott Key penned our current anthem in 1814. Since then, we have realized that after the show, it’s the afterparty, and that after the party, it’s the hotel lobby, and–perhaps most importantly–that ’round about four, you’ve got to clear the lobby, at which point it’s strongly recommended that you take it to the room and freak somebody.”
A petition to make R. Kelly’s “Ignition,” from 2003’s “Chocolate Factory,” the national anthem, a song that contains such lines as “let me see you/bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce.” The petition, at last look, was more than 89,000 signatures shy of being “seriously considered” by the White House. See it here and pray that we don’t one day look back on “Idiocracy” as a documentary.
“I think that the visuals kind of portrayed on this tour will be, I guess, more grown-up and a little more mature than things we’ve done in the past.”
Taylor Swift, in an A.V. Club story posted Tuesday, about her upcoming “reality” tour. It’s worth reading the whole hilarious article here
EARGGH! 