Music Features

The Donnas
"We wanted to make Spend the Night sound as close to live as possible while still having the balls of a good studio album. Mostly we were concerned with making sure it kicked everybody else's ass."
American Anthems
50 red, white and blue rock 'n' roll songs
Wonderlick
"Doing this record was probably only the second time in my life I felt the true spirit of punk coursing through my body."
50 Best Album Covers
Jason Falkner
"My initial reaction was really mixed because I don't like when people go and revisit the Beatles. I didn't want the Peter Frampton kiss of death."
Top Ten Breakup Albums
Sinatra, Stefani and Springsteen have all mended their broken hearts on vinyl.
Mogwai
"When the band formed there used to be a lot of singing, but it was just kind of rubbish. Stuart really wasn't very good at singing then."
The Soft Boys
"I don't think I wrote anything good till I was twenty-six, which was the age I was when I wrote most of the songs on Underwater Moonlight."
The Donnas
"Part of the Donnas is that it's larger than life and it has nothing to do with what we're like in person. We exaggerate everything and we know we do."
The Posies
"There's a couple of things on At Least, At Last I'm embarrassed of. But that's the purpose of a box set, to show the warts-and-all aspect of the group in question."
Sarah Cracknell
"I had a lot of songs lurking about that weren't particularly suited to Saint Etienne. They were very personal to me. Even though they're fairly well disguised as other characters, they're all about my past experiences."
Grant Lee Phillips
"Grant Lee Buffalo wasn't the same band it had started out to be back in '92. It just seemed like the right time to make changes. It was as though the universe was knocking on my door to evict me.''
The Lovin' Spoonful
"'Do You Believe in Magic?' is about the moment when we looked out in the audience and suddenly there was a sixteen-year-old girl dancing in front of the speakers and we went, 'It's here! They've found us!'"
Chuck Prophet
"Songwriting's all kind of boring and lonely, and I kind of hate it."
The Pretty Things
"If we had done an album every eight months, most of the members would probably be dead of drugs or something."
Kyle Vincent
"Somebody's got to write a song about Candlestick Park. Everybody's ragged on it, but people are still going to miss being there."
The Flamin Groovies
"Bill Graham really hated my guts in the beginning. He thought I was too punky or just not hippie enough, so he wouldn't hire us to play the Fillmore."
Red House Painters
"I never had any interest in acting whatsoever."
Nancy Sinatra
"They created this persona that later turned out to be an icon. It's a funny feeling. I kind of was along for the ride."
The Donnas
"This has only been happening to us recently. I guess our songs weren't good enough before for people to say someone was writing them for us."
Green Day
"Before I'm a punk, I'm a songwriter and that's way more important to me."
The Mr T. Experience
"We were the most unsuccessful band in the history of unsuccessful bands, and everybody was embarrassed to be associated with us, including us."
The Mommyheads
"I think what I go through, everyone is going through it. If any songwriter wants to talk about himself or herself in a way that's honest, they're going to be talking about a lot of people."
The Muffs
"I'm not cruelty free as a person, so I don't know if my makeup is or not. I love animals, but, y'know, somebody has to test my shampoo for me."