Quote

I started a big band when grunge was popular. I mean, that didn't make much sense.

I was a fairly good amateur musician, and I was an average professional. But the one thing I saw was that the big band business was fading.

We were perceived as a post-grunge band.

There's a whole apparatus for indie bands now, but back in the eighties it was just getting built. The early people really took it on the chin.

It's like they had a backlash the first 11 years. I think the reason why it always seems like there's a backlash is because when bands are unknown, they only get written about by fans.

When you look at what we can call the golden era of concept albums, which starts in the mid or late '60s and ends maybe in the early '80s, it's an interesting time for music. You see all these very established and popular acts and bands and artists that were somehow on the top of their game but really trying to experiment.

We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn't want to be like any of the other bands.

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.

I didn't have the confidence to leave the band because of a solo career, or anything like that. I just wanted to grow.

In the late summer of 1986, the band I had been in for five years stopped playing. Suddenly, I was on my own. This new state of bandlessness was, at first, traumatic. When your group breaks up, a lot of broken parts hit the ground.