Kurt Vile Quotes

Philly's busy enough. There are tons of record stores and record-head friends and plenty of D.I.Y. shows. It's a place where people pass through and bands don't usually skip on tour. There are lots of music resources, but it's not too over the top.

I'm from Chicago, I live in Chicago and I wanted very much for the music in Chicago to succeed.

I actually started playing in little cafes around New York, and I have a lot of good friends of mine who are musicians who are struggling in New York.

New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Shanghai doesn't even sit down, and not just because there is no room.

In cities like New York and Austin, there's much more of a social context for music than in other places.

We first started to rent old VFW halls in Philly or whatever; we rented kegs and did parties and played our own music. We had to find a way to do it because nobody else was helping us, and I think now it's important to keep those dialogues happening, those parties happening.

There was no support system in Seattle for musicians.

I like to support local record stores.

There's no real network, and every city in Mississippi is so spread out, so it isn't easy to drive around and pass out CDs. So when an artist from Natchez or Gold Coast or Meridian breaks out, they already know exactly what kind of artist they want to be. The grind and the hustle is just so adamant.

I will argue with anyone in New York: we have the best pizza in Chicago and the best blues.

When we first started playing shows, we were all 17. Everybody started somewhere. There were guys throwing shows in condemned houses and backyards just for the love of music and for the love of what bands were standing for.

New York - The city where the people from Oshkosh look at the people from Dubuque in the next theater seats and say "These New Yorkers don't dress any better than we do.

That's one of the cool things about going to local bars: seeing what people are doing and jamming with them. I'm a huge advocate of jamming with others; you learn a lot. So I love to go and do that - even if people wipe the stage up with you.

It's basically a city of songwriters and that's what gives it it's strength, that's what gives it its lasting ability. You've got people making all different kinds of music and that's what attracts me to Nashville as Music City.

Record stores keep the human social contact alive it brings people together. Without the independent record stores the community breaks down with everyone sitting in front of their computers

The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.

In the 90s, there was a yahoo factor where there would be 50 people crowd surfing at one time! It was insane, and it had nothing to do with the music.

Walking the streets of New York, a lot of people are cheering me on. It feels good.

If there were, say, only 10 percent of the hotels that exist now, there would be all these apartments for people who live in New York, as opposed to people visiting New York. And then all this junk in the theater, we would no longer need the kind of stuff that tourists like.

People are being more ­experimental. I hear chords being played that really haven't been on the radio. I love that. I go to my kids' school and see kids playing in bands. It is a sign of what's to come.

We're wealthy people. We're sitting here in New York, Washington. We live in a fantastically wealthy country. We don't have to worry about food. We don't have to worry about clothing. We wore the same shirt. We don't have to worry about our safety. It's very easy for us to be environmentalists. It's very easy for me to be an environmentalist. It's very easy for me to care about making sure that we protect the forests and the whales, and all that stuff. It's very hard for someone who makes $1,000 a year or some who makes less than $1 a day to care about the environment.

We campaigned across the South . . . without a single catcall or boo. It was not until we got north to New York that we began to hear this from Koch, President Reagan, and then Mrs. Ferraro . . . . Some people are making hysteria while I'm making history.

Of course, in Los Angeles, everything is based on driving, even the killings. In New York, most people don't have cars, so if you want to kill a person, you have to take the subway to their house. And sometimes on the way, the train is delayed and you get impatient, so you have to kill someone on the subway. That's why there are so many subway murders; no one has a car.

Living where I live New York I don't think anyone's going to make a fuss. But it is more deeply satisfying because it's of your place and means that you aren't forgotten; someone's noticed what you have been doing with your life.

Many people who pretend to be very busy have the least to do.