If it wasn't for Al Kooper, there might not be a Lynyrd Skynyrd. He's the one who found us at Pinocchio's in Atlanta, Georgia, and signed us to Sounds Of The South through MCA, brought the band to attention.
Back in the day, I don't think record labels were looking at Las Vegas too much for new acts, until the Killers came out.
The Moody Blues were a blues band, so when we got discovered, we were taken to London. That's where we started to make it. That's where the record labels were. That's where the action was.
The girl that introduced The Smiths' song 'Asleep' to me was an important musical influence that I met in college. From there it's been an ongoing journey of different bands at different times, introducing bands and songs to me.
You know, I have a really tough time finding new bands.
Touring with Blink helped introduce people to Alkaline Trio who otherwise wouldn't have ever heard of us.
When I was about 13, I went to see this band called Free, who I'd never heard, and I just fell in love with them. I found my heroes. I stood at the front with my chin on the stage.
Growing up, I was a giant KISS fan, and the truth is the record I had was 'Rock and Roll Over,' and there wasn't even a clear picture of them in the packaging! So I really had no idea what they looked like; I just loved their music.
Of course I always knew 'We Will Rock You' and 'We Are The Champions' and all those. But my real introduction to Queen the band and knowing who they were was the movie 'Wayne's World' like a lot of people in my generation.
FNM didn't really become one of my favorite all-time bands until after I'd had all their records for a couple of years. And realized I was playing them every day.
PWR BTTM isn't the only queer rock band. We've been lucky to receive a platform. If you go on Bandcamp and search for 'queer rock,' you can find 150,000 bands that you could love more than PWR BTTM.
I first heard of Ulver reading the 'Lords of Chaos' book.
Band of Skulls is joining Cage the Elephant as my new musical caffeine.
We were extremely lucky that someone discovered us as a band and that we got to experience a type of cinderella story.
The record company didn't know what we looked like at first. They were all excited about our tapes.
I used to love going to shows and finding new bands, but the Internet takes the fun out of it. Like a band? You can buy and download every single song they have ever done within five minutes.
I've really never discovered a band from Spotify or anything. I've really only discovered it from friends.
I always thought, if I wasn't racing, one of my dream jobs would be as a scout, going town to town and trying to find bands in all these little dive bars. That would be so much fun, discovering music that way as opposed to from your phone.
I heard Idles and was like this is all I want to work on, this is all I want to do, these guys are the best. I got into their DMs and told them that and luckily we got to meet and the proof is in the pudding.
