Independent Music Scene Quotes

I've always loved making independent music.

The underground is not a place but a way of life. You can be underground most anywhere, from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Hermosa Beach, California.

Even myself, I believe that as an artist I should pursue more independent activities. If more artists believe in this and are active about it, they will be able to accomplish more on their own, without the influence of entertainment labels.

That era in the late '80s through the '90s was really when the music was so new, fresh, energetic, but still creative. It hadn't quite gotten corporatized yet.

I started my entire journey as an indie artist. Ownership has its benefits and it's just about putting in the work. I'm just working.

Of course when people are as talented as Jim O'Rourke or Gene Coleman, pretty soon you know that they're going to be part of the bigger scene anyway.

I don't really give a f**k about the mainstream. The mainstream doesn't offer me anything. Why would I offer it anything? I love the world I have. I love the sort of subculture that Green Day represents.

A lot of the songs are pretty unmasked. If you listen to "As Cool As I Am," it's not all that different from what you were hearing from Ani DiFranco and some of the other indie women artists of the time. It was still in that context, still seen as folk music.

The big labels have less of a stranglehold on artists and how they record and where they go.

I have a fan base that some people say is equal to that of signed artists' maybe even more.

There is so much talent in the country, and not all of that necessarily is confined to Bollywood. There are some great musicians from the independent music scenario in India making some great music.

It meant a kind of real liberation of expression. It embraced amateurism in a way that I still am inspired by. It was not about trying to get, you know, stadium gigs or even commercial radio play or even record deals for that matter. It was about saying something 'cause you meant it, and expressing something that you felt. And that was primary for that - whatever the scene, whatever punk rock means, it was very, very important to me, very formative.

I always have looked at "indie" as a term of "independence." Never associated a sonic gesture with that in the same way that pop music has always meant "popular" to me it didn't define a sound. And I think now that has been the context for things. If something is indie, it almost has this sonic association with it, or pop has become this term of shame almost, like, bubblegum sweet pop.

There's a lot of situations where I feel irony involved when R&B and hip-hop is expressed in the indie worlds. There's a lot of times when I feel like the juxtaposition becomes a thing.

I think what's made electronic music so fascinating is that it came up through the underground and always moved and pivoted so quickly that you could never keep a handle on it. That continues to happen. Sure, the stuff on the very top moves slower and is marketed for Spotify. But there are still going to be undercurrents that flow freely and move around, simply because there's too much of a base with this music.