Indie Music Quotes

“I thought of the cool, fresh air of the city I'd always dreamed of living in. The art museums and trolleys and the mysterious fog that blanketed it. I could almost smell the cappuccinos I'd planned to drink in bohemian cafes or hear the indie music in the bookstores I would spend my free time in. I pictured the friends I'd make, my kindred art people, and the dorm room I was supposed to move into.”
― Heather Demetrios, I'll Meet You There

“Goliath was the best thing that ever happened to David”
― Carla Lynne Hall, The Ballet Companion: A Popular Guide for the Ballet-Goer

“It’s funny how books can change you. You open up a book and one minute you are who you’ve always been, then you read some random passage and you become someone else.”
― Brian Joyce

“The best songs are written through our anger. Even though feelings change over time, our lyrics will always remain inside the song as a way of reminding us how far and how much stronger we've become since then.”
― Kastle King

“It is a second-generation Seattle-scene record label; all of its artists are young people who came to Seattle after they graduated college in search of the legendary Seattle music scene and discovered that it didn't really exist--it was just a couple of dozen guys who sat around playing guitar in one another's basements--and so who were basically forced to choose between going home in ignominy or fabricating the Seattle Music scene of their imagination from whole cloth. This led to the establishment of any number of small clubs, and the foundation of many bands, that were not rooted in any kind of authentic reality whatsoever but merely reflected the dreams and aspiration of pan-global young adults who had flocked to Seattle on the same chimera hunt.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“There are moments in our lives that define the people we will become in the future, like a symptom before an ailment, or the catalyst before the cure.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“How ironic it is to have your past-self staring at you”
― Mary Gehad, When the Beauty is the Beast: Scar of the Past

“I’m not really interested in the audience’s enjoyment,' Cave mumbles once he has changed into clean pants. 'It doesn’t bother me one way or another. I just don’t give a shit. People feel more and more disappointed with each concert because less and less happens. It’s really easy to suck an audience in. Like, I can wiggle my bum and back-flip on my head and they love it. I could make an audience love me until the end of my days. There’s just no point in it any more. I wish they’d just ... die.”
― Antonella Gambotto-Burke, The Nick Cave Interview

“Eventually, that feeling fades, but there is always the memory of those days. When you’re young, everything is butterflies. What I mean is—it’s all new. I guess he was telling you to still believe, to hold on to your butterflies.”
― Brian Joyce

“Popularity is like a girl in class that you can't ignore. She give you eyes when no one looks then turns to her friends and laughs some more.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“The price of coming from a small town is that everyone knows your story. Your book has been read, shelved, dusted, and re-read by everybody.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“You know-portraits are odd things." "How do you figure?" I asked. "Well at the time, that portrait told the whole story. It told the truth. We were a family-a happy family. Now that same portrait just looks like a lie.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“Character isn't something you talk about; it's something you show through your actions-through your every day habits.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“Society gets by from the help of its citizens.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“I guess what's most important is that we chose to live with our hearts open and to let our experiences show us the way towards our brightest days.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“With the indie kids you have to remember this: they really think that what they do matters in some way. They reckon that history will care. (They don’t know that history will have other shit to be getting on with.) The indie kids figure that they’re passing on the torch or some fucking thing. That, just as they were influenced by someone—the Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman, the Stooges, whoever—then, in the future, young bands will be influenced by them. Maybe so. Maybe a few thousand malnourished cockless freaks scattered around the globe will give a shit. So what? Real people don’t..”
― John Niven, Kill Your Friends

“We listened to ‘Midnight City’ by M83 while driving under the city’s neon lights. No one spoke. We all just sat silent, breathing in the night. Nick tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, Maya swayed her head back and forth to the instrumental riffs, and I gazed up at the twinkling city around us. I wish I could describe exactly how I felt, but I can’t wrap my feelings into words. All I can say is that I felt alive and didn’t want to think about anything else besides this moment.”
― J. Aleong, A Most Important Year

“All our good and bad memories—they were like our B-side diaries. They were like those songs on old dusty punk albums that no one listened to anymore.”
― Brian Joyce

“character isn’t something you talk about; it’s something you show through your actions—through your every day habits.”
― Brian Joyce

“Eventually, that feeling fades, but there is always the memory of those days. When you’re young, everything is butterflies. What I mean is—it’s all new. I guess he was telling you to still believe, to hold on to your butterflies.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“It’s funny how books can change you. You open up a book and one minute you are who you’ve always been, then you read some random passage and you become someone else.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“Dream-start with dream. Start tonight-become who you want-dream big!" He became animated at this point, "No money needed for dreams. Dreams are free.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“Christopher was wearing a suit and adorned make-up. As long as I had known him, he never wore a suit or make-up. The look of him defenseless to his appearance saddened me.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“What were we, but kids with apartments and jobs anyway?”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's.”
― Brian Joyce, The B-Side Diaries

“All the colours in the rainbow don't compare,
With one look in your impossible eyes,
And I walked into the trap with my eyes wide shut,
But I never knew what it would be like.


All the plans were made,
In the wooded glade,
Where your body was split wide open,
And I count to ten,
As the race begins,
Round your hairpin bends.


Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Without you to hold me.


I can't count the times I forgot my lines,
And you pretended that you didn't know,
Let me take you through each stage of the male
mistake,
And we'll adopt our natural roles.



And I need you more,
Than you need to be needed,
So I sign my will one stab at a time,
And I count to ten,
As the race begins,
Round your hairpin bends.



Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Without you to hold me.



Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Sometimes I feel I'll float away,
Without you to hold me.


Away, away, away, away ".”
― Suede, Suede -- The Chord Songbook: Lyric Songbook, Octavo-Size Book

“See this decade, it started with a bang, and ended with an explosion.What we wrestled out of the hands of the dullest cunts on earth…got taken back and they weren’t loosing it again. Corporate disguised itself as hipster, and indie just disappeared. They were gonna do whatever they wanted, no matter what the people thought.”
― Alan McGee, Creation Stories: Riots, Raves and Running A Label