[PUNK] Naturally, most of punk was utter crap, but that didn’t make it much different from other subgenres. Most rockabilly was below average, and most folk. That’s why the very talented (or the very lucky) get the gigantobucks! The only difference was that punk not only abided, but in fact demanded a certain level of obnoxiousness. Instead of actual talent, the key things one needed were a sense of entitlement — why shouldn’t I be up on stage? — and shamelessness. A dollop of masochism certainly helped, as, if you make yourself throw up on enough audiences, one’s almost guaranteed to punch you hard in the kisser. Next stop, stardom!

 

[THE BAND] A year after groups began trading their rhythm guitarists for towers of amplification, The Band was greeted as the salvation of American popular music. While most of their contemporaries were dressing as Indians (the Bombay and chicken tikka sort) and composing flatulent concept albums about what they’d learned from their gurus, The Band looked like goatherds or subsistence farmers, and sang with authentic-seeming raggedness about someone jacking his daw, and other quintessentially North American recreations. 

 

[CHRISSY AMPHLETT] My girlfriend took me to see her at the Warfield Theatre. Ms. Amphlett seemed to be dressed as a French maid, in a skirt so short that her stocking tops showed. She was as far beyond merely sexy as Perth is beyond Honolulu. She stood right on the edge of the stage and paid no attention to the young fans of both sexes savoring the view, at least until she decided, during one song, to enjoy a little sit-down, on the edge of the stage, with her knees far apart, and an expression of the most exquisite indifference on her gorgeous face. For a moment, the young fans looked at each other in confusion. Then a young hand alighted on the oblivious songbird’s thigh, and in a wink there were hands all over her. She paid not the slightest bit of attention. She had a song to coo.

 

[HOW ROCK IS DYING] Young people want to watch older musicians (like my new UK band, the Freudian Sluts) they’ve never heard of play rock and roll as much as they want to hear Ma and Pa talking about their sexual escapades. People whose own once-pretty faces have become lavishly creased will pay $237.50 to see someone whose music they loved at age 23 — . the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac in the USA, and Oasis in the UK — but won’t walk sixty feet to see persons of their own vintage performing original music.