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I Wasn't Playing The Music, The Music Was Playing Me... And Once That Went Away, And I Had The Feeling I Was Playing Music, I Had To Stop. The Need To Go Onstage And Get My Brain Flattened Every Night Left Me, And What I Didn't Wanna Do Is Go Onstage And Perpetrate A Fraud... You Cannot Fool An Audience.

-Henry Rollins

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I Wasn't Playing The

Henry Rollins

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I Wasn't Playing The Music, The Music Was Playing Me... And Once That Went Away, And I Had The Feeling I Was Playing Music, I Had To Stop. The Need To Go Onstage And Get My Brain Flattened Every Night Left Me, And What I Didn't Wanna Do Is Go Onstage And Perpetrate A Fraud... You Cannot Fool An Audience.

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Before The Civil War, The Southern States Were Selling A Lot Of Cotton To England And Didn't Seem To Mind British Occupation. By And Large, The Revolutionary War Wasn't At All Great For Business.

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Watching A Documentary With People Hacking Their Way Through Some Polar Wasteland Is Merely A Visual. Actually Trying To Deal With Cold That Can Literally Kill You Is Quite A Different Thing.

There's Nothing Funny About, 'yeah, I Took A First Class Plane Ticket And I Went To Some Designer Beach And Made Out With A Laotian Slave Girl.' Who Cares?

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Telling Stories

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It's Sad When Someone You Know Becomes Someone You Knew.

Do It Or Don't. It's Amazing How Many Things In Life Are That Easy.

I'm Always Looking, People Are Always Presenting And I Have Found That Every Year Of My Life There's Been Great Bands. All Over The World, All The Time. So When Someone Goes, "music Sucks Now!" I'll Go, "i Don't Think So. Not Over At My House."

When You Start To Doubt Yourself The Real World Will Eat You Alive.

He Said That Hate Makes The World Go Round People Are Afraid Of What They Really Want They Make Enemies Of All The Things That They Would Like To Be They Condition Themselves To Not Embrace What They Are Love Is A Clinging Nausea I Tried To Disagree With Him It Was No Use I Never Saw A More Honest Look In Anyone's Eyes.

You Can Say, "well, I Have A Question," And Someone Will Say, "oh, So You Hate America." And It Has Nothing To Do With The Discussion At All.

Michele Bachmann Is Always A Great Person To Go To For An Opinion About Anything. She Has A Very Active And Interesting Mind.

I Think Perry Ferrell Put Independent Music On A Very Good Path With Lollapalooza.

The History Of Apartheid-era South Africa Is Incredibly Sad And At Times Infuriatingly Incomprehensible.

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I Think There Is Something Very Interesting About People Who Live Day To Day In An Environment Where They Could Get Taken Out By A Wild Animal. There Has To Be Some Kind Respect That Is Derived From That Relationship.

In Blues Music, There's A Lot Of Borrowing, So It's Often Difficult To Identify The Originator Of A Song.

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It's Hard To Get People At A Record Company To Talk About Music. They Don't Seem To Want To Talk About Music, It's All Marketing, And That's Part Of A Record, You Gotta Get It Out There, People Have Gotta Hear It, But You Could Do It In A Way That's Not Repulsive.

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The Perpetrators Of The Actual Bad Stuff That Does Real And Lasting Harm To People, Like Leakage Of Industrial Chemicals Into Water Systems, Seem To Get Not So Much As A Second Glance; The Bloviation From Media Pundits And Think Tanks Creates False Problems That Waste Time And Energy Debunking.

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Between The Dinosaur Jr. Albums And His Recent Solo Albums, 'several Shades Of Why' And 'heavy Blanket,' J Mascis Is Emerging As One Of The Last Men From All That '80s Indie Madness, Still Writing Songs That You Want To Listen To Over And Over.

I Like How I Write Better Than How I Speak.

If You Want To Believe That Humans Walked With Dinosaurs And The Planet Is A Few Thousand Years Old, That Is Absolutely Fine With Me. If You Want To Teach This To Your Kids, I Don't Care. If States Want To Teach Creationism In Their Schools, There Is Nothing I Can Do About It, So I Don't Sweat It.

I Was Happy To Find Out That When On Tour, Dolly Parton Doesn't Use Hotels But Stays On Her Bus Every Night, To The Point Of Having Her Buses Shipped From Austria To Australia So She Can Tour The Way She Sees Fit. I Used One Of Her Buses Once - An Honor.

You Can Pass All The Gun Legislation You Want. None Of It Will Make Me Feel Any More Or Less Safe Than I Do Right At This Moment.

I Cling To My Memories Of Glorious Desperation.

Creating Problems Is Easy. We Do It All The Time. Finding Solutions, Ones That Last And Produce Good Results, Requires Guts And Care.

Books Are Cool, But Knowledge Without Mileage Doesn't Mean Anything To Me.

Spending Time In Calcutta [india] Really Did A Number On Me. The Way Life And Death Are Almost The Same Thing, The Way Poverty Is Dealt With, The Sheer Number Of Dead Bodies You See, It's All Pretty Overwhelming.

A Text Conversation Is A Short Exchange Of Often Grossly Truncated Language That Corresponds To A Thought Made All The More Shallow By The Process.

There's No Such Thing As An Ex-junkie.

If I'm In L.a. For Longer Than 20 Days, I'm Looking For Work, Because I Don't Do Vacations.

Looking For Work

I Don't Really Think About The Audience Much. I Think Of Myself. Let Me Dig Myself Out Of That One.

I Don't Hate The Government. I Don't Think The Second Amendment Is Being Infringed Upon.

One Of The Most Insane Environments I Have Ever Spent Time In Is A Gun Range. There We Are, All In A Line, Armed To The Teeth, Firing Away.

I Was Very Lucky To Have Had The Opportunity To Tour With The Beastie Boys And Watched Almost Every Set They Played On All Those Dates. Why Not? You Do Your Set And Then You Get To See The Beasties Play? Best Deal In Town.

My First Introduction To African Music Was By My Mother, Who Bought The 'pata Pata' Album By The Great Miriam Makeba When It Came Out. Now That Is An Album. What A Voice.

I Don't Want To Play Old Music. To Me, It Is Fighting Battles That Are Already Over And Calling Yourself A Warrior. For Me, I See No Courage Or Adventure In Doing The Old Thing Over Again. If Others Want To, That's For Them. For Myself, I Have To Move On. Life Is Too Short To Live In The Past. There Is A Lot To Be Done.

Life Is Too Short

So I'm More At Home With My Backpack, Sleeping In A Hotel Room Or On A Bus Or On An Airplane, Than I Am Necessarily On A Bed. It's Weird Being Here. It Feels Like I'm Standing Next To My Real Life.

I Don't Wish To Be Anything More Or Less Than What I Am. If This Is How It Is, Then So Be It.

Enough Americans Saw Fit To Give President Obama A Second Term. I Don't Think There Will Be Many People Keeping Their Romney/ryan Bumper Stickers On Their Cars.

Listen To The Stage Manager And Get On Stage When They Tell You To. No One Has Time For The Rock Star Bullshit. None Of The Techs Backstage Care If You're David Bowie Or The Milkman. When You Act Like A Jerk, They Are Completely Unimpressed With The Infantile Display That You Might Think Comes With Your Dubious Status. They Were There Hours Before You Building The Stage, And They Will Be There Hours After You Leave Tearing It Down. They Should Get Your Salary, And You Should Get Theirs.

I'd Rather Work On My Radio Show, Which No One Hears But I Put About Eight Hours Of Programming And Writing Into It For Those 30 People Who Do Tune In.

I Don't Have Talent. I Have Tenacity.

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