Quotes of note for 2015: Girlschool, Bl'ast! and beyond

Kim McAuliffe of Girlschool in Seattle. (Cat Rose photo)

Here we go again -- quotes of note from our 2015 articles. Thanks to all the artists who participated and we hope to see you all soon.
Cheers, Andy and Cat


Kim McAuliffe, Girlschool
"Funny enough, when I was having to write for the new album, yeah, I'd be sitting out in the garden going through stuff. We didn't get anything (inspiration) from the trees or anything. I'm not that hippy-ish."


Vic Bondi, Black Theory
"Because my daughter is learning to be a musician, I keep telling her there's three stages of musicianship: stage one is learning how to play your instrument and getting good at that; stage two is learning how to play with the other guys; stage three is learning how to play with the audience, and being able to work off that vibe and generate that energy with something completely new... and at the Teenage Time Killers show, that was 'TV Eye.'"


Pete Stahl, Goatsnake, on the Teenage Time Killers show:
"I'm a punk rocker, man, so I like to turn it around sometimes -- twist it up, fuck it up. I wasn't really getting the vibe I wanted back from the people and so I was like, 'Let's just do it again.' It kind of threw the band for a loop and I think they thought I was joking."


Clifford Dinsmore, Bl'ast!, on recording with Chuck Dukowski and Dave Grohl:
"I remember Chuck, he was just like, 'Dave, Oh my god, I didn't realize you could play drums like that.' And he's like, 'Well, Chuck, I grew up learning to play drums to Black Flag records. C'mon.' It was cool, old friends, to have that kind of weird musical chemistry come about after all these years. We've been around each other's music forever, but we never really jammed together."


Ian MacKaye on Minor Threat songs:
"I also miss playing tackle football and I miss grinding in a pool. The same way I might miss singing those songs, but that's the way it goes. I miss sitting on my Mom's lap... that's the way it goes. That's life. So the thing to do is not try to find someone to be my Mom and sit in their lap, but rather whatever it was that I gleaned from that experience, find a corollary or a parallel or something that now can seed that same kind of energy in whatever form it would manifest today."


Mia Coldheart, Crucified Barbara, on writing "Lunatic #1":
When Mia's not fronting the band, she rides horses and spoke with Jens Fredricson two years ago at a clinic in Sweden. Fredricson explained how he changed his way of training with Lunatic to reach the top.

"It doesn't matter if it's horses or music, his words were really inspiring. So when I got back home from this meeting with him, and I just had all the words for this song. So the song is actually about having a teammate -- it could be a band or your best friend or someone who is on your side and make you reach your goals," she said.


Scott Crawford, "Salad Days" filmmaker, on the Washington, DC, scene:
"I knew that it was really special. Obviously, that period of time was huge for a lot of people, including me, and the music really meant a lot and it was a big deal, at least in my mind," he said. "It wasn't really until the Kickstarter campaign until I realized that maybe I was on to something.
"If I had it my way, I'd do a documentary on every single band that's in the film. The whole experience has been so satisfying on every level -- and therapeutic (laughs)."


Henry Cluney, XSLF
"We play the songs raw and as energetic as they used to be...hopefully people enjoy it!"


Billy Ledges, Mad Parade
** What did punk rock mean to you in the early days and what does it mean to you now?
"So much. I felt like I had no direction, I was young at the time when it came out and it was like I had this feeling ... and I still get this feeling, if it's done right, that the music basically spoke to me in a sense that said, 'Hey, we accept everybody. Come over and hang out with us. We'll take the misfits, we'll take the rejects, the square pegs in the round holes.' Whatever it might be. It was welcoming."

Michael Essington, author, on writing:
"In the very beginning, it was a bit therapeutic. Things I had bottled up, pedophile neighbors that want to hire me to do their lawn then expose themselves to me. I had forgotten this stuff, then slowly, but surely stuff comes out and into my books. I have, over the last few years, tried to be a little more sympathetic when writing about family. In the first book, I tended to blurt out anything I thought about people. Now, I’m trying to see their point of view a bit."