MUSCLEBOUND INDIE ROCKER SPEAKS TRUTH. A friend forwarded an excerpt from a Henry Rollins interview, taken by Michael Dean for a book he's working on and which will no doubt be worth reading, as is this Rollins fragment:

To do what you want to do, you have to be very tough. Especially in this day and age. Not tough like being insensitive, you have to be tough like Miles Davis who protected his art. He was very protective of that thing that he had, he was like a swan -- it's this very graceful creature but if you mess with it, it gets very pugnacious...

I think these days a lot of bands who do their first tour on a Privo bus with shiny new gear are missing out on a lot of things that will keep them in the game after the blush is off the rose. Because you never maintain your popularity -- everyone has an arc. Or ebbs and flows. Guys like Neil Young, they just keep making records and it's never like an up or down thing, it's like a high-tide, low-tide thing. He's just going to keep making records whether you buy them or not. Neil Young makes records. That's what he does... And those bands that were hydrogrown through the Clear Channel thing, they have no roots to the ground so when push comes to shove, they have no anchor.

I used to think Rollins was kind of silly, but these are not the words of a silly man.