America was cool with Saddam Hussein when he was killing Iranians.

Think about it: No matter who you are, the past plays a large part in your life. I am all about living in the present as best as I can. Try as I might, there is only so much I am able to achieve on this front.

Music keeps you young. Having music in your life keeps you open to things.

I have been restless for as long as I can remember.

My unconditional sure thing is that I don't have one.

Harmony is boring.

I think Perry Ferrell put independent music on a very good path with Lollapalooza.

George Zimmerman is a foot soldier in a rapidly privatizing country. He is a new centurion of 21st-century America. Law enforcement is tied down by the strictures of, well, the law. There is only 'so much they can do' to take care of the 'problem.'

Trayvon Martin did not need to die.

Airports in major cities, like LAX, are trippy environments. It is at once a national and international gathering of those in transition: The euphoric, emerging from planes, their journey at an end, and the determined, about to depart.

In my many trips to South Africa, I have met and spoken to a lot of people there, and they all seem to find apartheid as repellent as you would.

Michele Bachmann is always a great person to go to for an opinion about anything. She has a very active and interesting mind.

I don't hate the government. I don't think the Second Amendment is being infringed upon.

The opportunity to write for the 'L.A. Weekly' has been one of the better breaks that has come my way in a long time.

My mother, a very eclectic listener, had the first Doors album and gave it to me when I expressed interest in the band. It was one of the first records I ever had. As the years passed, the babysitters who used to look after me would bring their Doors albums to the apartment, and that's how I got to hear their later work.

If people are being upstanding citizens of the Republic, then you have to widen the net to incarcerate them. This explains why America's prisons are full of nonviolent offenders - a perfect example of American exceptionalism.

Luckily for me, I genuinely like my audience. They really are a good bunch.

I have to do things for myself, and if those standards are set high, then it's up to me to pass or fail.

Try driving the streets of Los Angeles without seeing a billboard depicting a film with a lead actor holding a gun. It's almost as if guns are harmless props used to bring out the cheekbones and jawline of the screen star.

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 am neither pro- nor anti-gun. I am gun-conscious.

If it's a man's world, as they say, then men, your world is a poorly run carnage fest.

With age, life becomes complex and difficult, often fraught with risk on several levels, from the practical to the fiscal.

I come from a town of great musicians: Washington, D.C. It's no joke, that history.

Those who seek to profit by division don't stand a chance.

I never had any interest in being involved with the Boy Scouts.

Literally thousands of lawsuits have been filed against the NFL by retired players, many of whom say that information on brain injury in football was withheld from them.

The GOP grows more and more unpopular with female voters seemingly every time one of its leaders gets in front of a microphone. Misogynist is as misogynist does. The GOP and its bloviating pundits don't like women and they are unable to hide it, nor do they seem to make much attempt to do so.

One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot.

Nothing moves me more than the history of the United States.

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.

Kids need parents who love and support them unconditionally, full stop.

I always found the Chicago audience to be a smart, fast-moving, violent and cheerful lot, and it's always good to be back.

Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.

When I am in Africa, I always have the feeling that it's where everything started. When I am in New York, I know it is where everything ended up.

We humans are hard to deal with. We are a loud, complex and demanding bunch. Often, we are best dealt with from a safe distance and for only brief periods of time. This could be why a lot of marriages fail.

Without the blues, modern music would be nothing like it is now - not remotely.

Being unique is never easy, and often, by the time culture catches up with you, there are only a few people who notice.

If some band sucks, you're going to have to find out about it for yourself, because I don't have the interest in issuing warnings.

The number of people who are actual supporters of Mr. Romney could very well be less than the Donner Party, whose members they sadly resemble in many ways.

The more I learn about Mr. Romney, the less there is to admire.

I wonder what it's like to be from a state that is spread across a few islands way out in the Pacific Ocean, only added to the United States in 1959. Not only that but to be the birthplace of America's first black president? Pretty cool, I bet.

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.

August in sub-Saharan Los Angeles is one of the great and awful tests of one's endurance, sanity and stamina.

As a young person growing up in Washington, D.C., summers were hot, humid and relentless. My friends and I grew more restless and adventurous with every passing year.

The Wacken festival started more than 20 years ago with just a few hundred people in attendance. Tickets now sell out before the lineup is announced.

Death metal uses a lot of white face paint and black hair dye to make its point. I quite enjoy this genre for its intensity, extremism and underlying irony: You have to be alive to play it and listen to it.

Youths write me and tell me that their band will go nowhere because of all the bad bands in the world. I tell them there has always been awful music and that no great band ever wasted any time complaining, they just got it done. Their ropey ranting is just a way to get out of the hard work of making music that will do some lasting damage.

The history of apartheid-era South Africa is incredibly sad and at times infuriatingly incomprehensible.

I wonder if it is Australia's great distance from more populated land masses that allows its inhabitants to be left to their own devices, to be incredibly creative and, at times, to be wonderfully weird.