Jason Mraz, And The New James Blunt

I've Always Thought That "punk" Wasn't Really A Genre. My Band Started In Olympia Where K Records Was And K Records Put Out Music That Didn't Sound Super Loud And Aggressive. And Yet They Were Punk Because They Were Creating Culture In Their Own Community Instead Of Taking Their Cue From Mtv About What Was Real Music And What Was Cool. It Wasn't About A Certain Fashion. It Was About Your Ideology, It Was About Creating A Community And Doing It On Your Own And Not Having To Rely On, Kinda, "the Man" To Brand You And Say That You Were Okay.

One Of The Reasons I Went Back To Music Even Though I Was Extremely Ill Was Because I Started To Forget Who I Was Aside From Being Sick. And When I'm Performing, Or Even Lecturing, It's Like I'm Myself Again, And That Was A Really Amazing Discovery - That, All Of A Sudden, I Have A Get-out-of-jail-free Card.

Johnny Rotten Isn't Punk. Maybe That's Punk To Somebody, But These People Are Participating And Challenging The Corporations That Are Telling Us What Punk Is And What Good Music Is.

Certain People Are Like 'oh, Here Come The Feminazis!' You End Up Acting 10 Times Nicer Than You Even Need To Be, To Be The Opposite Of The Stereotype Like 'you're The Man Haters!' We're Always Bending Over Backwards Being Extra Nice. And I Don't Know If Being Nice Is My Legacy.

My Mom Wasn't, Like, She Was Reading All These Historical Romance Novels The Majority Of The Time. She Read A Feminist Book And Then My Dad Would Sit Down And Explain It To Her Like She Was An Idiot.