“Nobody should be playing rock and roll anymore—no exceptions. It’s about as urgently needed—as opposed to socially, culturally compulsory—as making papier-maché frog masks. It was possibly once needed, but that was before it was everywhere— when you didn’t hear it in supermarkets or coming out of every Mercedes at a stoplight—before ‘rock-surround.’ What we need now is to turn it off. What was once liberating has become irredeemably oppressive. It exists to make you stupid— like sitcoms or the news or college football or your parents, for crying out loud.”

-- Richard Meltzer, 1998