J. Robbins Quotes

I think there's been this long cycle of the big companies making a lot of money by underestimating people's intelligence and people are used to it now. So, they're so used to having their intelligence underestimated that, for most of them, it really isn't worth the bother of paying a little more attention to something that might hit them on a deeper level. But you can't really read people's minds.

I'm an atrocious business man, because it's just not the way I think about things. And that's pretty much what all that Grammy/MTV kind of stuff is tied into.

Stage presence is not something I spend a whole lot of time thinking about. On the one hand, I do, because I have, like, favorite front-people and I know what's excited me to see in a band. But I can't be David Yow [Jesus Lizard frontman] and still play guitar.

There are a few artists that I'm really into. I mean, I'm a big Nick Cave fan. And there's a band from Australia called Big Heavy Stuff that's one of my favorite bands ever.

It's sort of a fine line where you're dying to express it and then hoping no one really gets it that closely. But I'm pretty much over that. I'd really just like to be understood.

Because as much as I love figuring out other people's puzzles, and love putting words together in ways that feel good to sing and sound good together and suit the melody, I think most of the best songs in the world are fairly clear about what they mean to say.

When I run across something that feels like a real eye-opener, it's gonna have an influence on me forever.

I think, then, there's the sort of, like, political dimension to lyrics. One of the problems that I've had with my output as a lyric writer is that I look back at it and there's some turn-of-phrases and some images and some kind of montage-y kinds of things I'm really proud of. But it kind of bums me out that people have told me again and again that they don't really understand what I'm trying to say.

Tim [Omundson] is just so wonderfully delicious. He has the sexiest beard on television. He's such a fabulous actor, and a great character.

To say someone is a producer... it's kind of a slippery term.

The Grammys thing doesn't even touch my world at all.

You just realize that you have to be committed to this thing in this kind of world that we're in the more your support group dwindles and you start seeing your peers buying houses and getting corporate jobs. So that can be discouraging.

I always feel like the less I think of stage presence, the better, because then I have to face the fact that I have really complicated guitar parts, I'm singing almost all the time, and I have like six pedals I've got to keep on top of

I'm a terrible drummer. I can tune 'em pretty good, but I'm a pretty bad drummer.

Who's got the most heartbreaking voice? I don't know. Tough question.

One thing I know that's really cool - it seems to me that Blake Schwarzenbach [Jets to Brazil frontman; ex-Jawbreaker] is someone who's made music that's people continue to take really personally.

I'm no good at predicting what will endure with people. I only know what speaks to me.

Another cultural thing that's really creepy. It's not like in the '60s, where there were definitely great high points of creativity where people were trying to outdo each other to be noticed even.

I think Supernatural is the last WB show that's still on the air. It came from The WB and transitioned to The CW. I've been with The CW from the start of The CW, and it says a lot for our network and for our studio that they stood by the show and continued to keep the show high on their priorities list.

For most of the projects I've worked on, I've been entrusted with some degree of musical responsibility, even if it's just like coaching for vocals and stuff.

One of my favorite things as an engineer is watching a band get comfortable in the studio and getting a great take. Like, they're playing the song, warming up, and then suddenly, the communication really happens and everybody's really in the song, and they nail it, and then that's the take.

I'd been in a couple situations where I'd seen bands realize that they didn't have to get a good take in order to get something that sounded like a song. The musicians are there and they don't quite have it together, and then the engineer says, "Oh! That's okay, I'll just cut and paste the verse!"

I worry about financial security, and the older I get the more I worry about it.

I'm the kind of person that, as a listener, will go the extra mile to interpret something that's fairly meaningless, or that might be meaningless.

I think politics and personal psychology and interrelationships - these things are interrelated to me and overlap.

I think I've always been extremely conscious of the kind of empowerment that comes from realizing that you're in a position to express yourself. And the fact is that - and this is the thing about punk rock - that everyone is in a position to create culture, and that point has never been lost on me. To me, that's an important political aspect of doing this, and trying to live in a way that's about dialogue as opposed to like... spectacle.

The fact of picking up an instrument and writing a song and expressing yourself publicly has a powerful political dimension.