Ian MacKaye Quotes
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Part of the way the work world works is not so much creating a separation between your work and your free time, but creating the illusion of a separation between your work and your free time. Every day is the weekend for me, which means I'm always busy.
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Minor Threat was an important band, believe me that it was important it in my life, but it belongs to an era that no longer exists. I'm not nostalgic. I think music today is much more important, because something can be done about it.
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Major labels didn't start showing up really until they smelled money, and that's all they're ever going to be attracted to is money-that's the business they're in- making money.
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I consider the guitar a tool for the most part. I do pick up the acoustic now and then, I certainly don't have any routine. Usually the only time I practice is when the band gets together. Hendrix has always been one of my favorite players, but I was a sucker for Nugent in the late 1970's.
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Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we're not interested.
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I consider the piano my 'main' instrument and have been playing for as long as I can remember. It seems to me that I might have come up with something resembling a song as early as 4 or 5 years old.
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I had a bartender friend once tell me about a $14.00 shot of vodka, this was years ago it's probably more now. I thought that was crazy. From what I understand, vodka has no taste. I think people like the taste of their money.
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At every election, my vote goes to the candidate less likely to declare war. You're dropping hugely expensive pieces of exploding metal on a population. America deserves the president it gets, whether the country votes for them or allows their vote to be stolen, and the least we can do is to elect someone who won't do that to other people.
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I've always been a bit of a documentarian.
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I was into Ted Nugent, I was a Nugent guy. I was a skateboarder listening to Ted Nugent.
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I'm basically in every band I ever was in, and the songs, I still mean them all. I don't take anything back, so I do look after them to some degree. But my main focus is on what I'm doing now.
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I never, ever had it in my mind that I wanted to be in the record industry, because I still contend that the record industry is an insidious affair. It's this terrible collision between art and commerce, and it will always be that way.
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When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.
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I don't dismiss the music that I was involved with, I don't think it was a joke, I don't think it was funny or a phase, I don't think it was just something I was doing back then, to me it was who I am. It connects all the way through. I don't distance myself from any of it.
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I just have work to do; I just do it.
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I think about Dischord. There's been a pretty consistent notion that Dischord have been some sort of "overlords" of the scene. Some people have felt 'they are too cool for us,' or 'they won't put this out,' etc. All we're doing is our own work, our own thing. That's all we've ever done. Our work.
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I've had people call me from bands that are very popular, and they're like, 'What do we do? We want to do what you do.' It's almost impossible to do what I do, because you would have to start in 1980. You can't just do it.
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I feel completely fortunate to have this outlet for something I don't really feel like I have a choice in, to make music. I've got to make it.
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What does bother me is that I have to spend time and energy dealing with the ramifications of what people do think about me.
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I always appreciate when people save, and more importantly, share. As we speak, there are people in this world - mostly men - who have giant collections of recordings that no one will ever hear. And the value of that collection is almost defined by the fact that nobody else can hear it.
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I stand behind all the lyrics I've ever written; I don't have a problem with that.
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Music is a language and different people who come along are each using that language to do something different, but all coming at it in a similar vein inasmuch as it's always community based and for the most part nonprofit. Most bands don't ever come within a mile of profit - clearly these people are not playing music to make money.
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I have thousands of tapes, and photos and fliers, letters, posters, artwork - basically everything that ever happened, I kept. I'm not a hoarder, though. I'm sort of a librarian.
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I work so I don't need to make rent through my songs, and I think if more people engaged with music without needing it to provide for their welfare, you're not beholden to anyone.