Top 131 Quotes & Sayings by Ian MacKaye - Page 2

1991 for some people was a significant year in terms of punk rock. It was the year "punk broke".

I feel quite connected to the past, and my memory. Everything that I've ever done I can still relate to, and feel connected to it in a way. There's no part of my life that I look at and go, 'I don't recognize that person at all.

My humor is very dry. To me it doesn't make sense.

It's so interesting that humanity has to be defined by emotional strife or something. I don't buy into that.

Structures can be manipulated for ill as well, especially when people are dealing with issues of power, or control, or violence.

I'm not talking about what came later [after the American underground punk scene], indie music, or whatever you want to call it, but the music that came before that - that's an important story. So many interviews with musicians get the time or context wrong. You have these older bands, usually men, who tell stories about "Oh, we got into this huge fight, this guy punched that guy," that's the wrong sort of story. My view of the time is truly pioneering.

In the late 90s, there was a reverse. Everyone would stand stock still and be so attentive and quiet. But then, it was almost like, "C'mon people! Engage - make a show with us!" You can hear these different eras pass through in the recordings.

Bars are meeting places and places to unwind. But at some point, what is culture unwinding from, and why can't they meet anywhere else?

I'm not a sports dude, but I'm interested in the sociological implications of it.

The Corcoran show was actually almost a reportage. The exhibit was, in many ways, pretty unique. It was one of the first pieces about DC culture that doesn't include some marble building or the Kennedy Center.

It's just hard to have a nuanced discussion with like a thousand people, 30 of which are white-power skinheads.

The amount of money that people spend on saving stuff, they try to feed you this idea that it's more important.

I obviously use computers. My car is wondrous. My phone is amazing. I've already talked about the music I'm digitizing. Technology is fantastic, of course.

People will say "You must miss playing to a thousand people." But I don't. I might miss playing. That's what I would miss, but I don't miss it, because I am playing.

The American underground punk scene, though, is a story worth remembering.

I jump from one thing to the next but try and strike a balance. But it's not nostalgic in the sense of 'those were the good old days and now we're not there'. I don't think like that. Not my way.

When you're in a band and write a song on your own, it isn't fully realized until it goes into somebody else's ears.

I'd much rather talk to a 30-year old that survived rough times in their lives [practicing Straight Edge] rather than someone that was harmed by a culture of violence.

American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it's profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It's just about sucking everything up. My idea was: Enjoy baking, sell your bread, people like it, sell more. Keep the bakery going because you're making good food and people are happy.

I work at a record label where I have archives. These things [memorabilia] occurred and are important to somebody, and they're important to me. I find the record industry largely repellent. This music, the Teen Idles, all of that stuff, is important to me. I don't have lawyers, an agent or a manager. However I find the music industry largely repellent. I just make records because that's what I love to do. So I think that era, those pieces of media, I keep in my collection.

I do not consider myself a teddybear. Just to be clear, I don't feel sorry for myself.

I don't think it's an ethical or moral issue, or even that people are stupid, but I do feel like as a culture things are out of balance, perverted, and inverted. Things that are ridiculous are worshipped, and things that are important are ridiculed. I think that's something worth thinking about.

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.

Truth is, right now two bombs could drop out of the sky and blow up this house and whatever building you're in and just obliterate Dischord and Pitchfork. And there'll be some people crying, there'll be some slow singing, but for 99% of the world, it won't even affect the fly on their soup. Most of the world never have, or ever will hear of me, Fugazi, or Pitchfork. Right now, someone just got killed in Ukraine. Do you feel any different?

The fact that the U.S. government spends millions of dollars to send murderous robot planes into other people's land to murder them, into other countries, that's a problem. That's what people should be concerned about. The fact that other people don't understand me is not a problem. I keep things in perspective.

I have a lot of stuff. Slowly I'm getting all my materials organized.

I remember when Martin Luther King was assassinated and riots broke out in the city. We celebrated Palm Sunday on 14th Street. I have a memory of walking down the street with buildings smoldering, and soldiers and cops everywhere. Anyways, it [St. Stephen’s] was a church that really taught me the things I needed to learn to not go to church. But I think it is a church that does great work, I went to a wedding there three days ago.

I put my name on that Occupy Musicians list because someone wrote to me and said, "Would you do this?" I said, "Yeah sure, I support this." What artist wouldn't support that? What's the big deal? But then people wrote to me, "Wow! You're on that list!" And I'm like, "Who isn't on that list?" That would be more shocking.

Let's say for instance people say, "He's a really totalitarian, strict guy, he's hard to work with or whatever." I don't think it's true, but people's perception of me leads that direction, like I'm a fundamentalist person. I end up having to spend extra time saying, "I'm not a fundamentalist." I have other stuff to do.

All we wanted to do was to make live records all available. For us, the idea is to make it all available and let people decide which ones they like better. It's not for us to decide. We don't care about that. What we're interested in is the idea that we made these recordings, and they're not doing anybody a damn bit of good sitting in a closet.

Why do we celebrate the opening of a bar so much?

Getting your letters or pictures digitized. I don't think it's that important. The more you spend on your materials, you're given the sense that those things are more important due to the total amount spent. You'd probably be better off giving that money to a soup kitchen.

I do remember seeing Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar, one of those. It was a liberation theology venue. Anything radical seemed to be accepted there. I definitely picked up the idea there that you should question authority.

When someone writes a really nasty piece about me. I think they're generally untrue because I think I'm a nice person.

You can hear a real shift. You listen to the late 80s recordings, you'll hear us engaging with the audience, dealing with the issues surrounding punk shows at the time. Back then, people thought you had to be a skinhead and beat the crap out of everybody when you went to a punk show. Come the early 90s, when you had this so-called grunge stuff and when videos became so dominant, you had this totally huge shift in the culture of shows.

If people want new music then they are going to have to figure out a way to be patrons of the arts. And they will.

What does bother me is that I have to spend time and energy dealing with the ramifications of what people do think about me.

I mean, why do people fight over sports? Because of the framework, the schematic of sports, those particular people seize upon these opportunities to be violent. And the number one problem using the same framework would be religion.

We were not a band that typically would say, "Hello, Whatever Town!"

Record labels have enjoyed a 100-year monopoly of selling plastic and now they're up against a different format.

We're on tour for six months out of the year.

Ultimately, if circumstances line-up in a way that makes it possible for Fugazi to play and the desire was there, we would do that.

Guy Picciotto had a really sound point: Live albums basically have bands playing songs that are available on studio records, and what example can you think of where the live album is better? What are the great live albums? I have live albums of bands, but I wouldn't listen to them for the most part. So we thought, instead of spending energy trying to puzzle out how to create a live record, let's just write another studio record.

Columbia Heights was a poor, messed up area, and the church was in the middle of it. What happened inside was a reflection of the community. I actually saw my first rock concert on the altar of that church [St. Stephen's].

You had bands like D.O.A., or Black Flag, and a whole network opened up to trailblazer a counter culture movement. I'm more interested in the less sensational type of stories.

One of my friends was a stage hand at a Bob Dylan show in the mid-90s and I remember him telling me that somebody crowd surfed during the gig. And this friend of mine was an old punk rock guy - he was totally humiliated by it. But some of Bob's people were there and they said, "Oh, Bob will be so excited! This is the kind of energy we want at his shows." That's where the old school was at.

I have other projects to do. I try not to let that documentation interfere with my present day.

For most people who have or who do identify as or with [song] Straight Edge, I feel like for most people, they're just trying to do the right thing.

I actually looked up in my journal trying to figure out some dates and, in January 1991, America is about to go back into its first sort of actual war since Vietnam, with the Gulf War. It just seemed unbelievable at the time that this country would do that - which is funny to think about now.

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.

As far as the bands that are reforming now, it's always nice to see old friends and hear some of those great songs, but it's just not our thing.

First of all, [St. Stephen's] is a radical church. It was one of the first DC churches to have gay ceremonies. A woman said mass there, which almost got a priest excommunicated there; Black Panthers spoke at the church; it was a sanctuary for civil rights protesters and anti-war protesters.

As hard as you try and create narratives about sports, once the ball is in the air, there's not a damn thing you can do about it, it's just very real.

I don't watch TV but occasionally I'll read the Washington Post. I will say that sports are the only "real thing" on television.

I don't need any more avenues of communication, and frankly I think people are still working out to realize that it's just a tool[social media] rather than something that you have to do or participate in.

We had punks literally protesting Fugazi. I respect a boycott. I respect a conscionable boycott, but of all bands to boycott? Fight crime. If you really want to get out there, go fight crime.

In the 90s, there was a yahoo factor where there would be 50 people crowd surfing at one time! It was insane, and it had nothing to do with the music.

I have stuff from 1979, 1980 in my collection. But I also have things from 2012. So I don't know if it's memorabilia as much as it is holding on to things that I find relevant that most people might not.

Now anyone can move anywhere. I've made deep connections with people around the world since I tour everywhere that I will simply never see again.

I'm not a sports guy. However it's interesting to be in a place where people have a sporting fever. One time I was in Italy during one of the European soccer cups, and it's interesting because it's so electrifying.