A Quote by Ian MacKaye

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.
My aim is always catchy songs, or songs with meaning and I want to write music people can relate to, about things anyone could go through, just real, honest music... songs that mean something, songs that are inspired by true life events.
We need welfare reform to get people back to work and provide proper support for those that can't.
Making a record? You've got to have the song, then you create a record. I think it's the same with a live performance. If the material is strong, you're already 90% there. I always tell young people it's all about the music, the songs. Work on the songs, work on the songs, work on the songs.
We make it easy for anyone to get free resources. Anyone can launch an idea for five minutes. Anyone can comment on, add, and enhance the idea. Need a designer? We provide an entrepreneurial matching system without the bosses getting involved. And in terms of unstructured time, we have a permission for that.
I didn't want to be beholden to one person. So I did something where I had hundreds of people who backed the work. I could just do work, and since a lot of people were interested in it, I wasn't beholden to any particular one of them.
A lot of labels always feel the need to tell you how they think the music should be marketed and what songs work best where. I say make music you love doing, come up with a strategy, and put it out there.
What social safety net does is provide a glimmer of hope for what a democratic socialist society might look like. It makes the claim that without social provisions, without a welfare state, without a social contract, society can't survive. We need a foundation for people - economically, politically, and socially - where what the Right considers "entitlements" are really rights.
Americans understand that the game is rigged, and they've had enough of it. They're ready to fight back. They want a Washington that works for them, i think that people are getting more engaged, politically, and they're seeing through a lot of the rhetoric that politicians have been throwing out there for a long time. They want to see some real change, and I think that's what we need to work on.
Some people feel like you need to have a very specialized understanding of music to have the authority to talk about it. They are such good directors that it's perfectly possible to have conceptual and directorial and storytelling conversations about music without needing to know all the technical pieces.
Some of the best songs are love songs. They're things that we all go through, and when we're going through it, we think that we're the only person in the world going through that. Having that music there sort of reminds you that you're not alone. It happens to me, too, as a music fan.
I think of myself more as an actress. I do my music because I'm very passionate about my music. I love making music. I love inspiring people. I love making great songs that are just really fun. But that's all it usually is for me. I love touring and singing great songs. I don't think I'll ever win a Grammy one day, and I'm totally fine with that. I do work really hard when it comes to acting and I want to do that for a long time.
At the beginning of my career, I saw an opportunity to forge new ground and focus on songwriting. Not many people were doing that at the time. Pretty much nobody. I thought I could write some really cool songs that would rise above all these dozens of genres that exist within dance music. I'd make it more about the songs. For the last 20 years, I've been sharing stories of my life through music. I've been writing songs about my life.
I don't think you need a record deal to write songs. You don't need any other reason than you want to do it. It's a far cry from why some people do music today. They make it to order, which is pretty horrible.
The world is filled with people who are no longer needed. And who try to make slaves of all of us. And they have their music and we have ours. Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare. And without their music and ideological miscarriages to compare our songs of freedom to, we'd not have any opposite to compare music with - - and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we'd never know its speed, its power.
I think if there's ever been a time we need music more, it's now. For our kids, it teaches you to take time, to listen, to work together, to listen to other people, and to use your brain. That's why classical music doesn't work when you throw it at people in a subway platform while they're rushing to work. Classical music is something that needs to be contemplated, you have to be completely present with an active mind that's working. It's not background music.
I think Washington, in general, is dysfunctional. I think it's high time we put people in Congress who were not beholden to their party, and not beholden to anything but the people who they live around and grew up around, in my case.
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