Ian MacKaye Quotes

That's a Roman concept where the government can do anything, as long as you give the people "bread and circuses." And I'd say this culture right now is similar, as long as people have money, fun, and food, our government can do heinous, heinous things.

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

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.

People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.

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

The archiving industry, much like the funeral industry and the wedding industry, these industries can be very exploitative.

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.

I appreciate the past, but I want to make new things. That's the problem with the sack on the back - if you carry it around with you, it's like you get hobbled.

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.

I think sometimes my humor is extremely dry, and a lot of times I would say things that I thought were very funny but... I have a reputation of - people think of me as a very fundamentalist, humorless fellow.

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.

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 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.

Yeah, if someone's selling downloads and collecting money for our songs I would be unhappy about that but if they're trading it I don't mind, obviously if I make a thousand records or CDs or whatever, I like to sell a thousand.

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

There are many things that people do happily that I can't imagine why they would do it... But I have to say that even though I am critical or judgmental of society at large, I'm not critical of people individually. We are who we are.

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 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.

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.

I'm a fifth generation Washingtonian and I was born and raised here. My kid's a sixth generation Washingtonian. Honestly I wish people didn't move because I love the people of the city.

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.

I never imagine myself as anything. I've never had a goal or any future vision at all. I just do what's in front of me.

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.

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 do feel like I have always, in my life, been inclined to be on the outside, walk a different path or something. Because of that, and increasingly over the years, my sense of distance from mainstream society or from the way culture works, I have a different kind of perception of it.

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

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

The only thing that drives music is the people who are making it.

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

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

The thing is, people can't complain about profit-oriented moves if they're only interested in profit themselves. You can't have it both ways. If they're willing to polish up a gift and sell it to make money, they can't really complain about the fact that somebody above them has sold them down the river. That's the way it goes.

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.

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

With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.

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.

The food thing is crazy to me. In this town the beer thing is also crazy to me. Frankly even with Brightest Young Things, it's such a celebration of [beer and food], all this stuff. I don't think it's bad or evil, but there's something out of bounds. It's like, "A bar opened!" Who cares? Think about that.

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.

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.

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

I think what we took away from first hearing about the punk stuff in England and then the early American punk stuff was a sense of self-definition and also sort of playing music for music's sake and being part of a family for family's sake.

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.

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?

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 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.

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.

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

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.

I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.