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.
Ian MacKayeI 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.
Ian MacKayeYou 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.
Ian MacKayeI 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.
Ian MacKayeThe Fugazi Live Series site, when we realized the Internet, the way it works - the speeds and its development - made it possible to have one source of infinite copies, was incredible for us. Using tapes or CD's to make copies would have been so unwieldy. We have shows that have zero downloads, which makes me sad, but they're all freely available at any time. The most downloaded show was the one with the best audio quality, but I didn't think it was a very interesting show.
Ian MacKaye