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.
Ian MacKayeI 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.
Ian MacKayeI 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.
Ian MacKayeI think that people are constantly thinking about capturing things that they're not actually present for the moment they're trying to capture. I'm quite sure of this. I think it's insane how many pictures have to be taken these days. We have to realize there's a level of documentation that's just chatter, it's noise, and beyond that, people who are truly documenting are going to have to find a way to puncture that.
Ian MacKayeI'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.
Ian MacKayeSkateboarding is not a hobby. And it is not a sport. Skateboarding is a way of learning how to redefine the world around you. For most people, when they saw a swimming pool, they thought, โLet's take a swim.' But I thought, โLet's ride it.' When they saw the curb or a street, they would think about driving on it. I would think about the texture. I slowly developed the ability to look at the world through totally different means.
Ian MacKaye