Ian MacKaye
Ian MacKaye
Ian Thomas Garner MacKayeis an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, musician, label owner, and producer. Active since 1979, MacKaye is best known for being the co-founder and owner of Dischord Records, a Washington, D.C.-based independent record label and the frontman of the influential hardcore punk bands Minor Threat and the post-hardcore band Fugazi, who have been on hiatus since 2003. MacKaye was also the frontman for the short lived bands The Teen Idles, Embrace and Pailhead, a collaboration with the band...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPunk Singer
Date of Birth16 April 1962
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'm not a religious person, and I'm not too interested in being a part of a religion, but I do like having some sort of communal gathering, and having some sense of peoples.
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.
I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.
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.
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 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.
We play loud electric guitar music, and we'd hope that that doesn't mean you have to act like an asshole.
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.
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.