Quote

It makes me sad, the way human beings talk smack. It's why I don't like irony. People are too gleeful to put some teeth into something.

Ian MacKaye

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Ian MacKaye
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: April 16
Composer
Guitarist
Singer
Washington
District of Columbia
Humans
Gleeful
Something
Smack
Way
Irony
Like
Teeth
People
Beings
Talk
Makes
Human

More quotes by Ian MacKaye

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When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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My point of view is, I'm just a person, and there are times when I look at other people and think, 'My God, they spend so much time thinking about things that seem so absurd.' But I'm sure people must think the same thing about me.
Ian MacKaye
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Music is a language and different people who come along are each using that language to do something different, but all coming at it in a similar vein inasmuch as it's always community based and for the most part nonprofit. Most bands don't ever come within a mile of profit - clearly these people are not playing music to make money.
Ian MacKaye
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It's so interesting that humanity has to be defined by emotional strife or something. I don't buy into that.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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Record labels have enjoyed a 100-year monopoly of selling plastic and now they're up against a different format.
Ian MacKaye
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I have other projects to do. I try not to let that documentation interfere with my present day.
Ian MacKaye
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Why do we celebrate the opening of a bar so much?
Ian MacKaye
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First of all, [St. Stephen's] is a radical church. It was one of the first DC churches to have gay ceremonies. A woman said mass there, which almost got a priest excommunicated there Black Panthers spoke at the church it was a sanctuary for civil rights protesters and anti-war protesters.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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In the late 90s, there was a reverse. Everyone would stand stock still and be so attentive and quiet. But then, it was almost like, C'mon people! Engage - make a show with us! You can hear these different eras pass through in the recordings.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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Straight Edge was a song about my life. There was no structure, no premise as if I was forming a club. There were no tenets. I mean I wrote a song called Straight Edge, I'll take that, but the song was about my life the way I wanted to live it.
Ian MacKaye
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Let's say for instance people say, He's a really totalitarian, strict guy, he's hard to work with or whatever. I don't think it's true, but people's perception of me leads that direction, like I'm a fundamentalist person. I end up having to spend extra time saying, I'm not a fundamentalist. I have other stuff to do.
Ian MacKaye
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We play loud electric guitar music, and we'd hope that that doesn't mean you have to act like an asshole.
Ian MacKaye
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Trenchmouth, really great band. Here's a photo of them in 1979 playing the Valley Green projects. It was an incredible, unusual experience. We ran a cord through the window and plugged the PA and amps into that and played right in the courtyard. It was an incredible experience. It was just local kids.
Ian MacKaye
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Archiving is extremely expensive and time consuming. I'm sure an archivist would tell me I'm doing it wrong. It's an industry that's built upon essential ideas, and some of those practices are abusive.
Ian MacKaye
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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 MacKaye
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I don't need any more avenues of communication, and frankly I think people are still working out to realize that it's just a tool[social media] rather than something that you have to do or participate in.
Ian MacKaye