Quote

When you're in a band and write a song on your own, it isn't fully realized until it goes into somebody else's ears.

Ian MacKaye

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Ian MacKaye
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: April 16
Composer
Guitarist
Singer
Washington
District of Columbia
Somebody
Song
Write
Else
Fully
Writing
Realized
Ears
Band
Goes

More quotes by Ian MacKaye

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What does bother me is that I have to spend time and energy dealing with the ramifications of what people do think about me.
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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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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The amount of money that people spend on saving stuff, they try to feed you this idea that it's more important.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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When someone writes a really nasty piece about me. I think they're generally untrue because I think I'm a nice person.
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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My humor is very dry. To me it doesn't make sense.
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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I actually looked up in my journal trying to figure out some dates and, in January 1991, America is about to go back into its first sort of actual war since Vietnam, with the Gulf War. It just seemed unbelievable at the time that this country would do that - which is funny to think about now.
Ian MacKaye
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Structures can be manipulated for ill as well, especially when people are dealing with issues of power, or control, or violence.
Ian MacKaye
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I was into Ted Nugent, I was a Nugent guy. I was a skateboarder listening to Ted Nugent.
Ian MacKaye
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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.
Ian MacKaye
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The first time I ever recorded, which was into my boom-box, I was like, 'Wow, check that out.' It sounded great. The narcotic of it was so intense - it was pleasurable. I was like, 'You sound like a band.' Then I ended up spending the rest of my life trying to chase that initial high again.
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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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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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.
Ian MacKaye
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I mean, why do people fight over sports? Because of the framework, the schematic of sports, those particular people seize upon these opportunities to be violent. And the number one problem using the same framework would be religion.
Ian MacKaye