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Quotes by Ian MacKaye

Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we're not interested.
– Ian MacKaye
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
If you grew up in Washington, D.C., you also know that there is no entertainment industry in this town, particularly not any local.
– Ian MacKaye
Keep in mind that at the beginning of Fugazi, I mean we all worked, we all had jobs, we were all working and touring.
– Ian MacKaye
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.
– Ian MacKaye
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
With Napster and the sharing of music, of course, there are going to be people who exploit it. Greed has no end. But there's a lot of good that could happen. We shouldn't let the economic concerns of the major labels infringe on our freedom to share music.
– Ian MacKaye
There are many things that people do happily that I can't imagine why they would do it... But I have to say that even though I am critical or judgmental of society at large, I'm not critical of people individually. We are who we are.
– Ian MacKaye
My focus is always on the day. What I've done behind me, I try to have respect for it, and keep an eye on it, and make sure it isn't abused, and obviously be thoughtful about it, because it's all real to me. I'm basically in every band I ever was in, and the songs, I still mean them all.
– Ian MacKaye
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
I'm really anti-option, so computers have been my nightmare with recording. I don't want endless tracks I want less tracks. I want decisions to be made.
– Ian MacKaye
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
I'm always happy when I hear about people selling records or selling books or selling movies. It makes me proud of them.
– Ian MacKaye
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
I don't dismiss the music that I was involved with, I don't think it was a joke, I don't think it was funny or a phase, I don't think it was just something I was doing back then, to me it was who I am. It connects all the way through. I don't distance myself from any of it.
– Ian MacKaye
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.
– Ian MacKaye