Incidentally …

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The A.V. Club (at The Onion) has an interesting interview with Ian MacKaye, formerly of Minor Threat and (more famously) Fugazi.  I never got the whole straight edge vibe — your basic no-drinking, Xs-on-your-hands nanny punk lifestyle. It’s easy to dismiss these insufferable twerps between sips of your sweet, sweet ‘Makers.  What gets lost, however, is that MacKaye was a much more fascinating songwriter than the stereotype allows, and that both he and many of the folks he inspired were far from the straight-edge pigeonhole. 

Anyway, I enjoyed the article.  Maybe you will as well.  After all, you can’t be what you were ….

12 thoughts on “Incidentally …”

  1. Straight edge would have been a helpful thing growing up in Talibama, so that I could have all the necessary punk affectations without actually getting in trouble…
    Of course, when I discovered Maker’s Mark, everything changed. For the better. ;]

  2. Fugazi rocks. Saw them at the Ritz way back in the day for, IIRC, $5. Ian’s rationale: that way, even if we sucked, those that attended could justify paying the cover price because it was still cheaper than a movie. And they never sucked.
    But man, I had no chance as a straight edge adherent, nor did I even have the desire to give it a chance.

  7. From the interview:

    IM: It’s funny, the pundits are like, “Oh, now we’re being lectured.” It’s so interesting, man. Talking to larger audiences, you’re talking through a huge PA system, so you have that “voice of God” problem. It’s just hard to have a nuanced discussion with like a thousand people, 30 of which are white-power skinheads. Also, when you have a room that big and so many people in it, the people in the back of the room are having a completely different experience than the people in the front of the room. There was always much derision about especially my kind of vocal, what people consider my “scolding,” that I was policing the crowd, or that I was trying to control the situation. They were like, “Oh, you’re anti-dance, you’re always telling people what to do.” The part that I think that people didn’t understand, and they could never really understand, is from our perspective, from the stage looking out, the people in the front were just getting wrecked. How long have you been writing?
    AVC: About 15 years.
    IM: Fugazi played shows for 15 years, which is about right. In that 15 years, imagine that because of your writing, there’s like half a dozen people who will never walk again. It probably would make you think about how you wrote. It’s obviously not what you intend. My work, essentially, is playing music, and because we played music, and because people came to see us, and because of the behavior of some people there, there are people who lost the ability to walk. That’s just insane. And the worst thing about it is, the people who usually lost that ability, they weren’t doing anything. They were getting landed on. They were just in the crowd.

    Ah, I remember the good old days of getting landed on in crowds (Rancid in ’95 @ the Embassy Hotel here in London, ON was a particularly memorable–if not painfull–pit). Still walking, too. Ian McKaye has always struck me as a self-righteous prat, especially if he’s provided with a soapbox and a megaphone.
    He’s also an obscenely talented songwriter (the prick.)
    PS – godfathers of straight edge or not, I still prefer Minor Threat to the myriad by-the-numbers basement hardcore also-rans they subsequently begat (including my own teenage contribution to the collective exercise in derivation). The one-two punch of Filler/I Don’t Wanna Hear It still gives me goosebumps.
    PPS – lots of insanity here.

  8. Fugazi was “straight-edge”? No wonder I couldn’t stand them. I always thought it was just the atonal whining and gratuitous torture of innocent guitars.

  9. Here I was thinking I was the only person who read wonky political blogs who also hung out in basements listening to punk/hardcore bands.
    Though I guess I might still be the only one doing it in the present tense.

  10. Back when I was listening to punk bands, there were no blogs. There was barely a set of innertubes. The word “internet” hadn’t even been mentioned yet, as far as I know.

  11. I still prefer Minor Threat…
    the chorus of I Don’t Wanna Hear It was my cellphone ringtone… until we changed to Verizon, who doesn’t let you upload anything to your phone.

  12. Self-righteous prat, to be sure, but hey, where would we be without a couple of them. It is undeniable that McKaye and the rest of Fugazi could have gotten dead-flat rich in the signing frenzy of the early 90’s (Helmet got a million-dollar signing bonus, for god’s sake), to say nothing of the much larger offers McKaye and Nelson got for Dischord as a whole. 4AD? Gulp. Sub Pop? Gulp. Matador? Gulp…(and then ungulp). Dischord?…no, thanks anyway.
    As for straightedge, that’s a much-abused term that really never applied to Fugazi, as far as I know. They got tagged with it a lot in reference to McKaye’s earlier stuff, but none of Fugazi’s songs deal with straightedge themes at all. To the extent Fugazi embodies any element of the punk ethos, it’s DIY, which is less of an annoying adolescent tic than most straightedge poses tend to be.
    That said, I’ve seen a bunch of Fugazi shows, and yes, McKaye can be a strident, irritating little dictator up there, no denying it. One of the tightest, most potent live acts I’ve ever seen, but dude, shut up and play!

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