In this Mother Jones video interview, Ian MacKaye, co-founder of Dischord Records, discusses why he decided to offer the Fugazi show archives on a pay-what-you-want scale, but did not offer them online for free. Here’s a longer-form text piece about MacKaye at MoJo.
A visceral, passionate, politically astute post-punk band that spurned music industry conventions, capping ticket prices at around $5 and insisting on playing for all-ages crowds, Fugazi won over hordes of loyal fans and helped kick off a nationwide movement of DIY bands and record labels. Fugazi and Dischord were living proof that starting your own band, making your own records, and booking your own shows worked. “It was the label that was very exciting at the time,” says Ian Svenonius, whose former bands the Nation of Ulysses and the Make-Up released several albums on Dischord in the ’80s and ’90s. “It had a staunchly anti-commercial outlook and it was explicitly independent and local.”
MacKaye at Dischord HQ (photo: Mother Jones)