We Owe You Nothing: Expanded Edition: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews / Edition 1

by Daniel Sinker

Overview

Revised and expanded edition of the punk classic (more than 15,000 copies sold), with six new interviews.

“Not just for fans of punk rock—Punk Planet is a fine source of articles about politics, current events, and do-it-yourself culture.” —Utne Reader

“All of the interviews are probing and well thought out, the questions going deeper than most magazines would ever dare; and each has a succinct, informative introduction for readers who are unfamiliar with the subject. Required reading for all music fans.” —Library Journal

The first compilation of the riveting and provocative interviews of Punk Planet magazine, which was founded in 1994 and charged unbowed into the new millennium. Never lapsing into hapless nostalgia, these conversations with figures as diverse as Jello Biafra, Kathleen Hanna, Noam Chomsky, Henry Rollins, Sleater-Kinney, Ian MacKaye, and many more provide a unique perspective into American punk rock and all it has inspired (and confounded). Not limited to conversations with musicians, the book includes vital interviews with political organizers, punk entrepreneurs, designers, filmmakers, writers, illustrators, and artists of many different media.

Punk Planet consistently explored the crossover of punk with activism, and reflected the currents of the underground while simultaneously challenging the bleak centerism of popular American culture. The expanded edition of We Owe You Nothing is updated with six more interviews and a new introduction, bringing the definitive book of conversations with the underground’s greatest minds up to 2007. New interviews include talks with bands like The Gossip and Maritime, a conversation with punk legend Bob Mould, and more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781933354323
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	11/01/2007
Series:	Punk Planet Books
Edition description:	Revised Edition
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Daniel Sinker has been the editor and publisher of Punk Planet magazine for twelve years.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Partners in Crime: Punk's Trailblazers

Ian MacKaye

Unlike many of the artists who helped form the foundation of the presentday punk scene, Ian MacKaye refuses to become irrelevant. Active for more than twenty years, MacKaye is even more important today than he was when he started his first band, the Teen Idles, back in 1979. While other musicians of his generation have become comfortable resting on their laurels, MacKaye continues to press forward, only pausing to look back when forced to. "I would say any band that's operating today is more important than bands that came before," MacKaye explains. "They're more important because they exist."

Which isn't to say that what "came before" for MacKaye wasn't significant. Ian MacKaye's story reads like the history of the American punk scene. In 1979, MacKaye was in the Teen Idles, one of the first punk bands in Washington, DC. Along with Jeff Nelson, he started one of the first DIY punk labels, Dischord Records, in 1980. After that, MacKaye — for better or for worse — started the straightedge movement with his band Minor Threat. A few years later, his short-lived band Embrace set the ball in motion (along with other DC-area bands like Rites of Spring) for what would eventually be called "emo," by tempering hardcore's aggressiveness with emotionally expressive vocals and dramatic, hard-hitting instrumental arrangements. Then, of course, came Fugazi.

Fugazi didn't start any movements. Rather, the band became a movement unto itself. Started in 1987 by MacKaye, guitarist/singer Guy Picciotto, bassist Joe Lally, and drummer Brendan Canty, Fugazi is the culmination of all that came before it and the embodiment of all that would come afterwards.

Live, the band is always a revelation, sending cascades of sweeping guitar noise crashing down on the heads of their audience like waves pummeling the shore. Fugazi, more capable than any live group I've ever seen, will then stop the punishment on a dime, turn the distortion on its head, and approach a chorus as something entirely new: as a whisper, or a clean, unimpeded scream. A Fugazi concert is an experience that words — especially the few allotted to an introduction to this interview — can't easily describe. I have seen Fugazi many times over the years and each time I have left overwhelmed.

Fugazi's recordings are a testament to their refusal to sit still. Each new album is like Christmas morning: you never quite know what's in store, but you can't wait to find out. Fugazi's seven records have seen the group transform from one that pushed boundaries of a hardcore punk framework to a band that is limited only by the imagination of its members. What started as a simple four-piece punk outfit armed with loads of feedback and tasteful reggae leanings has now turned into a veritable avant-garde idea factory, consistently bringing new instrumentation, production values, and songwriting techniques into its well-stocked coffers. It's all a fancy way of saying that Fugazi today is nothing like Fugazi yesterday. MacKaye admits as much: "Obviously, there are people that have listened to us at one point and now they may listen again and think, 'God, this band is totally different,' but that's because they didn't go along for the ride."

But Fugazi is perhaps most influential because of the manner in which MacKaye and company have chosen to conduct themselves as a band. To put it simply: Fugazi doesn't fuck around. The band has never compromised its egalitarian ideals. Insisting on low door prices, independent venues (wherever possible), and low-priced, independently produced records, Fugazi has shown the world how to conduct business respectfully and honestly. Maybe it's because Fugazi isn't a business. Their same no-bullshit approach is equally applied to every aspect of bandmembers' lives. Whether it's being outspoken about social injustice or about someone's violent dancing at a show, the band takes a stance and sticks to it. As a result, detractors say Fugazi is "preachy." But Fugazi doesn't preach — it leads by example. The same can be said for Ian MacKaye.

Interview by Daniel Sinker

You've just gotten back from playing the West Coast. It's the first time you've been out there in years. What took so long?

We're trying to come up with creative ways to do this. Now that we can't tour for two months, we can only go out for two weeks or three weeks. So we're trying to figure out how it's possible to go to the West Coast in two or three weeks time and have it make sense.

So you flew out there?

We flew to LA, and shipped all the gear. Then we played nineteen shows in twenty-one days — we just banged right through it. It worked out pretty well. You reach a strange point in a band when you get larger. There's a certain moment where some things that once seemed impossibly expensive actually make more economic sense. Like shipping this stuff cost $1,800 round-trip. But we don't own a van so we were renting a van. To have driven the stuff out there, we would have had to have paid for two more weeks of renting, plus mileage, gas, hotels, and food. Plus, we couldn't all drive out there because — and this is the reason we can only tour for short periods of time — one guy was in school and Brendan [Fugazi's drummer] has a kid. People have stuff to do at home. We would have had to pay at least one person a salary to drive out there and drive back.

So the question was, "How do we make this work?" The thing with us and how we do our business is to try and come up with seemingly obvious solutions to problems. I mean why not ship everything instead of renting a backline? Everyone always just goes and rents backlines — it costs twice as much!

What's that?

Oh, I'm sorry — a backline is all the equipment you rent. You'd take your guitars and your drumsticks and stuff, but you would rent everything else. You would rent your drum set and your amplifiers. Renting a backline costs quite a bit of money. This way, we were able to stick it all on a plane and we had all our own gear. That way there's no problem with having to use borrowed equipment or worry about its condition. Our stuff is ours to destroy. It worked out pretty well.

We built crates way back in 1988, the first time we went to Europe. People couldn't believe we were doing that, but it just seemed like, "Why not?" It made more sense than renting. So for this tour, we spent a day crating stuff up. There's something great about putting your gear into huge wooden boxes and loading it onto a truck and saying, "See ya somewhere else."

There's something very archival about it.

It really feels like, "Wow, we're working stiffs."

Is Fugazi eleven or twelve years old now?

Twelve years as of September 3. Our first show was September 3, 1987.

After that long, how does it stay new for you?

First off, the relationship between the four of us is that we're all friends. The band is something that is incredibly important to us. There's always a challenge within the band. We see it as a fixture; as something that's real; as something that actually exists. The challenge is to try and keep it interesting for us. Of course there are certain elements that are like, "Oh god, I've been through this so many times!"

What would those be?

Usually, bad interviews or being accused of "selling out." There are some things you hear so many times that are just so discouraging, you're like, "I've been doing this too long!" But for me personally, the band stays fresh the way life does. It's just like life. I've been living for thirty-seven years. How do I reconcile that? The band is just like living to me. It's what I do. It's something that's super-important and superprecious. If it was gone I'd be sad, but I know that's always a possibility. Because of that potentiality, I think that I stay committed to it.

I don't consider Fugazi a business because it's not something that I'd get bored of on that level. To me, it's something that is much more primary. It is part of who I am. It's not something you can cut away. It's not something that is easily separated. I don't get bored with life so I don't know why I'd get bored with Fugazi.

As a band that has been around for twelve years, you don't tour with the regularity that you used to tour or that your contemporaries still tour. You don't put out records on a regular basis either — sometimes there are years between them. Are there moments when Fugazi isn't even on your mind?

I think there was only one period of time when the band didn't enter my mind. I went to Alaska for a couple of weeks and that was one of the only times I didn't think about it.

I wake up every day to this band. I think about music every day. Since 1979, there have been maybe one or two weeks worth of days collectively that I haven't listened to music. I think about it every day. I wake up every morning in the band. I go to sleep every night in the band. I work out of the house I live in. My office is across the street. The phone rings every day.

We will go long periods of time where we don't practice. If someone goes out of town, we might go a few weeks without practicing. The closest time we ever came to not being a band was when we didn't actually get together to play. Because then there was all this energy surrounding us — we're Fugazi and I'm in a band and I'm working, I'm on the phone, I'm talking to people, I'm doing interviews, I'm answering mail, or I'm booking shows — but we weren't actually doing anything! It was like, "Where's the band? What's real here?" It was all so abstract. This was in 1994 or so and Brendan had moved to Seattle for a year and was travelling back here to practice. We reached a point where we would go a couple of months without practicing, yet the three of us would all be working on band-related stuff. But there was no band! I think all four of us were like, "This is crazy! Maybe we shouldn't even be a band." There has to be something real. You actually have to play music. There have to be songs. If there aren't, then it's not legitimate. It's not enough just to have an entity. You have to have substance.

As a band, we work all the time. People think that we go on tour for two weeks and then we sit around for nine months or something. That's not the case. When we're not touring, we're practicing. We work all the time.

Our lives are changing. People are getting married. Brendan has a kid. Our parents are getting sick. Our sound guy's in school. All these things have been happening to us that have made us really cut back the amount of time that we can tour. But at the same time, there are way more places in the world that we've gone to play. Initially, we would go out and do a tour to New York and back. Then we were going to the Midwest and back. Then it was the West Coast and back. Every time we go out, we're then including more places that we want to go. We went to Europe, then Australia, then Asia, South America ... Now we have an enormous list. I could sit here right now and name 365 cities that we could go play. That's a year! That's a year of solid playing. What that means is that at the same time we're pulling back the length of our tours, our circuit has gotten longer. It's kind of at odds with itself. We've been struggling with how to deal with it.

I think that people have been like, "What have you been doing for the last three years?" Well we've been working! That's what we've been doing. We made a movie. We made two records. We work all the time and it's not like we haven't toured. We've been touring all along. Last year was probably our slowest year and we did six weeks of touring. We also did a sound-track record for the film and we released End Hits.

One aspect of Do It Yourself is that you really have to do it yourself. It's work! We manage ourselves, we book ourselves, we do our own equipment upkeep, we do our own recording, we do our own taxes. We don't have other people to do that stuff. This is what we do and it takes time. You can't tour every day of the year because someone has to come home and book them sooner or later. I think there's a lot of infrastructure work that we do that people are unaware of.

The way people perceive the music system now is that you have all these other people doing all this stuff for you. But that's not punk rock. We come from a world where you do it yourself. Sometimes I feel like we're the Shakers or the Amish or something. People say, "You make everything so hard." Well, that's right! People see us and it's like seeing a guy on the highway in a buggy. "Why does he have a horse and carriage? Why doesn't he get a fast car?" There's a reason.

What is it?

The reason that we do things the way we do them is because this is how we feel comfortable presenting our music. Partially because it's the only way we know how to do things and partially because no one has disproved the process. People say it's not a logical process, but that's bullshit. It's totally logical! I think that the reason we take the approach to music that we do is that then we ultimately have complete control over how we do our music and how we operate the band. We don't feel compelled by anyone to do anything that we don't want to do. We're not indebted to anyone.

When a band signs to a major label, no matter how good a contract they think they have, no matter how much control they think their contract provides, it's unavoidable that you are conscious of being an investment. Somebody puts money into you and you have to pay off somehow. And you want to pay off. I think that a lot of bands that have signed have denied — maybe even to themselves — the open desire of "We want to be huge." If all goes well, then yeah, it's great. But if things don't go well, then all those aspects of the "great deal" and "artistic control" go out the window because things become desperate. And then, if the label loses interest, you're high and dry. We've never had that problem.

But there's definitely a space between the route Fugazi takes and signing to a major label. For example, there are a lot of independent bands that don't book their own tours. They'll use a booking agent to schedule their tours or they'll hire an accountant to manage their expenses ...

Let me make this really clear: I am not criticizing anyone for using accountants or booking agents. I'm a little dubious of managers, but that's because I've had to tangle with them so often. Some managers are great though, but most are problematic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being critical of these bands. I'm just explaining to you why we work the way that we do. This is the way that we've operated.

There was a period of time when we had someone else helping me book the band and it was a problem because the communication wasn't there. So much of what we do is instinctual. Each situation that comes up, we think about how we should go about dealing with it. It has to be instinctual. It's hard for somebody that's operating a business to be instinctual about it — it doesn't fit within their template. I'm not critical about bands that make those decisions at all. I'm not even critical about bands that sign to major labels; I just think that they need to be aware of what it's about, as opposed to this sense of, "It's a great deal because we have 'total control,'" because that's not the case. But for some bands, I think it's a better thing for them to do.

Why?

Because I think that a lot of independent labels have dropped the ball so horrendously, so some bands don't really have any other real options. I'm not unaware of the fact that I have a label. I've had a label since 1980. Dischord was already well established when Fugazi came around, so we already had a vehicle. I'm aware of that. I'm aware that there has been a lot of work that had been done ahead of time so I'm in a different position. There are bands that are doing very well but don't have fully operating labels representing them. They have to make a decision, and sometimes signing to a major is the better choice. I think a lot of people think I'm a lot more critical of the way other people work because of the way we go about doing our work. But it's never been about other people. It's always been about us.

In doing all of your work, you've made many choices that have brought even more work onto yourself. I can relate to that, and so I have to ask you what I always ask myself: Is it worth it? Are there ever times that you regret it? Are there ever times where you're just like, "Jesus Christ, I wish I could just sit down and read a book"?

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "We Owe You Nothing"
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Copyright © 2008 Punk Planet.
Excerpted by permission of Punk Planet Books/Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Expanded Edition Foreword,
Intro to 2001 Edition,
Contributing Writers,
Issue Numbers,
Partners in Crime: Punk's Trailblazers,
Ian MacKaye,
Jello Biafra,
Bob Mould,
Thurston Moore,
Kathleen Hanna,
Black Flag,
The Spotlight of the Sun: Dealing with Success,
Jawbreaker,
Sleater-Kinney,
Mordam Records,
Steve Albini,
An Artist's Eye and a Killer's Touch: Art & Design,
Winston Smith,
Jem Cohen,
Frank Kozik,
Miranda July,
Art Chantry,
Away from the Numbers: Breaking the Mold,
Negativland,
The Gossip,
Los Crudos,
Jody Bleyle,
Porcell,
In Her Kiss, I Taste the Revolution: Punk & Politics,
Noam Chomsky,
Punkvoter,
Central Ohio Abortion Access Fund,
Voices in the Wilderness,
Ruckus Society,
Jon Strange,
Nothing Left Inside: The Failures of Punk,
Duncan Barlow,
Matt Wobensmith,
Ted Leo,
G7 Welcoming Committee Records,

Editorial Reviews

"Indispensable reading for anyone and everyone who it at all interested in vital music that has yet to be co-opted, commodified, or covered to death in the mainstream press."

Jim DeRogatis