and looking at the address and going, “Woah, this one is from Washington DC!” And then Tracey said, “Dude, listen to this!” and she played me a Bad Brains record. And it was like, “Holy shit! They’re from DC too?” And then we listened to Faith and Void and all the real cool shit from Dischord’s early days. And a lot of these bands were still going at that time, so now I had a mission for when I got back home, to check out that scene. It took me about a year before I finally found it. And then I couldn’t get out of it.’
If liberal, leafy Evanston, Illinois was an unlikely breeding ground for punk rock revolution, the same could be said of Washington DC’s affluent, elegant Georgetown district, home to politicians, foreign diplomats and some of the city’s most influential, wealthy and well-connected families. Before he was elected as the 35th President of the United States in 1961, Senator John F. Kennedy owned a house in the district; former US President Bill Clinton also lived in the area while studying at Georgetown University, America’s oldest and most prestigious Catholic university. The hub of Washington’s glamorous social scene, Georgetown is best known for its refined architecture, upscale boutiques and high-end restaurants, but it was in this genteel, gentrified district that the punk rock scene which changed Dave Grohl’s life was spawned.
Ian MacKaye is the godfather of that community. A most reluctant punk rock icon, MacKaye’s name has nonetheless become a by-word for uncompromised integrity, independent thought and unyielding, principled self-determination. The Clash’s Joe Strummer once commented: ‘Ian’s the only one who ever did the punk thing right from Day One and followed through on it all the way.’ Dischord, the record label MacKaye co-founded in 1980 to document his hometown’s nascent scene, stands as an inspirational example of the potential of the punk rock underground. Preferring handshake deals over legal contracts, selling its releases at affordable prices and splitting all profits evenly between artists and the label, Dischord is a collective that values community above commerce, and offers an alternative, ethical framework to standard record industry practices. The trailblazing bands Ian MacKaye fronted – among them Minor Threat, Embrace and Fugazi – operated defiantly out of step with the music business; his current group The Evens continue happily to do so.
Like Dave Grohl, MacKaye is the son of a journalist father and a schoolteacher mother: unlike Grohl, one can easily imagine him excelling in either profession. Often portrayed as an austere, intimidating character, in person MacKaye is thoughtful, eloquent and disarmingly direct, blessed with a dry wit and an encyclopaedic knowledge of, and boundless enthusiasm for, music.
MacKaye’s introduction to punk rock came on the night of 3 February 1979, when he attended an all-ages concert featuring New York’s trashy punkabilly ghouls The Cramps and Washington DC New Wave outfit Urban Verbs at Georgetown University’s Hall of Nations. He remembers that night as ‘one of the greatest nights of my life’.
‘At that show I entered into a whole new universe,’ he told me in 1992, as we conducted an interview in a Georgetown café three blocks from 36th and Prospect Street, the former location of the Hall of Nations. ‘I met a lot of really interesting people who challenged me artistically and emotionally and politically and sexually, people who threw up all these different ideas and alternative ways of living. And when the music you listen to challenges established notions of how music should sound, it gives you the message that rules can be broken. It was the most unbelievable, mind-blowing night.’
The Cramps’ show was a benefit gig to raise money to save WGTB, Georgetown University’s radio station, which had recently been shut down after having its broadcast licence and FM frequency sold to
If liberal, leafy Evanston, Illinois was an unlikely breeding ground for punk rock revolution, the same could be said of Washington DC’s affluent, elegant Georgetown district, home to politicians, foreign diplomats and some of the city’s most influential, wealthy and well-connected families. Before he was elected as the 35th President of the United States in 1961, Senator John F. Kennedy owned a house in the district; former US President Bill Clinton also lived in the area while studying at Georgetown University, America’s oldest and most prestigious Catholic university. The hub of Washington’s glamorous social scene, Georgetown is best known for its refined architecture, upscale boutiques and high-end restaurants, but it was in this genteel, gentrified district that the punk rock scene which changed Dave Grohl’s life was spawned.
Ian MacKaye is the godfather of that community. A most reluctant punk rock icon, MacKaye’s name has nonetheless become a by-word for uncompromised integrity, independent thought and unyielding, principled self-determination. The Clash’s Joe Strummer once commented: ‘Ian’s the only one who ever did the punk thing right from Day One and followed through on it all the way.’ Dischord, the record label MacKaye co-founded in 1980 to document his hometown’s nascent scene, stands as an inspirational example of the potential of the punk rock underground. Preferring handshake deals over legal contracts, selling its releases at affordable prices and splitting all profits evenly between artists and the label, Dischord is a collective that values community above commerce, and offers an alternative, ethical framework to standard record industry practices. The trailblazing bands Ian MacKaye fronted – among them Minor Threat, Embrace and Fugazi – operated defiantly out of step with the music business; his current group The Evens continue happily to do so.
Like Dave Grohl, MacKaye is the son of a journalist father and a schoolteacher mother: unlike Grohl, one can easily imagine him excelling in either profession. Often portrayed as an austere, intimidating character, in person MacKaye is thoughtful, eloquent and disarmingly direct, blessed with a dry wit and an encyclopaedic knowledge of, and boundless enthusiasm for, music.
MacKaye’s introduction to punk rock came on the night of 3 February 1979, when he attended an all-ages concert featuring New York’s trashy punkabilly ghouls The Cramps and Washington DC New Wave outfit Urban Verbs at Georgetown University’s Hall of Nations. He remembers that night as ‘one of the greatest nights of my life’.
‘At that show I entered into a whole new universe,’ he told me in 1992, as we conducted an interview in a Georgetown café three blocks from 36th and Prospect Street, the former location of the Hall of Nations. ‘I met a lot of really interesting people who challenged me artistically and emotionally and politically and sexually, people who threw up all these different ideas and alternative ways of living. And when the music you listen to challenges established notions of how music should sound, it gives you the message that rules can be broken. It was the most unbelievable, mind-blowing night.’
The Cramps’ show was a benefit gig to raise money to save WGTB, Georgetown University’s radio station, which had recently been shut down after having its broadcast licence and FM frequency sold to
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