{"id":170642,"date":"2026-04-16T08:30:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=170642"},"modified":"2026-04-15T12:30:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T16:30:03","slug":"ian-mackaye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=170642","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;To me, music is no joke and it&#8217;s not for sale.&#8221; &#8212; Ian MacKaye"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/morris_fugazi-e1649941229192.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"463\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-175044\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\n<big>&#8220;People ask me: \u2018What is punk? How do you define punk?&#8217; Here&#8217;s how I define punk: It&#8217;s a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It&#8217;s just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn&#8217;t being dictated by a profit motive.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8212; Ian MacKaye<\/big><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s MacKaye&#8217;s birthday today. <\/p>\n<p>Ian MacKaye is one of my brother Brendan&#8217;s heroes and inspirations. He&#8217;s written a lot about him, both as frontman for Minor Threat as well as Fugazi, so I thought I&#8217;d share those pieces here (again). I posted my brother&#8217;s music writing from his old blog here &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?tag=music-monday\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Music Monday<\/a> &#8211; which included his list of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?tag=50-best-albums\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">50 Best Albums<\/a> &#8211; and it&#8217;s a pleasure to share this stuff again. He wrote three pieces on MacKaye and his bands Minor Threat and Fugazi: <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143459\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">50 Best Albums, #17. Minor Threat, <em>Minor Threat EP\/In My Eyes<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=143271\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">50 Best Albums, #49. Fugazi, <em>Steady Diet of Nothing<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=149627\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fugazi Won\u2019t Stand For It<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n<small><em>Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here&#8217;s a link to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.venmo.com\/u\/Sheila-OMalley-3\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">my Venmo account<\/a>. And I&#8217;ve launched a Substack, <a href=\"https:\/\/sheilaomalley.substack.com\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you&#8217;d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/sheilaomalley.substack.com\/embed\" width=\"480\" height=\"320\" style=\"border:1px solid #EEE; background:white;\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;People ask me: \u2018What is punk? How do you define punk?&#8217; Here&#8217;s how I define punk: It&#8217;s a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=170642\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17,39],"tags":[1101,2584],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=170642"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175045,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170642\/revisions\/175045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=170642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=170642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=170642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}