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If you wanted to see Minor Threat, why would you want to see a guy who is 49 years old, doing a song he wrote when he was 19? I think that’s just insane. I tell people, I love Minor Threat, but that band belongs to that moment in time. I think it the music holds up because it is an honest expression, and that's why people can still relate to it. If you want to see Minor Threat, form a fucking band, that’s minor threat.
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It was an era where there was a lot of fighting going on. That was part of that era. When punk was new, it caused a lot of friction and I think that a lot of kids who were involved with it fell prey to the more aggressive elements to society. So kids fought back. And then that language became a little bit too deeply engrained in the community and then the violence itself became a problem and that needed to be eradicated.
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their point of view is that "There are people that consider him a god, so we're just trying to show he's just a human." But my position is that you don't throw rocks at human beings. So if you're going to be cruel to me, then you're making me into something that's apparently larger than life. If they're going to be ugly about my name or ugly about me, then all they're doing is reinforcing the idea that I'm not a human being, that I am some weird god. I'm comfortable with myself being a human being. I don't know why they have to waste their time writing about me.
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when we first started playing "Waiting Room," at that time, contextually, with the music that was being played, people thought, "What is this weird, reggae crap?" They hated that song. They hated that song. So that goes to show that there's always room for growth and change and if you don't take advantage of that, you're just going to keep beating on the same drum.
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Minor Threat practice tapes. That band argued all the time. People ask, "Why did you break up?" Because we were sick of each other. We argued all the time. We were kids. Brian was 14 or 15. Lyle was 16. I was 18 or 19 and we were struggling how to live and grow up and that band was full of fire, so we had intense arguments.
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the reason we started using the term "hardcore," we were really trying to differentiate between what people were calling punk rock, which was this really Sid Vicious kind of New York or London, kind of posie kind of fashion. It was a fashion thing. That was punk rock. You were supposed to spit on yourself. All this kind of stuff. We thought, "That's a fashion thing." We're hardcore punk rock kids. Have you heard of the term "hard-shelled Baptist"? A hard-shelled Baptist is someone who's relationship with God is so intense they actually don't need to follow - they can smoke and drink and whore around, do anything they want - because that's how hard-shelled they are. So hardcore punk doesn't really need to do any of the stuff that people attribute to punk rock other than be dedicated to what they're doing. So that's why we started using that term. I don't know if DOA was the first band to use that. It was right at the same time.
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My principles are not based on hatred; it's not about hating. I don't hate things. It's not that I'm out to smash the state. I'm just interested in building my own damn state.
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this label was created to document music here in Washington--our friends' bands. I've never wavered from that, and there never was a moment when I considered branching out or looking for exciting new acts. If you look to the history of this label, there were years when we put out 20 records and there were years when we put out one. It really depends on the flow of what was happening here. Right now, we have three bands on the label, and who knows? Maybe next year there'll be none.
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And here in Washington, because it's such a non-industry town, there was no music scene, and because we weren't taken seriously by anybody, we decided that we would have to take each other and our community seriously. And we were able to create something that had an incredibly lasting effect on us. The people I've been running with I've been running with for many, many, many years. I'm not a religious person, and I'm not too interested in being a part of a religion, but I do like having some sort of communal gathering, and having some sense of peoples. It gives me a lot of energy to have the chance to be around my friends and family and the people here at Dischord and the bands--all these people who have donated their time and energy and commitment to be a part of this. And I feel like I have a responsibility to represent them in a good way, since they have all entrusted me with that. Keep in mind that I don't see Dischord as something that's happening today; I see Dischord as almost a library. Over the years, all these bands, all these people, all these artists have committed their work to Dischord. So I feel that it's very important to continue to represent them in the best way possible. So I guess that's a good enough reason for energy, and also, I'm a bit of a fighter, and I feel like there's stuff that can be done
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When I first wanted to play music, I thought I'd never get to, because it seemed like music--and the whole industry surrounding it--was really for professionals only. And therefore, there's no point in me even trying. And punk rock was... I first started hearing about it in 1978 or '79, and it was like I had discovered this portal, this small window into a world that I knew must exist but could never find. And suddenly, here it was: this place where you could explore all sorts of unconventional ideas and approaches. People were just fucking around with good, creative things, and there are bad and good things going on. But it's important that you can have a place where bad things can be done. This world is not just about the good, and any time you're in a place where only good is being offered, you know that something very evil is working somewhere else. To get things right, you have to be able to make mistakes, and you can't be ashamed of that.
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every penny we made went into a cigar box. We never split our money up. We saved everything, and that money is the money we used to start the label. For us, it was never about making money; it was always about trying to create our own scene, because we wanted something to do. We were bored as fuck. So, finding this sort of thing made me realize that here is an area that is not about getting real.
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"Well, if you want to be in a punk band, you'll have to move to New York." And that's ridiculous. This is for real! In 1979, in Washington, D.C., not only if you wanted to be in a punk band, but if you wanted to be a punk, you had to live in New York. And I thought, "How could this be geography-based?" Since when are anger and boredom and frustration limited to one city? It just doesn't fuckin' make sense to me. So we were, like, "Fuck that. We're just going to start it right here." We just did it. In the early years, there was this sense of always proving to people that they were full of shit.
