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“Do you know what I call an unplayed record?” asks Ian MacKaye. “A fucking piece of garbage. It’s paper and plastic. So, if I make something, I want to make sure it adds value. “
Thankfully, as the co-founder and co-owner of Dischord Records, MacKaye did the exact opposite of the indie dump. The Washington DC label will turn 40 next month, having created one of the largest punk discographies in the world while remaining fiercely egalitarian. They don’t sell merchandise, just music, and even at low prices: a socialist and ascetic stance in the corporate United States. MacKaye once told malcontent slamdancers, about the lack of security at a concert by his band Fugazi: “It’s more fun to look at each other than to pay the people who take care of us,” summing up his entire socioeconomic ethics. . “We started and continue to exist on the fringes,” he says now.
Dischord was founded in 1980 by teenager MacKaye plus Nathan Strejcek, Geordie Grindle and Jeff Nelson to release their punk band Teen Idles. “No one else would have let him out,” says MacKaye, now a funny 58-year-old. His parents’ address was on his sleeve; 1,000 copies were printed, with the covers cut and glued by hand. “This is the real record industry,” says MacKaye. “We sat together and made records.”
Guy Picciotto, who played in Fugazi with MacKaye, remembers the impact. “It was electric,” he recalls. “The guys who release music demystified the process, but because it was such a claim, the subject matter was heightened. It was different to keep that record. I had this strange pride, even though I had nothing to do with it. “However, there was some resistance in the ideologically pure punk scene.” Releasing a record and monetizing the music, some people looked suspicious, “says MacKaye.” So we declared that all the money we made would go to document other bands. . “
Inspired by local hardcore punk heroes Bad Brains, MacKaye and Nelson’s next band, Minor Threat, arrived in a whirlwind of screaming, sweating, and banging dancing. MacKaye hated the cliché of the profligate rock star, and his refusal to participate in alcoholism, drug use and promiscuous sex – inadvertently, he suggests – sparked an abstinence-based cultural movement known as the straight edge. “Music is sacred,” he said. “It’s a fiction that you have to be drunk, crazy or using drugs. I don’t buy it. “
“I didn’t drink or do drugs and it was hard to find people like that,” says Amy Pickering, who has worked at Dischord for 22 years. “At 16, I discovered a subculture that looked like a family.”
Dischord began releasing records from a burgeoning local scene bristling with dizzying guitar beats, guttural howls and rapid-fire drums. It was in a unique position in Washington. “The whole city operates in the shadow of government money and there’s not a lot of sunlight in that cover,” says MacKaye. “So the things that grow up here are really stubborn.”
The label has been run by volunteers for years, operating in a shared house known as the Dischord House. Pickering ended the era of teenage boys on its first day by quickly removing the “no skirts allowed” sign. The bands rehearsed sitting in a low-ceilinged basement, while every night they were pulled to assemble records. “At night, we used to take cardboard from people’s trash to make sleeves,” recalls Pickering. They also won a recycling award from the county. MacKaye had three jobs to keep things afloat. “It was three years before we took the money off the label,” he says. “We didn’t start paying ourselves until after eight.”
By 1983, the city’s punk shows had turned violent and skinhead-infested. “We were tired of super aggressive people,” Nelson recalls. Many key bands, including Minor Threat, disbanded, but a new group soon emerged, ditching hardcore punk and embracing the melody. Picciotto’s band Rites of Spring was key, as were Beefeater and Embrace. The term emotional hardcore, or emo, was put on them, eventually creating an entire teenage subculture – although bands rejected it.
This period of musical evolution, which put an end to violence during performances as political engagement intensified, was entirely thought through. Pickering sent anonymous notes in the post saying: “Get ready, it’s Revolution Summer”. Some considered the scene excessively serious or preaching; noise-rock group Pussy Galore had a song called Fuck You, Ian MacKaye. “People accused us of being hamsters,” says Nelson. “I suppose that’s true, but we wanted to work with people who made great music and were kind.”
Dischord’s workload has grown as the Fugazi on endless touring and their fierce live shows of dusty spring-and-release tension – where you might see Picciotto slam himself mid-set against a basketball hoop – earned a huge following. Hundreds of thousands of albums were sold and the label flourished. Chris Richards, the Washington Post pop critic who played in the dance-punk band Dischord Q and Not U, remembers the 1990s scene as “magnetic, a gravitational force.” Fugazi’s concert politics of all ages ushered in a new generation. “At 15, the bar for entry was zero,” Richards says. “This took my breath away. You introduce yourself and you are part of it. In my young mind the fact that music and community are inextricably linked has cemented itself. “
By now, in the wake of Nirvana’s global success, big money was being thrown into the underground scenes. The Fugazi were offered $ 10 million from the Atlantic but they passed and stayed on Dischord, charging $ 5 for the concerts. “If we had signed there would have been no band,” says Picciotto. “We worked because we were in the driver’s seat and if someone else was in the driver’s seat we would have crashed into a wall.”
Contracts and lawyers were never used and MacKaye says he “never got a discharge from the bad band.” In 40 years, only two remain for the majors: Shudder to Think and Jawbox. MacKaye remains friends with them, but Pickering remembers some friction. “It was creepy, because the word ‘sale’ was on everyone’s tongue the whole time,” he says. “It looked like they were abandoning ship.”
Craig Wedren of pop-trending Shudder to Think argues that his ambitions have always been there. “We wanted to bring our music into the mainstream,” he says. “There have been a lot of negative reactions, but if you’re cutting off relationships because we signed with Sony, that means you’re not listening to the music. Those people were more interested in philosophy. “
Despite the dedication to low prices – in 2020, digital $ 7, CD $ 10, vinyl $ 15 – and high principles, it hasn’t always been a united front at Dischord. “Ian and I are like an old married couple,” says Nelson. “There’s no lack of love and respect, but we couldn’t be more different. I’m a graphic designer, so I love commercials and TV commercials, but Ian hates all of those things. We hit our heads a ridiculous amount. “
MacKaye almost finished the job around 2007 and another job has often been suggested to him: “People say I should apply,” he laughs. “But I’m not a big enough asshole.” However, he soon had a change of heart. “I realized that I was supported by the trust of hundreds of people,” he says of the label’s bands. “They’ve entrusted Dischord with the care of this music and I have a custody responsibility.”
He also hired a private investigator to track down Void’s band members, who had disbanded in 1984 but weren’t cashing their royal checks. When the investigator found one of them, it turned out that he was sticking to the original agreement: that all the money would go to release the next Dischord record, even if the band weren’t making one themselves. “For 30 years he lived on this premise,” says MacKaye. “It was really touching.” He convinced him to start cashing checks.
Dischord still releases new albums – MacKaye Coriky’s band is a 2020 release – but mostly focuses on the archive, including Fugazi’s sprawling live series of over 750 recordings. The label tends to peel off and stick. “His legacy is incalculable,” says Richards. “I’m 41 and still learning what Dischord and Fugazi taught me. It’s a beautiful model for what music and community can be. “
Wedren thinks the same way: “There is magic, genius and beauty there, along with viral decency. I take it for my work in Hollywood as a composer, and what better place to apply the principles of Dischord? “
So is Dischord a role model for contemporary labels or the product of a bygone era? “People should self-determine and figure out what’s right for them,” says MacKaye. “Now everything is less, in terms of sales, but the music will never die. It will take on new forms. Children are developing secret languages through music and will find ways to spread them. Be it plastic or their devices; whatever the form, there are ways to do it that seem ethical, meaningful and right. “
Dischord won’t commemorate the label’s 40th anniversary, but, reflecting on its legacy, MacKaye looks back on a box set that came out after 20. “When we started, we were told we were too idealistic and not a real business,” he says. “People were mocking and making fun of. After 20 years, I wanted to ask: Are we still fucking real? So I’d just like to double that. If you ring a bell and 40 years later people can still hear the sound, then that’s already something. “
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