Skatepunk

Punk Planet has been a source of fairly consistent entertainment and education for me over the last 7 years or more, and they've recently compiled a book of their favorite 25 interviews. It's called "We Owe You Nothing; Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews." If you're into reading stuff from people like Noam Chomsky, Winston Smith, Jem Cohen, Ted Leo, Steve Albini, Henry Rollins and Black Flag, Thurston Moore, Jello Biafra, Los Crudos, and Ian MacKaye, then this book will give you some of the best interviews of these people that I've seen. Here's a completed unauthorized excerpt:

Daniel Sinker/Punk Planet: How else (has your taste for the unorthodox) manifested itself?

Ian Mackaye: How hasn't it manifested itself? Bascially, I've done everything not by the book [laughs]. All through my life I've done things in an unorthodox way. **** When I was a kid, we formed a skateboard team because we liked to skateboard, not because we were particularly good or because we had sponsorship. We just did it. I started skateboarding in the mid-70's and a lot of people thought, "Oh, it's just a sport." But it's not just a sport. Skateboarding was about redefinition. It was like putting on a pair of filtered glasses--every curb, every sidewalk, every street, every wall had a new definition. I saw the world differently than other people. Everything had completely changed because I was a skateboarder. It really helped me understand the idea of redefining what's been given to you. I've always been interested in saying, "Here's what's been presented, now how does it work and how can it work?" Skateboarding was such an important part of that. ****I had given up on playing music by the time I was fourteen or fifteen years old because I wasn't a trained musician. I didn't think I could do it because it seemed that everyone who did it were professionals. That's why punk rock was so important to me. I realized that here was a space that I could operate in the way I wanted to which would never go over with mainstream people whatsoever. To find that space made so much sense to me. It was so much a part of the rebellion that I was feeling with skateboarding. Punk rock seemed like a logical place to go next. ****Ironically, at the time I thought that skateboarding and punk rock never mixed. They totally did not mix in 1979. I stopped skateboarding as much because my skateboarding friends were totally not into punk rock and my punk-rock friends were not into skateboarding. It wasn't for another year or so that skateboarders finally started becoming punk rockers. Now the two are almost synonomous. But at least for a few years, they seemed opposite; they seemed to be at odds with each other. To me, though, there was a totally logical, natural bridge between the two. I was so happy when Tony Alva cut his hair off. I was so pleased. I thought, "Wow, it wasn't just me." That made it seem more logical.

Ian MacKaye Interview Excerpt Check Out