P: The business paradigm of Dischord Records is something to be admired. Would you ever think of teaching a course in business management if asked?

IM: I don’t know about that. There all kinds of businesses that run on an ethical principle. I think that we get a bit more ink, I think we get more talk about because we exist in the music world.

P: The music world especially. Expansionism in the music world, you’ve expanded a great deal but perhaps not with the intent of...

IM: That’s natural evolution. The difference is this; there is a philosophy in business that if you are not growing you’re dying. That notion is something which I fundamentally reject. My position is that if you create something that people appreciate and want to be apart of, that if you make it available to people they will be more than happy to shoulder some of the responsibility that it takes to keep it going. It does cost money to make records and it costs money to record them. But if you are ethical about it, and think about it not just trying to grow all the time, to blow things up basically artificially- then people kind of want to go on for the ride, to be a part of that.

In terms of the label- we are a much more well known label now than we were ten years ago, and of course much more so than twenty years ago. There is a natural evolution. We are the outlet, the creative outlet. At the same time there is waxing and waning, like the seasons. If there is not that flow and ebb eventually the purpose will die and the label will suck. There are times when we release only two records and other times when we release a lot of records.

P: I just spoke to the Black Eyes , and I’ve spoken to El Guapo - you are taking people mostly from the Washington DC community, no?

IM: Yeah, but I think it’s a bit more about the underground. Yeah largely it’s from Washington, its always been Washington but it’s more about the underground, the different factions, and areas there in.

P: Dischord appears to be widening its musical genres...

IM: I think we’ve always been like that. Very early in the label there was what some might call the Dischord sound. All of us are best friends; we are all playing fast and such. We put out a box set and you’ll hear that sound as early as 1985. But I think we run the gamete, if you listen to the box set you’ll hear that we were varied from the beginning.  As of recently El Guapo strikes me as a band that has a total sense of the label. The community we draw from are people that generally don’t require much.

P: After 22 years who comprises your audience now?

IM: Whoever is interested. I try to work on things that interest me. If other people find it interesting that’s great. If they don’t that’s okay too. It doesn’t make any difference. Obviously it makes a difference if people don’t want to buy the records because that makes it pretty hard to put out the records. You have to kind of make a bit of an investment. I just put out a record by this guy named Don Zatarra (check spelling) on this different label Northern Liberties (a side label that features even more obscure music). Don did a solo record that I think is fantastic. But I know that people might not be much into it, so I made 500 copies its going pretty slow, but I don’t care for me it was interesting I wanted to document it, and I did.  When it comes to other bands The Black Eyes, El Guapo, Q and not U, they’re just great bands and they’re my friends, I wanted to make the records. I think the music is interesting, I think they are challenging, I think they are challenging themselves and I feel it represents a kind of an approach to the art that is really sort of missing in most of the music and entertainment world. It’s a very middle class approach to music; the people aren’t trying to be famous- they also aren’t wallowing in their own self-image. Artists do spend a lot of time sort of waiting for someone to discover them, you know?

interview conducted in 2004 - it was the first interview to be in Provokator. By Marika - thank you to Ian MacKaye for his time (and for calling Provokator in Prague from Dischord office in Washington D.C.) and Michael Wareham Dean for the introduction

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