9 Comments

So great!! I look forward to every issue!

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Mar 21, 2021Liked by Michael Donaldson

Fantastic piece!

Looking back, I feel fortunate that I worked at one of the labels that helped to define your punk rock dream, so I've seen the working model up close. It was all based on lean principles of business sustainability through continuous improvement. Turns out those years of record label and mail order catalog work were far better and cheaper education than the college I dropped out of so quickly. I have also applied those ideas and ethics into my own business practices and have been very successful even though I am as far removed from the music business as I could have ever imagined being in my life. The label? Still around and doing better than almost all of their peers.

As a result of my experience, I feel your dream can be made reality, but it is not easy. I am very discouraged by the explosion of platforms and how those platforms have created a monolith expression of culture that feels like a global constipation of ideas. I look forward to following you down the rabbit hole as you explore this punk rock dream as a counterweight to platforms as the default setting for the digital diaspora of expression and hopefully hack out a tangible road map for the rest of us.

The reason I say all this is because I never been more artistically creative than in the past year. But I no longer want to use platforms to share my expressions. I don't really have the time to figure out a new road map for disseminating ideas so my ideas remaining on the cutting room floor, which I am okay with because I am old. On the other hand, I'd rather not feel like I am being put out to pasture quite yet, either. Your newsletters have given me a new perspective that I very much appreciate and find them to be extremely valuable reference material, just like those old zines that used to come in the mail when I was a kid.

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Mar 21, 2021Liked by Michael Donaldson

Great read!! Thanks!! The Minutemen were amazing & inspiring--we've been DIYing it ever since!! PS: (Great band picture!!)

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