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Mac McCaughan has a superhuman love for records.
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My husband Zeke doesn’t really like the Spark and in general doesn’t pay attention to it.
For my interview with Mac, though, he gave me very specific instructions. “You better ask Mac about balance,” he told me. After having toured with Mac on occasion, he was deeply struck by how Mac managed to write songs, front Superchunk and Portastatic, paint, be a father, run Merge Records (the coolest independent label on the planet) and still sell merchandise after a rock show in Philadephia. “Just ask him how he does all that. That’s what I want to know.”
Mac has a superhuman love for records. That’s how he does it. He lights up talking about music. Mac loves music the way people who truly love their work do – even better for the gritty parts, even more when no one is looking, like it’s never really crossed their minds that it is work at all. Whether there are 300 miles to the next gig, or 7-inchs to be assembled by hand in the middle of the night, his pulse forward is always looking, even impatient, for the next song. He talks about demos and writing and record covers as passionately and easily as anyone you’ll ever talk to. And when I asked him what I should listen to, it was like I’d turned on the best radio station ever. Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records, his new book with Merge co-founder and Superchunk bassist Laura Ballance, is the most complete love letter to being in a band that I’ve ever read.
You’ve probably heard theories about how you have to hustle this or grease that and compromise all sorts of corners to succeed in this world. But that is all nonsense. And don’t tell them to Mac. He is our living proof that all you really need to do is follow what you love with your superhuman heart.
Thanks, Mac.
PS
Radio Mac
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