Creativity Quote by Greg Ginn

Ginn’s line lands like a dare, because it’s aimed at the soft underbelly of an industry that sells rebellion while insulating itself from actual risk. “Scaring” here isn’t about cheap provocation; it’s about leverage. He’s accusing musicians and scenes of letting labels feel comfortable again, of accepting the rules of a business built to launder danger into product. The target isn’t taste so much as power: the “kind of people” at record companies are gatekeepers trained to metabolize novelty, smooth it out, and resell it on schedule.

The subtext is classic hardcore-era frustration: punk was supposed to be a disruptive force, but by the time Black Flag and their peers were grinding across the country, the machinery of A&R, distribution, and radio had already learned how to domesticate chaos. Ginn’s phrasing is blunt, almost managerial in its clarity: if the people with budgets and contracts aren’t uneasy, then the art isn’t pressing where it hurts. He’s not asking for edgier lyrics; he’s calling for an adversarial posture that makes executives nervous about control, optics, and precedent.

Context matters because Ginn built his own infrastructure (SST) precisely because the mainstream pipeline treated abrasive music as a novelty to be curated, not a force to be answered. The line reads as both critique and instruction: stop auditioning for approval, start acting like you don’t need it. In a culture where “alternative” became a market segment, fear becomes a metric of authenticity.