Trick question. They’re all the best.
I loaned my Fugazi collection to a friend for a while, just recently got them all back. I stood outside for a few minutes tonite looking at the lunar eclipse, in the coldest air mass in the hemisphere according to the radio (it’s actually warmer tonite than it was, I shouldn’t complain; this morning, however, was way the fuck too cold). Then I came back in to do dishes before having a cup of tea (lovely rose tea from the hippie-and-yuppie co-op near my house which I loathe and which induces a bit of self-loathing for my shopping there, and an additional bit for caring; what can I say, they have good produce).
I was in a bit of a mood. I put on Red Medicine to lift that mood. (The mood was something along the lines of “what in the hell am I doing in graduate school?” but not as a sincere question, rather as a rhetorical question, as in – I know what the hell I’m doing in graduate school: I’m getting old and losing my hair and getting back aches and worsening knee pain and dealing with an institution I dislike and people who annoy me and tremendous pretentions and I’m getting paid very little and I’m not having a baby with my wife and I’m not living where I want to and I’m not playing music and I’m not seeing a lot of the people I love including the ones who live fifteen fucking minutes away from me at least by car anyway and I’m not seeing live music or getting excited or getting tattoos or having as much time as I’d like for political and organizational work, instead I’m blogging and grumpily washing dishes with music turned up in a small apartment that I don’t like – and as in – I know what the hell I’m doing in graduate school: I got an economically useless college degree and a lot of debts then I went to work in so-called “nonprofit social justice organizations” [all four words are false; they’re for profit, antisocial, unjust, and disorganized] then I started working in the labor movement and I loved it like an addiction and one I would go back to in a heartbeat if, heaven forbid, my marriage were to end in some way, and when the contradiction between working in the labor movement and being in my relationship with my partner came to a head I left the work, though it took me too long, embarassingly too long, to make that decision, the right decision; from there I had no skills or job experience and a lot of debt and a relationship to rebuild and some friendships to restore as well, and after two years of economic tailspin graduate school became an attractive option [I recently met a comrade of mine in person who I’ve known electronically for some time, he lives in the UK and had a similar experience except he went back into the labor movement instead of going back to school], and this assessment is not one which makes graduate school look good; so yeah, a bit of a mood. Hence the Red Medicine.) Red Medicine is a fantastic album. Of course, it’s a Fugazi album.
The song “Bed for the Scraping” makes me want to learn to play guitar, I mean, I know how to play guitar but I mean _really_ _play_ guitar, like Fugazi can. The rest of the record didn’t do it for me as much, though. That was weird. Like reconnecting with a dear old friend but not connecting. You love them, but you don’t feel the old feeling. That sucked. It lifted the mood while still sucking at the same time. Weird.
So I put on Steady Diet of Nothing. Steady Diet of Nothing is a fantastic album. Of course, it’s a Fugazi album. (Speaking of fantastic music, let me tell you, go buy something by Chicago’s fine Shot Baker. They’re great. I’d seen flyers for them around when I was in Chicago but never saw them, not until they played here in Minneapolis with Naked Raygun. They were really good live, and this is a band who was opening for the Methadones and Naked Raygun, live bands who make it easy to forget the other bands. The cd I got is good too. Melodic and tough. The singer sometimes does 80s hardcore shouty parts, and mostly does a shouty-singy thing. Kind of reminds me of Youth Brigade’s singer combined with the singer from SNFU. Check it out. And I like the lyrics. There’s a song about moving out of Illinois which makes me sad because I wish I still lived there. There’s another song with a chorus of “I don’t like it, I can’t stand it, I can’t help it,” which the first time through has a nice dramatic delivery – you think the singer’s talking about something in the world and really it’s about his own behavior. Also includes a final breakdown with a rousing set of classic Chicago punk rock whoa’s.) I first heard Steady Diet when I was 14 or 15. My friend Pat got me into them, and a lot of other good music. That means I’ve been listening to Fugazi for around half my life.
I had never heard anything like Steady Diet before. It was like … musical, but not like other music. I remember repeatedly having the “how did they make that sound?!” response, and yet that sound was always a good one, even – especially! – when very dissonant. I tried repeatedly to see them live – I thought it was so cool that it was always cheap to see them play live, that was part of the mythology, though also true and to their credit – but it never worked out. I can’t remember all the complications. One of them was when I was 18 or 19 and I actually had tickets to a show of theirs 2 or 4 hours away. I ended up staying up all night the night before and after staggering around all day I decided that I would probably crash if I drove so I skipped the show. I finally did see them at the Congress Theater in Chicago, with Colin. It was fantastic. (I saw the Descendents there another time, with Handsome and Less than Jake, and Guttermouth who really suck. I think Jim got his glass broken at that show and we hung out with either Tyler who later got “Hott Mama” tattooed on his ass and showed me at a Lawrence Arms show in Milwaukee – a tattoo done, small world, by a friend of my friend Tim – or we hung out with Darren whose name I never remember except for just now but who I still sometimes see when I’m back in Illinois at rock shows and who was at the Lawrence Arms show where I choked a stoned dumb ass in a sudden fit of anger over which I’m still mortified. In my head I can’t remember if it was Tyler or Darren at the Descendents show. How odd. Jim, do you remember? [The Congress Theater was right next door to where the Autonomous Zone was for a while in Chicago; I never went there really except once in a great while. I found the subculturey vibe offputting. I went to only one event there I think, a performance by Reverend Billy of the First Church of Stop Shopping. I remember he said he wanted to be “post-new” which I thought was hilarious. I went to one other A-Zone event, when it was at a different locale. It was an event on gender and cross dressing during something called, I think, Midwest Ladyfest. I would have made a decently attractive woman given all the proper costuming and make up, if I had remember to shave first. The not shaving plus my build – the jaw and shoulders – made me I’d say only a 6 out of 10. Shaving would have easily made me a 7, possibly a 7 1/2.])
I remember Guy Piccioto (sp?) talked about the World Bank before they played “Public Witness Program.” He was kind of mumbling and rambling and hard to understand at first. He was asking the audience who had been at the World Bank protests in DC where Fugazi is from and most of us – at least the people I was with – didn’t understand him. Either most people in the crowd didn’t understand him or hadn’t been at the protest because most people didn’t respond, myself included even though I had been there. He was incensed about that, which after I figured out what he was talking about struck me as a bit funny. Fugazi played a really long and really great encore, which I don’t think was like a planned rock and roll encore because they took forever to come out and the venue had turned the lights on and stuff and a lot of people had left but the remaining people kept chanting and clapping and stomping their feet. I mentioned to my wife tonite that the first time I heard the refrain “It’s time to meet your maker” I had no idea what they were singing until I read the lyric book. The closest my ear and mind could come was “it’s time to be Jamaican” which I have to admit I always think of every time I hear that refrain to this day. She said “maybe instead it could be ‘its time to be Shot Baker’,” which is funny. And it’s definitely time to be Shot Baker. I wish I was Shot Baker. Maybe when I grow up.
I’ve always been partial to “End Hits.”
I think we’ve talked about this before…but…I vote for steady diet of nothing. I too had a wtf experience, in a good way, when I first heard the opening 30 seconds of the album. Guy chanting exeunt over and over (“exyouenta” of “haychoocha” with an accent on the last a) and I had no idea what it meant but it was beautiful. I also thought the line was “its time to meet Jamaicans” for like 5 years of my life. My comrade Daraka has an interesting post on fugazi here: http://hoverbike.blogspot.com/2006/03/fugazi-and-politics-of-communication.html
Hmm, I think I agree with Steady Diet. Definitely the most distinctively Fugazi. In On the Kill Taker too, which is not really representative and not often mentioned as the best, but I’m pretty partial to it as the first one I got into.
I was really into these guys in high school too, and beyond. To this day I think the time I saw them in the student union at Victoria University in Wellington is the best gig I’ve ever seen. As for whether the encore was planned – I know their regular strategy during gigs was to take turns deciding which track to play next – there was no setlist, the leader for each song just starts playing and the rest have to work out what it is and join in. Very cool!
hey y’all,
I have a real hard time with sounds distracting me, particularly sounds that include words – like songs or people talking, TV, etc. So I have an instrumental playlist that I use to help me tune out that stuff so I can read in places which are not an empty soundproof bunker. I put all the Fugazi instrumentals off the records up through either Red Medicine or End Hits on there. Good stuff. I still need to buy their instrumental album. They should make more of those, I really like the instrumentals.
I think if I had to pick just one – like if I was going to be marooned on an island and was only allowed to save one Fugazi album – I’d probably pick Repeater. I’m not sure though, they’re all so good.
Matt, I’ve always particularly liked Guy P’s pronunciation in “Latin Roots.” “Your Latin Roots-ah!”
take care,
Nate
ps- Speaking of Fugazi, turns out there’s an EP I never got – “Furniture” http://www.amazon.com/Furniture-Fugazi/dp/B00005OMBK/ref=pd_bbs_12?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1203691919&sr=8-12
and there’s a book of Fugazi photos just out http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Your-Eyes-Open-Photographs/dp/0964191687/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203691919&sr=8-4
pps- Part of the reason I stick with the “what in the hell ellipse awkardly phrased question” title format is to avoid having to think of titles. If I were to think of titles, however, this post would be entitled any of “Nate #512” or “Post 512 is not a fuck you post, I’ll save that post for later on” or “This is not a Fugazi post.” Suggestions of other Fugazi puns for possible post titles which I won’t actaully use would be much appreciated.
I saw Fugazi probably a half dozen times, including a couple of those shows they did every few years at the Congress in the early part of this decade. The first time I saw them in Chicago was up at the old Rainbow Roller Rink (now sadly demolished and replaced by a yuppie condo complex aimed at upscale gays and lesbians — “Rainbow Village,” get it?), and we were all hoping that we’d be able to rent roller skates and skate around while Fugazi played. Sadly, that didn’t happen.
But the best Fugazi shows I ever saw were the first two, at First Avenue in Minneapolis in 1993, when they were touring for In On the Killtaker. They played three straight nights, and I somehow scrounged up rides from Northfield to Minneapolis for two of the three. Tickets were (of course) $5.00, but I was on the permanent guest list at First Ave at that time cuz the record store I worked at in Northfield was an authorized ticket outlet for them. (At that point First Ave was saying fuck you to the expanding Ticketmaster empire; you could only buy tickets at the box office or at one of two dozen record and book stores scattered around the Cities and outlying towns like Northfield.)
Anyway, Fugazi brought with them two sets of high-powered flood lights, the kind that highway construction crews use to work the night-shift. The brightest lights I’ve ever seen, and the only shows I ever saw at First Ave that didn’t feature the house lighting. The lights were placed on either side of the stage, elevated maybe fifteen feet off the stage and pointed down into the center, so the band members were bathed in the purest white light you can imagine. They couldn’t possibly have seen the crowd.
I have no memory of what songs they played, or of any lectures that might have been given by Ian or Guy. But the shows made such a huge impression on me that they remain to this day (compressed into a single event) on my list of 10 all time best shows.
Sorry, no good puns for you…
hey Mike,
I’m jealous as hell.
You lived in Northfield MN?
take care,
Nate
I’ve always liked their (not) tshirt more than their music. *shrug*
I go back and forth between “In on the Kill Taker” and “Red Medicine” (mostly for the instrumentals). On balance I lean towards “In on the Kill Taker.” “Repeater + 3 Songs” has an extra special place in my heart, being the first albumn of theirs that I listened to. You’re right though, they are all the best (except “End Hits” which has some great songs, but is not the best).
I saw them I think three times back in the day (1991-1995ish) at Frist Ave. My clearest memories of the show were of all of them, but especially Guy, completely saturated with sweat by the end of (or usually just 2/3s of the way through) the show. Sweatiest skinny boys ever. Also the openers never made sense, except one year when it was Nation of Ullysses. One time First Ave had booked a fucking comedy hypnotist!
You are not what you post.
hey Jpool, here it is almost a year later and somehow I’d missed your comment, I just stumbled back on to it randomly. I’m sorry. You’ll probly never see this reply. That’s too bad. Especially cuz you totally have the best Fugazi pun in the thread.
take care,
Nate
well its a while since the last comment on this post, but I have recently rediscovered Fugazi after maybe a decade of not listening to them at all…. and they blow me away like they did when I was 16. Maybe more, because I can appreciate them with a little more maturity, and see how they fit into history a little better.
My favorite album? In On the Kill Taker. The most powerful yet nuanced album. Maybe it lacks the most memorable songs, but it makes up for in raw guts, energy and production.
I guess I might be influenced in that the only time I have ever seen Fugazi was in Singapore, in 1993 or so, when they were touring for that album. One of the best concerts I have ever been to, and definitely the strangest. Singapore at the time was a terribly repressed country. A benevolent dictatorship controlled by one political party for 30 years (and still is). No free speech, and draconian laws. Performance art, of all things, was banned when I was there. In fact, the government loved banning things. Exactly one week before Fugazi played at a tiny community centre in a far off suburb, Henry Rollins played at a bigger venue in the city. While I’m not a fan, it was mental. Slam-dancing, crowd-surfing, Rollins punching and kicking the fans and the next day my best friend was pictured on the back of the main tabloid, crowd-surfing in front of the stage, with the headline “WOULD YOU LET YOUR CHILDREN DO THIS?”
Within a few days it was all over the news, and the government just as quickly banned slam-dancing and (as they said) “all forms of anti-social dancing”. I’m not joking.
One week later, Fugazi arrived, and I guess the government had been keeping tabs on the indie scene because there were more police than fans in attendance. Police vans, dogs, riot cops, the works. The actual gig was in a gymnasium, and if my memory is correct, I remember that there was a line of cops, locked arm in arm, along the second floor balustrade that made a ring all the way around the gymnasium. And the gym was only maybe a third full of fans…. who had heard of Fugazi in Singapore? Not that many.
Ian Mackaye came out and explained that there would be no inappropriate dancing so “find a new way to dance” and that the lights had to stay on and that they had to stop exactly at nine. Everything was so tense you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. And I think we all wanted to see something riotous happen…. but Ian said, hey, if everybody could just behave then they wouldn’t need to waste time talking between songs and “everyone can have a good time”. And that’s what happened. And it was amazing. And when they stopped silent in the middle of songs, as they like to do, we all stopped silent as well, in the full lights of the gym, and stared at the cops. By the end everything was very intense… but the last song Fugazi played was Sweet and Low, from In On the Kill Taker….. and we all behaved and smiled lovingly at the (literally) hundred or so police standing in a ring around us.