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WE SPEAK THE WAY

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BREATHE HOW FUGAZI REVOLUTIONIZED INDEPENDENT ROCK

COMPILED BY BENJ GLEEKSMAN

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Introduction IN IN EARLY EARLY JANUARY JANUARY 1988 1988 AND AND AFTER AFTER ONLY ONLY TEN TEN SHOWS, SHOWS, FUGAZI FUGAZI DECIDED DECIDED TO TO GO GO INTO INTO INNER INNER EAR EAR STUDIO STUDIO TO TO SEE SEE WHAT WHAT THEIR THEIR MUSIC MUSIC SOUNDED SOUNDED LIKE LIKE ON ON TAPE. TAPE.

Starting a New Chapter Punk’s 10-year anniversary brought with it a wave of change in the circle of independent music. Scenes were splitting up, and bands who had subscribed to the formula of loud guitars and fast beats were experimenting with new things — metal, pop, rap and even funk. Was hardcore dead? Or was it eveloving into something else? This big transformation was most prevalent in Washington D.C., home of the Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and global politics. Between 1985 and 1988, D.C.’s famed Inner Ear Studio had seen many of the hardcore bands come and go as their members matured, outgrew angst and gained life responsibilities. At that time, the studio was still located in the basement of engineer Don Zientara’s family house. It was a familiar space as almost all of the members of Fugazi had recorded there with their previous bands (Teen Idles, Minor Threat, Deadline, Insurrection, Rites of Spring, Skewbald, Embrace, and One Last Wish).

Joey Picuri (aka Joey P), who would later become one of Fugazi’s longtime sound engineers, joined the band for the initial tracking.

The sessions only lasted a couple of days, but tour dates and indecision about the tape would delay the final mix for another two months.

Though the band was at first pleased with the results, it soon became clear that this tape would remain a demo as new songs were being written and the older songs were evolving and changing shape while the band was out on tour. It was decided that the session would be passed out free as cassette copies, with the band actively encouraging people to share the recording. In the spring, Fugazi went out on its first U.S. tour and the rest, as they say, is history...

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Table of Contents SECTION 1 Chapter 1: The History............................................... 8 Chapter 2: Band profiles............................................ 20

SECTION 2 Chapter 3: Fugazi Timeline.......................................... 26 Chapter 4: Discography.............................................. 28 Chapter 5: Band Interviews.......................................... 34

SECTION 3 Chapter 6: Fan quotes............................................... 68 Chapter 7: Member Projects.......................................... 80 Chapter 8: Credits.................................................. 82 Index............................................................... 84

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Section 1

INTRO

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The History Band Profiles

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The

CHAPTER 1

History IF IF HISTORY HISTORY IS IS KIND KIND TO TO FUGAZI, FUGAZI, THEIR THEIR RECORDS RECORDS WON’T WON’T BE BE OVERSHADOWED OVERSHADOWED

BY THEIR THEIR REPUTATION REPUTATION AND AND METHODS METHODS OF OF OPERATION. OPERATION. BY

From the Beginning Fugazi was the next project of Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye and Rites of Spring’s Guy Picciotto, following the dissolution of their bands. The two songwriters abstracted hardcore punk-rock into a theatrical form of music that is as deeply committed politically and ethically as it is aesthetically. MacKaye, a moral ascetic and dissolute artist possessed by an otherworldly force, was the driving engine, a Jim Morrison for the hardcore generation, propelled by a dissonant and thundering accompaniment. The first two EPs, Fugazi(1988) and Margin Walker (1989), which make up the album 13 Songs (1990), unleash monstrous psychological tension to fight a devouring existential fever. The terrorist attack carried out against society by Repeater (1990) is more cathartic than destructive, and even presents a Zen-like aspect. In the album, the two leaders and their phenomenal rhythm section devise countless tricks to keep the tension as spasmodic as possible. Having acquired a new musical language, he bends it like a chunk of clay.

Steady Diet Of Nothing (1991), arguably their sonic masterpiece, replaces frenzy with cinematics: songs are always in motion, typically in an obsessive crescendo, fractured and deformed by numerous discontinuities. In On The Kill Taker (1993) makes the package more accessible by bringing out the melody that was hidden behind the pandemonium and polishing the guitar-vocals counterpoint. Red Medicine (1995) is the transfiguration of Fugazi: after MacKaye and Picciotto mastered the new art of storytelling that they had invented, the two now proceed to turn it into a classical language. The sophisticated puzzle of timbres and arrangements, the manic dynamics of pauses and rhythms, the acrobatic repertoire of shy litanies and strident rants have forever changed the context of hardcore music.

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Complete Bio Over the course of their career, Fugazi were

This arose as a reaction to the theatrics of

Ian was increasingly rousing and continually

one of the most important groups in punk

rock. Ian MacKaye had a strict moral code

striving in his existential “preaching”. As if

rock story, aside from being the pride and joy

but an unrestrained artistic sensibility; he

possessed by supernatural spirits (like Jim

of the music scene in Washington, DC at the

was also one of the more polished intellectu-

Morrison), MacKaye pulled from all his

time. For a decade, the group remained a

als of punk-rock. The group was, in fact, the

resources, like an actor consumed in an

bulwark of honesty and devotion, as well as

objective of the underground career of

engaging Shakespearian solo. MacKaye

intelligence and inspiration, for other bands.

MacKaye, one originated from his experience

recorded another single under the alias Egg

Their ethical and political contributions were

with short-lasting but influential group

Hunt before being joined by Guy Picciotto,

on par with their artistic contributions.

Minor Threat. In 1993 the group disbanded.

the former band leader of Rites Of Spring,

Fugazi transformed hardcore rock into a

MacKaye gathered together what was left of

and forming Fugazi (a Vietnam-era slang

means of expression that was as adaptable as

the group Faith (another storied group from

expression for “fucked up situation”), a

it was powerful — not much different from

the area), and formed the group Embrace.

quartet complete with 2 singers, drummer

what Jim Morrison was doing with psyche-

The songs recorded in 1985 finally appeared

Brendan Canty (also from Rites Of Spring)

delic rock. The group’s theatrical sound has

in the album Embrace (Dischord, 1987), and

and bassist Joe . The EP Fugazi (Dischord,

no equal within the annals of the genre.

unveiled a revolutionary type of performer.

1988) is a milestone in hardcore punk.

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The adolescent uneasiness of Minor Threat becomes an existential Although one can sense the influence of the Clash, the sound is fever that burns and corrodes. MacKaye’s performance was set in an infinitely more violent and fragmented. Bulldog Frog merges the emoapocalyptic scenario where emotions become exasperated in a tionalism of “emo-core” with the walls of sound of the MC5, repeating beastly manner and enormous tensions cuts into the psyche. Equally, a verse with a psychotic tone as one would a magic spell and then the primitive and naive hardcore sound of Minor Threat passes and exploded with a deafening emphasis. The most serene moment on the becomes a complex and diversified type of rock music, the rhythms album is Bad Mouth, which is conducted with a reggae-like pace and broken in the breathless lament of an agony without end. The a power-pop riff. Also different is Burning, one of the most sinister sarcastic shouting of MacKaye and the “war cry” makes up the and mysterious tracks, on which the lyrics are sung in a vibrant singular call-and-response in the general pandemonium of Waiting manner with a surreal accompaniment from a bass that continuously Room after which the rhythm section creates a tense climate through repeats the same sinister sound and a keyboard that makes rhythms a pounding staccato from the bass and a near violent, hiccupping with chopsticks, while the guitar only occasionally contributes with a syncopation of the keyboard (it ‘s one of the group’s sure masterpieces). mostly casual and somewhat subdued distortion.

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The sound of the quartet is weakened at times by the guitar.

Surprisingly, this unevenness is what gives the sound its unprecedented charge and dynamic. The guitar dominates with its dissonances, its repetitions and “raga” Give Me The Care, a rock track influenced by Sonic Youth, and Suggestions, a quiet blues that renovates Led Zeppelin and Cream with various and abrasive punk-rock and reggae sounds.

The next EP, Margin Walker (Dischord, 1989), is more timid.

Hardcore resurges in the title track and in Lockdown, while it is weakened in And The Same, an experiment reminiscent of Sonic Youth and Gang Of Four. The essence of Fugazi’s music is profoundly urban: the neurotic litanies and dissonant guitar contrasts with the agility and fluidity of the rhythm section, and in a sense prudently represent the alienation, the anger, and violence of the individual within the apparent order of society. In some sense the dramatic and true apex of the disc is Promises, a spiritual blues for mechanically-screamed zombie noises in an apocalyptic atmosphere. Each of these 2 EPs was compiled on the album 13 Songs(Dischord, 1990).

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THE ALBUM NOT ONLY INVENTED A UNIQUE EXPLOSIVE AND CATASTROPHIC SOUND THE ALBUM NOT ONLY INVENTED A UNIQUE EXPLOSIVE AND CATASTROPHIC SOUND BUT ALSO BECAME THE SOUNDTRACK OF A REVOLUTIONARY AND PURGING BUT ALSO BECAME THE SOUNDTRACK OF A REVOLUTIONARY AND PURGING MOOD, AND THEREFORE GAVE IT A DIMENSION BEYOND THE EXISTENTIAL — THE METAPHYSICAL. MOOD, AND THEREFORE GAVE IT A DIMENSION BEYOND THE EXISTENTIAL — THE METAPHYSICAL.

Next Stages The third and preparatory EP, Three Songs (1990), contains

The CD edition also contains the tracks from Three Songs; It is

another of the group’s classics: Song Number One, on which the

one of the most revolutionary discs of rock music. The album

maturation of MacKaye on guitar is evident and the two

not only rails against society but does so with an almost Zen-like

vocalists counter each other gloriously, MacKaye rough and

attitude. The album not only invented a unique explosive and

hoarse, Picciotto savage and resounding, while the guitar sets

catastrophic sound but also became the true soundtrack of a

itself afire and rants in riffs increasingly epic, reminiscent of

revolutionary and purging mood, and therefore gave it a dimen-

Jimi Hendrix. The instrumental Joe Number One is an eerie

sion beyond the existential — the metaphysical. Fugazi affirmed

dance, like that of the Fleshtones, in line with their apocalyptic

that they were the equivalent of Bob Dylan for the generation of

vision of an individual continuously crushed by society. And

the 1990s (while, in stark contrast, Nirvana stopped at the exis-

Break-In is the most important instrumental score — fast,

tential dimension). Technically the album is considered to be

fierce, dragging, a concentrate of staccato at breakneck speed

the archetype of all of post-punk, even the benchmark that

and epidermal riffs. “You are not what you own”, “Never mind

inspired all hardcore of the 1990s. Fugazi employs indulging

what’s been selling, it’s what you’re buying” and so on: these are

pauses, glacial accord, ringing of guitar, furious howling, and

the slogans of Repeater (Dischord, 1990), Fugazi’s first album

above all continual changing of scene to accentuate the drama.

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Moral Examples The more “regular” tracks are Merchandise, which fluctuates between heavy metal and reggae, and the tribal instrumental Brendan Number One. The most captivating track is perhaps Turnover, which after an initial excitement finishes in a breathless boogie. The leaders found that the group’s strength, however, was in the tracks that, musically speaking, impart a greater sense of the catastrophic terror and the solitude of the individual: in Sieve-Fisted Find, with agitation worthy of the first Pere Ubu albums, in Styrofoam, completely shouted as if in mortal agony, and in Blueprint, a mixture of the Velvet Underground, Stooges, and AC/DC. The earthy syncopation of Greed, and the angry heavy metal rumble of Two-Beats Off, all form the grammar of the language of dramatic tension. Even though the confusion is excessive here and there, the vehemence still reigns supreme and redeems even the baseless drunk (as, for example, in the title track). The album sold more than 100,000 copies and almost turned the group into a record company. The fans saw in MacKaye’s integrity one of the few moral examples during the 90’s (“You are not what you own”, he said in Merchandise). In this disc Fugazi found a legendary equilibrium between fierce passion and almost mathematical intelligence,

But nonetheless it is awash in a frenzied and tribal sound. “KYEO,” a

between instinct and rationale, between poetry and engineering.

more driving track, is marked by MacKaye’s hysterical quiver. The

Steady Diet Of Nothing confirms Fugazi’s inexhaustible repertoire

therapeutically shocking. Sonic Youth’s influence is particularly

concentrate in-depth on the possibilities of American hardcore. The

evident here in the way Fugazi mixes rock and dissonance.

Sonic Youth-esque Reclamation and the title track, with its maelstrom

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songs are all attempts to make the music even more diagonal and

of musical drama, enriched here with new expressive forms that

Fugazi return to more traditional hardcore elsewhere, but still with

of wild distortion and tribal pulsation, each hover in hallucinatory

a dark, paranoid expressiveness. “Exit Only” alternates from jumpy

climates, defying the conventions of hardcore, while staying rooted in

syncopations in the style of the Pere Ubu to violent boogies, while

the techniques of rock. Sounds go adrift into an ocean of brutality,

“Runaway Return” exploits the band’s arsenal of howls, breaks,

much in the vein of Big Black.

progressions and repetitions, and “Latin Roots” is devastated by

Here co-frontman Ian MacKaye experiments with a new language

thundering phrases of all the instruments. To emerge in these storms

of rock, in which songs are always in motion (typically in an obsessive

of Wagnerian intensity, the voices of our two “actors” must scream out

crescendo, fractured and deformed by numerous discontinuities).

of their mind, abdicating to any aesthetic ambition. No less appealing

“Nice New Outfit” is surely the catchiest, melodic song on the album.

is the ghostly “Long Division”, accompanied only by bass and guitar.

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Fugazi’s lucid understanding of the dynamics of hardcore music leads them to new heights of physical, moral and spiritual expression with what is arguably their sonic masterpiece.

The rage of Fugazi seemed inexhaustible. In On The Kill Taker (Dischord, 1993) concedes nothing: it is another determined attack.

The songs even renounce the experimental architecture of the two previous albums and concentrate mostly on the energy. This album makes excitement a mode of expression. The level of violence is more elevated in compensation for the hyper-neurotic atmosphere of the preceding discs, which are more subdued. The album is the most accessible of Fugazi’s career (as in the melodic and syncopated Public Witness Program). It is an album in which the energy is not limited to a few explosions but channeled into noble songs of freedom (as on Facet Squared , a fearless attack with a pow-wow style rhythm).

Conscious of the limits of this form of expression, the group was probably in search of a new sound, as demonstrated by the intermittent signs at the very start of Facet Squared (and the tribalism that follows), the endless distortion that makes up framework of 23 Beats Off, and the instrumental Sweet And Low, that drowns their volatile sound in abandonment, with a (relatively) relaxed, chill, and almost jazz-like sound.

At this point Fugazi are in danger of parroting fIREHOSE, as evident

A world of new sounds populates Red Medicine(Dischord, 1995), a more sophisticated work. The listener can hear a bit of John Zorn and Black Flag, Minutemen and acid rock, and even Can and Beethoven.

in their new compsitions, which are hummable but aggressive,

The group mixes sophisticated inflections and arrangements, played

dramatic, and at the same time innovative, e.g. Smallpox Champio-

around with pause and rhythm, and slow and twisted sing-song. At this

nand Cassavetes. However, their best tracks remain close to the style

point Fugazi seems to have learned more from the pop experiments of

of Big Black, such as Rend It or Walken’s Syndrome, where the group

Unrest and Tsunami than from their own legendary past.

loses control of their emotions and MacKaye screams like a wolf howl-

An irresistible hiccupping pulse and a violent strumming like that of

ing at the moon, yet without surrendering the very harmonic quest

Sonic Youth propels their single Do You Like Me; but the track is very

to “classicism”, of this rock style without confines.

deceptive, in that the rest of the disc is immersed in dissonant harmo-

Fugazi created a group of eclectic EPs, from the grim expressionism of Repeater, to the Wagnerian (as in Richard Wagner) power of Steady

nies that are disordered, dispersive, and depressing, like the crime dramas of the 90’s. This was rather like Mark Stewart of the Mafia

Diet of Nothing. Meanwhile, In On The Kill Taker signaled their point

period and David Thomas but increasingly more distraught and with

of arrival; each album highly more valuable than the last release.

a sparse and unkempt accompaniment.

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Overproduced and layered with sonic tricks, End Hits (Dischord, Ostensibly, Instrument (Dischord, 1999) is merely the soundtrack to 1998) wants to reaffirm Fugazi’s modernity but ends up sounding like a rock documentary on Fugazi, but these mostly instrumental pieces an unusually (for them) unsophisticated work, as if the leaders had confirm the transition to a somewhat calmer and apolitical aesthetic. assembled it during lunch breaks at work. Certainly, nobody can For whatever reason, Picciotto and McKaye became convinced that accuse Fugazi of indulging in routine: even the powerful Break and Fugazi is a top-notch guitar band. Like the previous album, The the instrumental Arpeggiator hardly recall the band’s old style

THE THE RAGE RAGE OF OF FUGAZI FUGAZI SEEMED SEEMED

Argument (Discord, 2001) is mainly a display of guitar counterpoint,

(Caustic Acrostic and Place Position get closer). Experiments rule, but Which is not necessarily bad, but certainly not the reason that Fugazi not the well-integrated kind of experiment that turned Red Medicine existed. However, the personal/political dramas (Strangelight, Life into a bridge between past and future: these “end hits” rather build a and Limb, Argument) benefit from the slower, less intense approach huge gap. Closed Captioned and Recap Modotti are dotted with in that their epos is now closer to the everyman than to the everyelectronica, funk and dub. Floating Boy, Pink Frosty, No Surprise punk. The low-life vignette of Cashout is to hardcore what the Kinks revolve in a universe of dislocated harmony that would steal the show were to Merseybeat (with a touch of cello, courtesy of Amy on a post-rock epic. Picciotto also fronted the Cranium on A New Domingues) Actually, the harder edge of Nightshop, Full Disclosure Music for a New Kitchen (Slowdime, 1998). and Ex-spectator sounds trite.

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Guy Picciotto on vocals, 1989 17

Forward The single Furniture, released at the same time as the album, is a poppy affair that further confuses the trail.

Ataxia is collaboration between Fugazi’s bassist Joe Lally, percussionist Josh Klinghoffer and guitaristJohn Frusciante.

The Evens (Dischord, 2005) is a collaboration between Ian McKaye and drummer Amy Farina, an album of lo-fi rage (vocals, guitar and drums) but often fuming tracks, particularly You Won’t Feel A Thing, All These Governors. The project was continued on Get Evens (2006), that was, again, more of a political than musical artifact.

Fugazi’s bassist Joe Lally launched a solo career withThere To Here (2006) and Nothing is Underrated(2007).

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Band Profiles CHAPTER 2

GENERALLY, GENERALLY, MACKAYE’S MACKAYE’S LYRICS LYRICS AND AND SINGING SINGING ARE ARE MORE MORE DIRECT DIRECT AND AND ANTHEMIC ANTHEMIC (MACKAYE (MACKAYE ADMITS ADMITS THAT THAT HE HE LOVES LOVES AUDIENCE AUDIENCE SING-ALONGS SING-ALONGS AND AND WRITES WRITES SONGS SONGS WITH WITH SHOUT-ABLE SHOUT-ABLE SLOSLOGANS), GANS), WHILE WHILE PICCIOTTO PICCIOTTO USUALLY USUALLY FAVORS FAVORS A A MORE MORE ABSTRACT, ABSTRACT, OBLIQUE OBLIQUE APPROACH. APPROACH.

Ian Mackaye with Minor Threat, 1980’s

Ian Mackaye Ian Mackaye founded Dischord Records as a teenager in 1980 with partner Jeff Nelson. Their original intent was simply to release a single to document their recently defunct band, Teen Idles. However, the label has gone on to release more than 160 albums over the last 25 years and counting.

Ian and Jeff went on to form Minor Threat, who along with Bad Brains are credited in the early 80s with introducing their hardcore ethic to an audience well beyond Washington, D.C. In 1986, Ian formed Fugazi with Joe Lally, Brendan Canty and Guy Picciotto. Over 20+ years the band has released seven albums and toured the world extensively covering all fifty United States, Europe, Australia, South America, Japan and many points in between. In 2003 Fugazi decided to take an indefinite hiatus from recording and touring as young families and other priorities began to take center stage.

Since 2001, Ian has played in The Evens, a duo with partner Amy Farina. They have released two albums and have toured extensively in North America, Europe, South America, Australia, and New Zealand. Ian has also been taking on speaking engagements at colleges and universities.

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Guy Picciotto with Fugazi, 1990’s

Guy Picciotto Picciotto’s musical career began in 1984,

The last two bands were both projects with

He played characteristically trebly Ricken-

with the group Rites of Spring. A part of the

Brendan Canty. He also created a record

backer guitars. After seven albums (13 Songs,

D.C. post-hardcore scene, Rites of Spring

label called Peterbilt Records, which released

Repeater, Steady Diet of Nothing, In on

increased the frenetic violence and visceral

limited quantity vinyl record albums for the

the Kill Taker, Red Medicine, End Hits, The

passion of hardcore while simultaneously

bands Rain, Happy Go Licky, and Deadline,

Argument), and several tours, Fugazi went on

experimenting with its compositional rules.

then years later was involved in releasing

“indefinite hiatus” in 2003.

Picciotto, as the band’s lyricist, as well as

the album 1986 by One Last Wish, along with

singer & guitarist also shifted hardcore into

Dischord Records.

intensely personal realms and, in doing so, is generally credited with creating emo.

Though not in the first, original line up

Picciotto has also produced numerous albums including the Gossip’s breakthrough record Standing in the Way of Control as

of Fugazi, Picciotto joined very early in the

well as Blonde Redhead’s Melody of Certain

group’s career, singing with them by their

Damaged Lemons (2000), Misery Is a Butter-

includes the bands One Last Wish (1986),

second show and appearing on all the band’s

fly (2004), The Blood Brothers final album,

Happy Go Licky (1987–1988), Brief Weeds

studio recordings.

Young Machetes, and Downtown Boys’ Cost

Picciotto’s early musical resume also

(EPs released circa 1991–1992), and finally The Black Light Panthers (a sporadic project).

From the Margin Walker EP on, Picciotto also willingly took up second guitar duties.

of Living (2017). He is a sough-after producer in indie rock circles.

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Joe Lally Joe Lally formed Fugazi with Ian MacKaye in 1987. He remained as the group’s bassist until their “indefinite hiatus” in 2003.

Lally founded Tolotta Records (distributed through Dischord Records), which was active from 1994 until 2001, putting out notable releases by such artists as Dead Meadow, Spirit Caravan, Stinking Lizaveta & Orthrelm.

In early 2002, Lally joined ex-Frodus members Shelby Cinca and Jason Hamacher on a project originally called The Black Sea, which would change its name to Decahedron and release an EP and an album before Lally left the band. He has also worked with John Frusciante and Josh Klinghoffer as the group Ataxia, releasing two albums: Automatic Writing (2004) and AW II (2007).

In 2006, Lally was playing solo shows on bass with slight laptop accompaniment in various college towns, leading up to his first solo album, There to Here, which was released in the fall of 2006. It features many other musicians from the DC music scene.

In 2007, he toured the U.S. with the Philadelphia band Capillary Action and Melvins, and Europe and Japan with the Italian band Zu. His second solo album, Nothing Is Underrated, was Joe Lally solo, 2013

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released in November 2007. Lally released Why Should I Get Used To It, in 2011.

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BAND PROFILES

Brendan Canty Brendan Canty began playing drums at the age of 15, debuting in DC Dischord Records band Deadline, one of the signature bands of the early DC hardcore scene in the summer of 1981.

They recorded a demo at Inner Ear Studios that Fall and from those sessions three tracks were used on the Dischord “Flex Your Head” compilation. After playing a number of shows through the following year, Deadline recorded one more session at Inner Ear in August 1982, just prior to disbanding. Canty continued his musical career in 1985 with Dischord band Rites of Spring, after which he played drums in one on/off reunion group One Last Wish, and Happy Go Licky.

Canty joined Fugazi, as their drummer in 1987 and recorded and toured with the group until their “indefinite hiatus” in 2003.

Many of Fugazi’s songs since Repeater are based on guitar riffs introduced at rehearsals by Canty. An adept multi-instrumentalist, Canty also writes songs on piano (he plays a skeletal version of “Bed for the Scraping” on the Instrument DVD), as well as bass lines for some songs. He is also noted for using a large farmers bell as part of his drum kit.

Brendan Canty with the MC5, 2018

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Section 2

INTRO

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Fugazi Timeline Discography Band Interviews

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Fugazi

Timeline 1989

1984

1987

Ian MacKaye’s seminal D.C. hardcore band Minor Threat breaks up.

The band plays their first show at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C.

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CHAPTER 3

Both EPs are combined into one album called 13 Songs.

Guy Picciotto decides to play second guitar.

1991 The band’s second studio full-length Steady Diet of Nothing is released.

1986

1988

1990

1993

Ian recruits Joe Lally (bass) and Brendan Canty (drums) to try out for a new band

The band records their first EP, self-titled. Fugazi embarks on their first tour. After tour, the band records a second EP entitled Margin Walker.

The band records and releases Repeater, which eventually sells more than 2 million copies worldwide.

The band’s third studio full-length In on the Kill Taker is released and the band begins to play large auditoriums. They reject several major recording deals.

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CHAPTER 3

1996 The band releases Red Medicine and tours more extensively.

1998 End Hits is released.

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TIMELINE

2002–2003

2014

Fugazi plays their final shows — 3 sold-out nights at the London Forum in England on November 2, 3, and 4. The band announces a hiatus.

Dischord Records First Demo, featuring Fugazi songs previously unreleased. Ian MacKaye insists that the band is not broken up, but on indefinite hiatus.

1997

1999–2001

2011

After an extensive worldwide tour, the band takes a hiatus.

Fugazi enters the studio and begins recording End Hits.

The Argument is recorded and eventually released along with a final EP entitled Furniture+2

Ian MacKaye states that Fugazi has “been offered insane amounts of money to play reunions, but it’s not going to be money that brings us back together, we would only play music together if we wanted to play music together and time allowed it.”

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Discog

CHAPTER 4

raphy

Self-Titled Dischord Records, 1988 Songs: 1. Waiting Room 2. Bulldog Front 3. Bad Mouth 4. Burning 5. Give Me the Cure 6. Suggestion 7. Glue Man

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DISCOGRAPHY

Margin Walker Dischord Records, 1989 Songs: 1. Margin Walker 2. And the Same 3. Burning Too 4. Provisional 5. Lockdown 6. Promises

13 Songs Dischord Records, 1989 Songs: 1. Waiting Room

9. And the Same

2. Bulldog Front

10. Burning Too

3. Bad Mouth

11. Provisional

4. Burning

12. Lockdown

5. Give Me the Cure

13. Promises

6. Suggestion 7. Glue Man 8. Margin Walker

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Repeater Dischord Records, 1990 Songs: 1. Turnover

9. Styrofoam

2. Repeater

10. Reprovisional

3. Brendan #1

11. Shut the Door

4. Merchandise

12. Lockdown

5. Blueprint

13. Promises

6. Sieve-Fisted Find 7. Greed 8. Two Beats Off

Steady Diet of Nothing Dischord Records, 1991 Songs: 1. Exit Only

9. Polish

2. Reclamation

10. Dear Justice Letter

3. Nice New Outfit

11. KYEO

4. Stacks 5. Latin Roots 6. Steady Diet 7. Long Division 8. Runaway Return

30

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CHAPTER 4

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DISCOGRAPHY

In on the Kill Taker Dischord Records, 1993 Songs: 1. Facet Squared

9. Great Cop

2. Public Witness Program

10. Walken’s Syndrome

3. Returning the Screw

11. Instrument

4. Smallpox Champion

12. Last Chance for a Slow Dance

5. Rend It 6. 23 Beats Off 7. Sweet and Low 8. Cassavetes

Red Medecine Dischord Records, 1995 Songs: 1. Do You Like Me

9. Version

2. Bed for the Scraping

10. Target

3. Latest Disgrace

11. Back to Base

4. Birthday Pony

12. Downed City

5. Forensic Scene

13. Long Distance Runner

6. Combination Lock 7. Fell, Destroyed 8. By You

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End Hits Dischord Records, 1998 Songs: 1. Break

9. Foreman’s Dog

2. Place Position

10. Arpeggiator

3. Recap Modotti

11. Guilford Fall

4. No Surprise

12. Pink Frosty

5. Five Corporations

13. F/D

6. Caustic Acrostic 7. Closed Captioned 8. Floating Boy

The Argument Dischord Records, 2001 Songs: 1. Untitled

9. Ex-Spectator

2. Cashout

10. Nightshop

3. Full Disclosure

11. Argument

4. Epic Problem 5. Life and Limb 6. The Kill 7. Strangelight 8. Oh

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DISCOGRAPHY

The Fugazi Live Series Between 1987 and 2003, Fugazi played over 1000 concerts in all 50 states and all over the world. Over 800 of these shows were recorded by the band’s sound engineers. The goal of this project is to make each of these recordings available to download for just a small fee.

A searchable archive lists each show along with all available photos, flyers and general show info. Each listing with a download offers a streaming preview of material for sound quality as well as the reading and posting of comments on the show and the recording.

The size and scope this archive dictates that it will always remain a semi-permanent work-in-progress. We welcome visitors to contribute photos, recordings, corrections, and any additional info that may be missing from specific shows. Please see the About section for information about contributing content.

33

Band Interviews CHAPTER 5

GENERALLY, GENERALLY, MACKAYE’S MACKAYE’S LYRICS LYRICS AND AND SINGING SINGING ARE ARE MORE MORE DIRECT DIRECT AND AND ANTHEANTHEMIC MIC (MACKAYE (MACKAYE ADMITS ADMITS THAT THAT HE HE LOVES LOVES AUDIENCE AUDIENCE SING-ALONGS SING-ALONGS AND AND WRITES WRITES SONGS SONGS WITH WITH SHOUT-ABLE SHOUT-ABLE SLOGANS), SLOGANS), WHILE WHILE PICCIOTTO PICCIOTTO USUALLY USUALLY FAVORS FAVORS A A

Joe Lally

MORE MORE ABSTRACT, ABSTRACT, OBLIQUE OBLIQUE APPROACH. APPROACH.

Your newest album is called Nothing is Underrated, which seems to me to be open to a lot of different interpretations. Indeed, it is.

Do you have an interpretation of your own? For me I guess it’s coming from more than just a few places. But I suppose with the pace of the world and how much — especially here in the U.S. — people feel like they have to be accomplishing. And it’s really not just here in the U.S.; it’s about the mind and what we feel we have to accomplish to feel satisfied and what allegedly makes us happy. I don’t know; it

something that’s growing everywhere, which is great. To me it’s

underrated. Being silent and going to a quiet place where creativity

something that should be taught in schools. For me, getting to know

can come from… It’s a number of things; it’s hard to say that it came

the relationship between your mind and your body is just an essential

from this and therefore it’s that.

part of life that for me every child should come to know better. How to

Of course. I seem to remember reading somewhere that you

34

Is yoga less popular in Italy? It could be to some degree. I think it’s

just sort of came down at some point to the idea that doing nothing is

relax, how to be quiet and okay with it. It’s such a simple thing it

practice yoga. I do, but I moved away and I have kind of a teacher

seems ridiculous talking about it; for me if I try and say what I think is

here, who I actually hope to see tonight. I moved away last July and I

great about it. For me it’s such a natural thing to bring into focus for

just haven’t been able to get into it. It seemed like in the states I could

children so they’re more comfortable with themselves and under-

always do yoga someplace and make up classes. You can’t do that at

stand their mind and body better. And of course, I understand that to

all where I live now and I haven’t fallen into any class there and it’s

many people it’s wrapped up in a particular religion or a relationship

been hard to kind of get it going at home. Really ever since my

with one’s, I suppose, God. And therefore it’s immediately dismissed

daughter was born it’s not quite the daily practice it used to be.

as something that could be taught in school.

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How did your last album, There to Here, influence your approach to Nothing is Underrated? There to Here is really the discovery of how to record a record on my part and how to get my songs down. At that time I was struggling to record songs that had been kicking around my head for two or three years. I hadn’t really played with anyone in the initial approach to recording. I had started to work with some people to bring them into the studio, but I was really trying to figure out how that was to be done. I did the process kind of backwards and recorded some of the stuff with just me on bass and then tried putting other stuff on top of it and it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. It was a whole learning process. Some of it was fine because I recorded with a whole band and maybe re-sang the vocal part and it was done. I’m not one to spend much time with the mixing of something. I’m really up for whoever’s mixing it to surprise me with their editing.

Approaching the second record that was all understood. I really

be any road that has stuff under it from the past left over from past

wanted the initial sounds to go down and then really left the editing

civilizations. Everywhere in Rome — they go to dig for the subway and

up to Guy and Ian and had done all my parts and just left the country.

they just keep uncovering more stuff. There’s a lot of that going on. Via

I think Ian and Guy had a little bit of guitar to put down after I left and

Nomentana is not far from where I live and I just kind of understand

I just left it up to them to mix because I trust them, you know, and

it so it just happened to make sense and just sound the best for that

know them really well and they know me really well.

song. It’s a road that led into the spot where my wife worked and was

Some of the lyrics seem very personal. I don’t want to read too

36

“Via Nomentana” has some gorgeous guitar work. I take it that was inspired by a visit to that ancient road? That road actually could

living for a time just outside the city. So I spent a lot of time on it.

much Fugazi baggage into it, but was it an emotional experience

What can you say about the song on the album, “Strascinata”?

recording a song like “Painfully Aware” with Guy? No, because…

That has a lot to do, I guess, with moving over there. And it has to do

There may be some of that in that for sure; Fugazi is a huge part of

with… I don’t know how else to put it, other than ‘living simply.’ And

my life and then to have it just stop, you know, it was a really difficult

not asking or needing a lot. It’s also a type of pasta that really is just

thing to not be able to play with those guys, be around them and work

flour and water. When my mother-in-law is making it — and it is so

on making songs and playing them live with them. However that’s

good — it’s hard to believe how simple it is when I’m eating it. But

worked itself into my songs is not to where recording with Ian and

strascinata is also a way of saying, ‘to drag,’ and the connotations are

Guy is therefore really heavy or something. It doesn’t really have too

very similar to the different connotations in English; like a relation-

much to do with that — recording a song is sort of trying to naturally

ship dragging. To make the pasta you cut off a section from the little

capture something that’s an expression so in itself that can be heavy

tube you’ve rolled and drag it so the little ridges between your fingers

but it isn’t really my relationship between the people I was working

show up. So it’s just this blob; it doesn’t have a shape like a lot of

with that made it that way.

pastas have. It just has that imprint from between your fingers.

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37

The bass sounds really interesting on that song. That’s something that I didn’t try too hard to capture but we thought it came out fine. I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time mic-ing the room to death to

FUGAZI FUGAZI IS IS A A HUGE HUGE PART PART OF OF MY MY LIFE LIFE AND AND THEN THEN TO TO HAVE HAVE IT IT JUST JUST STOP, STOP, YOU YOU KNOW, KNOW, IT IT WAS WAS A A REALLY REALLY DIFFICULT DIFFICULT THING THING

try and capture the acoustic sound of the Hoffman. But I really like sound a lot and play that bass a lot. At home I never really plug in an can afford to do with two other people. Especially coming back to electric bass. I always play them acoustically and write that way. But America now. Paying for flights in Euro and then making dollars to that bass just sounds so nice acoustically; we just put some mics in pay them back is turning into a joke. With this particular tour there the bathroom and I’m just kind of standing in the doorway. are people in other cities who will be joining me. So I’ll play with Instead of forming a new band, you’ve been sticking to the solo Ricardo Lagomasino, who plays on the second record and I’ve done route, with a varying supporting cast. Have you had any inclination three tours with him now with Capillary Action. And Jon Morris will to work with a set group? I wanted to, especially moving to Rome be there; the three of us are playing together for the first time on this because I felt like it would be really helpful to be able to get around tour. I kind of know what I’m aiming for better now so I feel I can get a Europe and maybe I could fall into a band. It’s really hard to do better performance out of people. In the past getting together quickly because people either have their jobs or a lot of other bands are with people was really frustrating and I think that’s getting better. It’s involved. People are always in at least three bands here. Then there’s nice; there’s a cello player who’s going to play with us in Chicago — I the reality of flying to other countries, which is still not necessarily I only know her from hearing her stuff on the internet.

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TO TO NOT NOT BE BE ABLE ABLE TO TO PLAY PLAY WITH WITH THOSE THOSE GUYS GUYS AND AND WORK WORK ON ON MAKING MAKING SONG SONG

AND AND PLAYING PLAYING THEM THEM LIVE LIVE WITH WITH THEM. THEM.

What about in New York? The guy from

Especially in the last years — we kind of

I’m probably going to end up trying to see

Glorytellers is doing a week of shows with us

outlasted that by the end of our run. Now I just how that can work because I don’t know how

so he’ll be playing on some of my songs

don’t mind whether the people there are

many places I’m really going to get asked

during that part of the tour. There’s also

messing with me while I’m playing. Though I

back to.

Aurora Nealand, a saxophone player who is a

certainly don’t want to put the word out: “Fuck

friend of Ricardo’s. She joined us in New

with me at my show!”

Orleans on the last tour, showing up just

I’ve seen you twice in New York. Do you feel

In speaking with Brendan and Ian, the consensus seems to be that the Fugazi hiatus is permanent. Is that your sense of

before we went onstage. So I wasn’t able to

like you would be better received in less

things? Yeah, there’s no other way to look at

say much but this time she gets to hear a few

conventional rooms? I feel like I’m not in too

it. I’m not trying to make a particular

things beforehand.

much of a position to pick and choose because statement about it one way or another. But

There were often some rowdy assholes at

I don’t think I could even cover my plane ticket psychologically why look at it any other way?

Fugazi shows. Is it more enjoyable to tour

if I came over and just winged it, booking

You’ve got to focus on what you have and

now that those morons have been weeded

shows and touring, staying in hotels. We’ll see

why spend time trying to figure out some-

out? It is so not an issue that it’s not compa-

what happens over the next couple years. But

thing you don’t really even have any kind of

rable. [Laughs.] And that stuff kind of died.

it seems like it might go something like this.

control over anyway?

39

Guy Piciotto Was there a specific moment growing up where you remember being impacted by music? Growing up, there was no music in my family, no one was particularly musical. We didn’t have a piano in the house. My dad had been in an all harmonica band when he was a teenager called the Three Musketeers so there was a harmonica in the house but that was the extent of it.

But when I was in third grade I had a friend Paul from England and I would go to his house and his family had all of these Beatles’ records and this Beatles illustrated lyric book which was really trippy and I remember the first time hearing them over there, something changed in me. I got so into them, there was so much joy in the music and from that point on from ages seven to twelve, it was just a total Beatles situation in my head. So that was my first kind of experience having music impact me and in a way it kind of insulated me from any other influence until punk rock happened. I listened a little bit to Kiss, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and so I was aware of stuff that was happening at the time but it wasn’t until punk rock happened that I paid attention again, until then, I was just in a kind of cocoon.

What were those early days of DC punk rock like? I know in

40

They turned it into a really powerful free form station that reached all

Philadelphia at that time it was a lot of small shows in churches and

the way up to Delaware. That’s where I first heard punk rock music,

it allowed you to think you could actually be a part of something

just being in my room listening to it on a transistor radio. That station

whereas bands like Led Zeppelin and Kiss didn’t seem attainable,

eventually got shut down by the Jesuit president because he wanted

the first time I heard Black Flag though I thought, well maybe I can’t

to stop all of the radical politics and music that was coming out of it.

do this exactly but it’s a lot closer to me than Stairway to Heaven.

So the first punk rock show I saw was when I was thirteen and it was a

Reading a lot of books on music history there is always this feel-

benefit which was more of a protest against the closing of that sta-

ing about music being unattainable. I think it’s a reality of being a

tion and at that show. At that show I saw Bad Brains and my future

young musician starting out that you feel like you have no entry point

bandmate Ian MacKaye and I remember seeing The Cramps play live

and for our generation that was why punk rock was a really big

which was a really violent and frightening show. It was actually hard

influence. There was a radio station in DC at that time called WGBT. It

for me to even look at them because they had this kind of great,

was run on Georgetown University property but had almost nothing

powerful energy that surrounded them. Then a few months later I ran

to do with the university. The university was run by hardcore Catholic

into them on the street in D.C. and I was surprised, but I just went up

Jesuits but these radicals had taken over the station and it changed.

and talked to them and actually they were so polite and so kind.

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BAND INTERVIEWS

So The Cramps and the radio station were your sort of opening.

so powerfully and raw and then meeting them on the street and

What was the next step? How did you start forming some of your

getting this incredibly warm, openness from them… it was really

own bands? You played with two really influential bands Fugazi and

amazing. They really had a huge impact on me.

Rites of Spring. How did they come about and what did these

There weren’t that many friends around me at that time who were

bands bring to your life? I was around fifteen and I had a guitar and I

listening to this kind of music. Then later I started to see other people

started seeing people putting bands together and knew I wanted in on

who were into it and I started to make those connections and I saw a

this. Three of the people I went to high school with were in bands.

lot of kids who were a little older than me start to put together bands

One of them was in this band S.O.A. with Henry Rollins and two of the

and that’s when I knew I wanted to be a part of that conversation.

other guys Brian and Lyle were in Minor Threat, so these were friends.

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They were in two of the most important bands in the early hardcore scene and I would tag along with these guys to watch them practice and play. At that time I would be involved in these one off, completely hysterical, freak out bands, like at one time I had done this thing called The Hostages where it was just basically about screaming, wearing diapers on your head, and just being crazy and then I remember seeing Minor Threat and they were just on another level with what they were doing, they were so structured.

That’s the thing about hardcore music, I think a lot of people look back on it now and see this orthodox or rigid style of music but the shapes that everyone can look at now and see as a pattern, when

THAT’S THAT’S THE THE THING THING ABOUT ABOUT HARDCORE HARDCORE MUSIC, MUSIC, I I THINK THINK A A LOT LOT OF OF PEOPLE PEOPLE LOOK LOOK BACK BACK ON ON IT IT NOW NOW AND AND SEE SEE THIS ORTHODOX THIS ORTHODOX OR OR RIGID RIGID STYLE OF STYLE OF MUSIC MUSIC

these people were starting to make that music it had no formulaic shape yet so it felt incredibly radical at the time. I would see punk rock bands but these hardcore bands would be more extreme, more cut down, more direct of a focus on radical ideas and that’s what really drew me into it. I got really excited seeing those bands and I really wanted to be a part of it. So there was this crew of me and my friends and we would just be hanging around at different band practices and over time we started to form our own band.

My first band was Insurrection, when I was around fifteen and it

Mike Fellows and Eddie Janney) figuring out how to actually play our

was all of us basically inspired by listening to a lot of Discharge. But

instruments a little bit too (laughs). Playing guitar is still kind of a

we were playing shows, like we were still in high school but we’d

mystery to me actually. I feel like you don’t really know how to play an

drive to Detroit or New York on the weekend to do a show and when

instrument in some ways until you play it with other people though

you’re that young these bands are really volatile and people would

and find some mutual language together. I knew some chords and

keep breaking them up and reforming them. So I was in about six

stuff and I took some lessons in elementary school but I didn’t and I

bands before I joined Fugazi at age 21.

At a certain point I started to get an idea of wanting something that

still don’t really understand how it all works...But when I am playing with other people I just started to figure out how to create sounds

was different. I wanted to find something else and create a new edge

together with them and that’s how Rites of Spring formed. It was just

or a new place to go to with music and that’s what Rites of Spring felt

the four of us hanging out, trying to put all of the different things we

like to me. It was kind of pushing the conversation forward again and

were listening to into our own songs while also having the feeling of

I think that was the first band that I was in where I felt like it was a

really not caring what people thought about it at all. (laughs) We were

perfect thing. We were all into it and it’s what we all wanted to do and

all so psyched on each other and psyched on playing together. And

I think there was a little bit of us all (Guy Picciotto, Brendan Canty,

pretty quickly people in town were really into it and it was really brief.

43

But it had a really good feeling for awhile until it fell apart. But then that band reformed again a year later under a different name and we were called Happy Go Licky which was completely different from Rites of Spring but playing with those three guys, the idea was always to move forward. That one only lasted 9 months but I thought we had a lot of really cool ideas.

With your start in Fugazi, you showed up to visit Brendan at practice and you just kind of fit into the mold eventually? How did that really come about? Well Brendan was in two bands at the time, he was drumming with us in Happy Go Licky and we were playing intermittently. Brendan started playing with Ian in the early version of

New Energy

Fugazi and at that time Happy Go Licky was not going to continue

Suddenly I felt this different energy to be more free on stage and to

and I kind of honestly thought I wasn’t going to do music anymore so

move and it was really a kind of cool and unexpected feeling that

I sold my amp and I packed up and arranged to meet some friends in

I could be free like this and I started to feel the music push me

Texas and I just left town. It was around Halloween time and I found a

energetically. After that I wanted to play guitar and to write and be

pumpkin patch and I was working there for a night or two and I met

more involved with them and it just kept working. I think because we

these friends of mine and we drove around the country for awhile and

had all been in so many groups before we had this idea of not being

then went back to D.C. and Brendan told me that he was in this band

able to keep a band together but I think we were all kind of engaged

now (Fugazi) and they made it open to me that if I wanted to sit in

into being loyal to the concept of the group and we were willing to

and do something I could because in the beginning they were having

push it as hard as we could and that’s what we did. We went out and

lots of people come over and sit in with them and Brendan and I had

toured six to seven months a year and we worked like motherfuckers

been in bands pretty much since the first day we met. And I had this

and that’s how we learned how to be a band and that’s how we learned

feeling like oh shit, it’s over for us playing together and I was feeling

how to play together. It was the first time I had been in a band that

really shitty and I just didn’t know what the fuck to do with myself and

didn’t start from the ground up but the personalities, the discipline,

since I was feeling kind of desperate I thought, OK I’ll sing with these

and the communication, it just all began to make a lot of sense to me.

guys since they’re being so generous but I didn’t really understand the

44

In the beginning of Fugazi, you mentioned how you had this

music at first and I didn’t really understand what was happening at

new freedom without the guitar and you and Ian sort of had this call

all. But I finally started singing because I was so bummed and aimless

and response, Sam and Dave kind of vibe in an abstract way…That’s

and then something started to happen during that time, at all. And

the thing, we were listening to a lot of James Brown and Public Enemy

before Fugazi, I had never played in a band where I didn’t have a

at the time, which might have had the biggest influence on us in

guitar and so I felt unencumbered because I didn’t have to play

the sense of there being two voices or two perspectives. Minor Threat

anything and I didn’t have to define my role in the band because they

and Rites of Spring for instance were two totally different bands and

already built the band so I had all of this freedom and it was weird.

Ian and I had two totally, completely different approaches to music.

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Creating Confusion But there was something about supporting both of our styles that created a kind of complexity for people. They had to wraps their heads around it and initially I think it may have been a bit of a stretch for people sometimes. The audience was like, “What they fuck is that guy doing on the side of the stage but that was part of the point, we were trying to create some kind of confusion or some kind of complexity. Public Enemy were fucking way confusing and that’s what made them so cool. It was so disorienting what they were doing and their sound was so extreme. We were really inspired by that.

I think the question of, “What the fuck is this?” is alway s a sign of something valuable. It’s like Suicide that was a band who when they first came out and I put on their record, I was just thrown by it or seeing Beat Happening or Bikini Kill for the first time. Those bands had to really challenge people and upset things and bands that really upset people’s perspective are bands who are bringing something new to it. It’s really easy to repeat a form and there’s a lot of value to respecting forms and reproducing them but there’s totally another value in bands who are finding a different angle that people aren’t used to or ready for yet.

45

Fugazi has these wonderfully juxtaposed elements. It’s like a mixture of dub music, Wire, Gang of Four, some Krautrock, definitely soul, and some experimental elements. I remember seeing you guys play live so many times at churches and I’ve even seen you at your house. You guys played at a party for around one hundred people when you were about to record a new record, testing out the material on us. Just watching the interplay between the band was really interesting and exciting. Where did that sound come from do you think? Well a lot of the rhythm section and the bass especially was such a huge part of the band. The band was kind of built up from the bass lines and (bassist) Joe (Lally) grew up in Rockville, Maryland listening to a lot soul and saw Graham Central Station and Sly and the Family Stone and his bass playing had a lot of that inspiration in it.

Ian was actually a bass player and Brendan also wrote a lot of bass lines so there was a lot of focus on creating a foundation and then over that foundation all of this other shit could happen. The period you’re talking about when you saw us at that house party everyone was living in mass group houses all in the same neighborhood. So you had like eight to ten people living in a house and then a block away there’s another house with eight to ten people and bands in each one.

So there’s something to be said about communities and bands that grow up together mutually influencing each other. The house we lived in was called “Pirate House” and we had a eight track in the basement so we were able to record groups and try to create something ourselves. When you start touring you feel like a thread has been cut off, like you’re out there working and then you come back after three or four months and you can feel this weird alienation but that was what was cool about being able to come back to this community and see what everyone had been doing and you still feel like there’s something behind it that you always wanted to get home to. We felt a strong home vibe which was really cool.

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WHEN YOU START TOURING YOU FEEL LIKE A THREAD HAS BEENTOURING CUT OFF, LIKE YOU’RE WHEN YOU START YOU FEEL LIKE OUT A THERE AND THEN YOU COME BACK OUT THREADWORKING HAS BEEN CUT OFF, LIKE YOU’RE AFTER ORAND FOUR MONTHS CAN THERE THREE WORKING THEN YOU AND COMEYOU BACK FEEL WEIRD ALIENATION AND YOU CAN AFTERTHIS THREE OR FOUR MONTHS FEEL THIS WEIRD ALIENATION

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Brendan Canty Brendan Canty is the drummer for Fugazi, the rightly revered D.C. post-punk band whose page on the Dischord Records website still states “1987–present.” The group hasn’t played together or released an album since their phenomenal seventh LP, The Argument; in 2002 they embarked on what is looking increasingly like a permanent hiatus.

Like his bandmates, Canty has been consumed by various other creative projects: he’s produced albums for Ted Leo and The Thermals, among others; recorded and toured with Bob Mould; composed

recording with Benjy Ferree. She’s the one who introduced me to

Tweedy’s live concert documentary; and helmed an eccentric rock

Brent and we really hit it off. I like the fact that is he just a really hard

DVD series called Burn to Shine. Started in D.C. in 2004, each DVD is

worker. Besides the aesthetic, which I love.

shot on a single day with a lineup of bands who each get two takes

Yeah, he’s self-taught, isn’t he? He is self-taught. His first films were

on one song in a house slated for demolition. Canty will be at The

made by stringing together about 10,000 individual photographs in

Kitchen Wednesday night to perform live soundtracks to Brent

iMovie on his Mac. Anybody who goes through the trouble of actually

Green’s distinctive stop motion animation films; other musicians on

using the tools at hand to make the film he wants to make on his own

the bill include Jim Becker (Califone) and Fred Lonberg-Holm ( from

terms is someone I give lots of credit. I’m just trying to get my head

both Wilco and Freakwater).

together while walking around pulling things out of my daughter’s

How exactly did this ongoing collaboration with Brent Green

48

She was on The Argument, right? Yes, and now she’s in Nashville

soundtracks for film and television; directed Sunken Treasure, Jeff

mouth. She’s eight months old, and while I’m speaking to you she’s

come about? Through Amy Domingues, who is sort of a premiere rock

crawling around, picking up things, looking at me and then shoving

‘n’ roll cellist. She’s played with a ton of people like Chan Marshall and

them in her mouth. But I guess that’s what babies do, they put things

Fugazi, and others too.

into their mouth.

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That’s fine. What is it you like about his films? I like how beautifully primitive they are, how he exposes his own process by leaving the scotch tape on the prints. That made me think that he is more interested in rugged beauty and wasn’t someone who was going to hide who he really is. There’s an underlying, acute honesty to the way he deals with his art and performance. He gets up there in front of the whole crowd, speaks the dialogue and really exposes himself in his work and in his performance. I know that sounds overtly emo but it’s something that really speaks to me.

There’s so much bullshit and artifice in the art world and music world where people just hide, especially in this age of Pro Tools music perfection and digital effects in photography. Brent chooses to highlight his blemishes. It sort of all goes back to the idea that the things we view as mistakes in ourselves our only considered mistakes because they set us apart from other people. But the mistakes are our individuality. I’ve never asked him if he wants to make a big blockbuster movie but I don’t think that’s where he’s coming from.

So when you make music with his films is it improvised? For the most part, yes. I know the script and the dialogue now, having done it a few times, so I know when something’s going to come up. But he’s usually working on something that he’ll screen without telling me and we have to improvise to it.

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Live? Yeah. Which is fine. [Laughs] It’s really not always the most successful part of the show but it can be. But even when we know the film a lot of it is improvised.

So are you the one the other musicians are generally following along with? It depends. I think in any improvised situation you get into a pack mentality where somebody’s going to be alpha to a certain extent. And the alpha dog here is always Brent and his script. But sometimes people are better or worse at listening to what the script is suggesting, and that’s when I sort of take over and boss people around. [Laughs] Not boss them around, but I play a little louder so people can follow. Sometimes it’s just first-time people who sit in when we do this. Not often, but it’s happened. When I played with Califone doing this stuff I would defer to those guys because they’ve toured with Brent and they taught me how much better the musical aspect of it works when you just create a bed of music for Brent’s script. It’s better when we make a soundtrack and resist the temptation to go for the wood blocks whenever someone in the film knocks on a door, you know?

Because you run Trixie DVD do you help him with any other aspects of the projects? I helped him with the audio on Hadacol Christmas. But I haven’t helped him with the most recent stuff. The things he’s working on now are pretty interesting; he’s been making more non stop-motion films up in his gigantic barn studio in Pennsylvania. He’s been tying birds to strings.

Live birds? He has. He has. I don’t know if I’m letting the cat out of the bag here, but I’ve just seen some footage of a little girl who’s got strings tied between her and the birds flying above her. He claims to have consulted a bird handler to figure out what the best way to achieve this vision was.

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That sounds cool. It is; it’s a really great ending. It’s a very ‘SeatIs this going to be screened in New York? I think he might show tle-recycles’ kind of ending. The vibe was great at this one but the some of it; he did when we were at a film festival in Charlottesville. more of these I do, the more people want to do them and we end up I see the Seattle Burn to Shine is coming out soon. How did the with too many bands because we have a hard time saying no. filming of that go? One of my favorite parts of the day was Jesy What are some of the biggest crises you’ve had to deal with during Fortino, you know, Tiny Vipers. We shot it up in the center of Seattle Burn to Shine? On this one [Seattle] we were shooting on Saturday by the zoo, and seemingly everyone in the world would know how to and I lost our original location on Monday. I was in D.C. and had to get there — but not her. And she calls me and says, “I’m down by the find a new place to shoot this — a place that was going to be destroyed airport. What bus goes there?” I don’t know what bus goes there! But — by the weekend. So I called up an architectural salvage place and she made it in and was just amazing. Eddie Vedder played a great song that’s when I immediately started throwing around the word Fugazi. on his ukulele. Ben Gibbard played an unreleased acoustic song. I “Hi, this is Brendan from Fugazi! Does anybody there know Fugazi?” We guess I shouldn’t spoil it but at the end the house doesn’t get defound this one guy John who really saved our ass. He had these two old stroyed, which is kind of a funny thing. At the last minute somebody outdated bungalows that people didn’t know what to do with. They came by — the day we were filming — and fell in love with the house were apparently going to salvage all the stained glass windows in them and moved it down the hill to an empty lot. So instead of being and this guy fostered a close relationship with a developer who owned destroyed like the houses in the other films, it ends with this really the property. The name Fugazi didn’t resonate with him at all. So then I creepy final segment of the house rolling on the back of a truck in the started throwing around Eddie Vedder’s name with him. middle of the night followed by a parade of people.

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That pretty much sealed the deal by saying his wife could meet Eddie Vedder the day of the shoot. But yeah. Getting a house that is going to be burned, convincing firemen that you’re okay and convincing owners and neighbors that you’re okay and that it’s okay that you’re going to bring 60 people into the house and play rock in there all day long and then film the demolition…the whole thing is really a big headache. I love it but it’s so much work. Getting the bands together is a cakewalk compared to convincing people this is a good idea to do in their house.

There was a rumor over the summer that Fugazi would reunite to play a Fort Reno show again, which seemed to me immediately bogus. My impression is that you guys aren’t getting back together, and definitely not for just one show. Yeah. [Laughs] I mean, we might do it for a benefit kind of thing. But everybody is doing something different. Almost all of us have kids now. Fugazi was a real full time activity and the reason we stopped a few years ago was because it didn’t feel like Fugazi when we only did it twenty percent of the time.

But you’re right, I don’t see us putting it all back together, which would be a lot of work. We still see each other all the time, except for Joe, who’s moved to Rome. If there was a burning desire for us to get back together and do it, we would do it. There’s nothing necessarily stopping us. But I don’t see it happening. I’ve got to say, it doesn’t feel like things are pointing in that direction. It just doesn’t seem like that would necessarily be a step forward for any of us. It doesn’t really make sense, you know?

I love the guys. Everybody continues to make music and everybody is plenty stimulated in their lives. I don’t see us going back to Fugazi. I think everybody was pretty much ready for a break by the time it was done. Then again, we never put it out of our heads, really. A lot of the reasons why we stopped were logistical because of kids and things like that. It was mostly kids and death. Kids were being born and almost all our parents were dying at the same time. Everybody was like, “Okay, we need to take a break.” It seems like everybody in the band lost somebody pretty recently.

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Left: Live at the 9:30 Club, Washington, DC, 1990 Right: Live at Bogies, Albany, NY, 1989

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Ian MacKaye Ian MacKaye is known for a lot of things, his bands: Minor Threat, Fugazi, The Evens, Teen Idles; founding and running the uber indie/ alternative Dischord Records; being the inadvertent creator and leader for the Straight Edge movement; someone with fierce, occasionally outspoken, political beliefs and a passion and dedication for all things independent that he’s seen as some sort of DIY mogul for many that have followed in his footsteps.

Now approaching 53 years of age he may be less active musical-

SKATEBOARDING SKATEBOARDING AND AND PUNK PUNK MUSIC MUSIC

ly (The Evens is his only currently active band) but he’s no less busy.

Taking time out of his hectic Dischord schedule, he gives me a couple of hours to talk through his life and career and offer his insights from the point of view of someone who has maintained strict ethics and principles staunchly throughout a 30-year period that has seen the greatest and most significant changes and fluctuations in music’s history. He is just waving off someone from an old DC punk band called The Penetrators who had popped in to his office.

Does he get a lot of pop-ins, I enquire.

“No, I wish I did. I like fucking pop-ins. You don’t get a lot of that; most people just don’t think it’s done. I’ve noticed this thing when people come to visit and they’ll call and say: ‘I’m on my way out’, and then they’ll call and say: ‘I’m out front’. Well, knock on the fucking door! God damn!”

It’s an animated start to our conversation and emblematic of Ian’s general approach: clear, to the point, honest and he loves to throw in a good “fucking” here and there to hit home a point with very intense, hammer-like force.

Growing up in Washington DC, Ian struggled to find a sense of identity during his teenage years. “When I was in high school, around thirteen or fourteen, kids were already talking about ‘got to move to New York, got to get out of here,’” he tells me. “It’s not a good town for teenagers because there’s nothing to do, especially around then, it was a 70% black town and white kids were kind of invisible in a way.

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WERE WERE HIS SAVIOURS. HIS SAVIOURS.

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Nobody should feel sorry for them, of course, it was just this weird cultural void. I used to say that Washington DC has two distinct cultures: the federal culture — big business, Hollywood movies, network television, major label music, anything the federal government are involved with; then there was true culture, which in a 70% black town was black culture. What was the white culture? None of us had any clue.”

YOU CAN MAKE YOUR LIFE WHAT YOU WANT IT YOU CAN MAKE YOUR LIFE WHAT YOU WANT IT

Skateboarding and punk music were his saviours.

“I started skating about 1975/76 and even though I had met Henry Garfield who became Henry Rollins earlier on — I met him when I was 11 — we really bonded over skateboarding. We had this gang of kids and we decided to form a team so we just formed our own skateboard

TO BE, TO BE, ELSE’S ELSE’S

THAT YOU THAT YOU APPROVAL APPROVAL

DIDN’T NEED SOMEBODY DIDN’T NEED SOMEBODY AND MAYBE EVEN THAT AND MAYBE EVEN THAT

team even though we had no sponsor — it was like a street gang for us.

It was a tribe thing. I think I deeply desired a tribe, and the skateboarding thing gave me really good practice on how to define the world around you… [then] what I got from punk was this sense of…a call for self-definition. That you can make your life what you want it to be,

YOU NEEDED SOMEBODY’S DISAPPROVAL. YOU NEEDED SOMEBODY’S DISAPPROVAL.

that you didn’t need somebody else’s approval and maybe even that you needed somebody’s disapproval.”

Ian saw the same potential in punk that he experienced growing up immersed in 1960s counter-culture as a child. “I was born in 1962 and I was here in Washington right through all the civil rights stuff, the anti-war stuff, gay rights. My parents and I went to a church that was radical liberation — very, very left, it had a woman saying mass in 1972, gay marriage in 1974, the Black Panthers spoke there, rock bands played there — it was radical. I was raised in that environment so I thought that’s how society would be. Then the ’70s came along and you had this period of people partying and disco music and such obsolescence, it was such a bummer and I felt so disconnected from it. I was like, ‘where’s the counter-culture?’ It seemed so real to me as a child but as a teenager it was gone.” Everyone was just partying a lot. During this period, Ian realised the drugs and booze lifestyle he saw going on near him wasn’t going to work for him in any way at all.

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He tells me: “In high school, the only form of rebellion that seemed to be on the menu was self-destruction, in other words getting high or drinking. That seemed to be a rather inert form of rebellion because you’re neutralising yourself. If rebellion is pushing back against a system then by neutralising yourself I don’t think you’re a danger to that system, it’s not offering up any options.”

A life-changing Cramps concert — a poster for which he has framed on the wall at Dischord’s office — came later, in February 1979.

He says there were probably 800 people there, “so many freaks.”

“I thought, ‘I’m home,’” he says. “Because in my life I wasn’t partaking in what everyone else was partaking in I felt different and I felt marginalised. Then I found myself in a room full of people who, for varying reasons, where the same. Maybe they were junkies, maybe they were transgender, maybe they were politically anarchistic, who knows? Whatever it was they were in that room and they were full of ideas and that’s what I was looking for — ideas, people who were interested in kicking around some thoughts instead of letting things get blurry.”

Ian’s first band, The Teen Idles, were relatively short-lived. However, they saved every penny from their gigs and this money led to them putting out their first ever record via the newly formed Dischord Records that Ian set-up with band-mate Jeff Nelson. Even when he was barely out of his teenage years he had manage to fuse seething passion and intensity with astute pragmatism. “I assumed that was normal,” he tells me now.

“So many people have come to me over the years and said: ‘How do I start a label?’ and I just say: ‘Get a band. Get some music you want to document.’ I think so many people have been brought up around the idea that this is a career. Over the last decade there’s been all these advertisements on television that are like young people in indie-rock bands in their VW cars to carry their electric guitars or whatever and there is this weird emphasis of ‘we’re in a band now’ like it’s a career choice. I generally think that it’s something that just has to come out.

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I just think of it as a normal form of communication that predates language. I don’t think Nina Simone was like, maybe I’ll be some kind of a doctor or maybe I’ll be a musician. I don’t think that happened, it was just something that had to come out of her. Today I think that mentality exists — ‘ah, I’ll be a musician.’

“Music is becoming content,” he continues, focusing on some of the major shifts of focus in music in recent years. “You can see it with these streaming services. You just sign up and subscribe to the service and you get all this content. It’s not music, it’s content. They don’t care — they do not care — the people that run those businesses do not give a fuck about music. What they care about is content; they want the subscribers. I think even labels are moving in that direction too.

“It’s really depressing but that’s the way it goes. If you think about the relationship people had to music in 1850, imagine what music meant to people, how rich it was; what’s happening now is music has been degraded. But music is deep; it’s deeper than a lot of people truly understand. I understand there has been a marketplace built around music but that’s not music that’s just the marketplace, that’s just business. Music was here long before the music industry.”

That includes music venues too — in their day, a key part of the DIY network built by the US hardcore scene in the early ’80s. In that early, disenfranchised world, fanswould attend shows of groups they’d never heard of allowing bands a freedom that’s missing today.

“Venues, by and large, are bars and their economy is based on the sales of alcohol,” says Ian. “There’s no ethical or moral issue around alcohol, on my part, per se, but at the end of the day that is their economy so what they are most interested in is selling alcohol and therefore they need clientele. A band’s audience is the clientele; the problem that you run into is that a new band with a new idea doesn’t have an audience yet, so if you’re a band who plays in a club, by and large, you’re already established. The economics of it discourages innovation, but what I loved about punk rock was that the audience was just there, almost by default — profit wasn’t part of the equation.

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“I’m not a curmudgeon,” he insists. “I’m an observer.”

After The Teen Idles came Minor Threat, one of the most influential hardcore bands of all time, despite only releasing one album, ‘Out of Step’, in 1983.

Not wanting to change the habit of a lifetime, Fugazi (Ian’s longest standing group, operating from 1986 to 2003) inspired even more via a ferocious mix of experimental and noise rock that resurrected the lawlessness that has been dumbed down from hardcore’s beginnings.

Being involved in such truly seminal groups, it’s not long before talk turns to the reunion-heavy, play-your-classic-album period that music is currently immersed in. “I guess the bottom line, for me, lies in the answer to this question: would they have done it if there was no money involved? Would they have played together if they weren’t being paid? And if the answer is no then I’m probably not interested.

It’s not that interesting to me, but if the answer is yes then cool, why not. I mean I saw Nina Simone in 2000 and I would imagine there was a lot of people who knew her music and saw her in 1970 who would have probably thought that show was terrible, but for me it was kind of life-changing — a hugely important gig. So I do see the value of these bands playing, they’re great bands. I mean, for you [at your age] a lot of the bands who are reforming and playing broke up before you were even born. So, that’s an opportunity to see them and one hopes that when you see them you get: ‘wow, these guys are not fucking around!’ When I saw [a reformed] Arthur Lee play I thought, ‘this guy is the real deal. He has to do this!’ For me, my favourite genre of music is made by people who have no choice in the matter. So when I saw him he was playing to hardly anybody but he was going so hard.”

It must be an offer Ian gets a lot, to reform one of his old bands?

“Well I think it’s pretty much on the record by this point,” he says. “I mean, Fugazi never broke up; we may or may not play again, we don’t know. We really do get an awful lot of requests for Fugazi, all the time.

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But it doesn’t matter because we will play if and when we choose to.

If we decide to get together again we will do so and if we decide to do that publically we will do that and if we decide not to, we won’t.

We’re very clear about that. Minor Threat, I used to get people writing to me once in a while, usually from Indonesia, but it’s not even possible. Minor Threat broke up at a time when we were not getting along and agreeing on what the band should do; there was a split in the decision of if we should split or keep going. All four of us agreed that it’s just better to stop instead of perverting the name, of perverting the band just to keep the name. The twenty or so songs we did, it was kind of a perfect cannon. Anything we did now would be a disservice to that.”

While Ian is a straight talking kind of guy, there’s often been some retrospective misunderstanding and misconceptions about him and his bands. He says he feels he was “misunderstood in the beginning, misunderstood in the middle and misunderstood in the end.”

“One of the things about the Fugazi stuff,” he says, “if you listen to the early ’90s live stuff [Ian has painstakingly been documenting and uploading hundreds of live shows to the online Fugazi archive for the last five years] we have such combative fights with the

Although in retrospect he feels it is not the worst of responsibilities to

audience and I think when people today listen to that they think,

be burdened with. “The whole idea of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll… or

‘what?! What’s up with this guy yelling at the audience?’. But people

the idea of alcohol, who do you think really supports that notion?

don’t have any real idea of how fucked up those shows were — guys

Who really supports the idea of alcohol being a huge part of music?

were beating the shit out of each other, it wasn’t that they were

The alcohol industry,” he says.

laughing and jumping around, they were fighting. It was gangs of skinheads and we stepped to them.

“I’ve read things with people saying, ‘oh he just heckles the

believed that milk was akin to air and water and that you would die if you didn’t drink milk. My parents didn’t tell me that, the fucking dairy

audience the whole time.’ They don’t understand that it was a

lobby told me that. If you were in school you were taught to drink

reaction to the environment. I think when people go to punk

milk, it was insane, it’s bullshit, and guess what — I haven’t had a

shows today they don’t have any idea what those shows were like.”

glass of milk in 30 years and I’m still fucking here and healthy. It’s

Similarly, Ian’s desire to live his life a certain way also resulted in

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“When we grew up in America in the 1960s and ’70s I genuinely

obvious to me that it’s a put on, that you have to be drunk, a fuck

people attributing what became an entire movement to him. He was

up, use drugs, I mean why? Music for me is sacred; I don’t buy it, I

never happy being the recognized figurehead of Straight Edge.

don’t agree with it that those are some kind of prerequisites.

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I am unhappy about the idea that my music would ever be used, or to soundtrack, hurting someone. I don’t like that, I find that to be problematic but I can’t control it. There was a period of time when a white power group used one of my lyrics from Minor Threat on their website but what can I do? Your friend who was taking amphetamines and listening to Minor Threat, he was just coming from a

I’M I’M PRETTY PRETTY SURE SURE LIGHTNIN’ LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS HOPKINS NEVER NEVER ENVISIONED ENVISIONED PEOPLE PEOPLE DRIVING DRIVING

different place. That’s what they needed. I think music is just part of that equation. I mean, I’ve thought about this a lot, as I’ve been someone who coined the term straight edge and sort of promote —

AROUND AROUND IN IN A A CAR, CAR, SCREAMING SCREAMING ALONG ALONG

although I didn’t feel like I was promoting anything — people not to

TO TO HIS HIS SONGS. SONGS.

joys of heroin, especially after seeing the amount of carnage that

drink or use drugs…well, good! Better that than singing about the comes out of that drug. Or like the gang-banger gangster rap guys — they weren’t all gunslingers, those people; a lot of them were art school guys who went along with what was selling. I mean, I would feel terrible if I wrote a song that actually helped people kill each other. Like deliberately, like, ‘I’m going to take out my gun and blow your fucking head off’, and someone went, ‘yeah, I’ll do that’.

“People have often asked me what it’s like to be a big influence or

So, when you have some band going: ‘oh, we were out of it, we didn’t

have people follow you and follow your model, and it’s like, well

care,’ well I fucking cared. That’s on you. I met a guy that was like, ‘oh,

better than if I were singing about something really destructive.”

I didn’t really keep track of any of our stuff,’ and I was like: ‘okay, you

With having such a clear head for his entire musical career, an

didn’t. I did.’ There are some people that kind of thought it was cool to

accurately kept archive, extensive diaries and notes, I wonder if we

not keep track of things, that wasn’t what punk was. For me punk was

can ever expect a memoir of sorts from Ian? I wouldn’t be surprised

construction, I’m a construction worker.”

if it was as much a recurring conversation as more Fugazi shows.

I mention a friend of mine who used to stay up late on amphet-

“Yeah, people have talked to me about memoirs for years and I’ve

amines listening to Minor Threat records in his room, and ask if

thought about it, I’m not sure I like the idea. I’ve read books by

this bothers someone who essentially wrote music opposed to such

many, many people that I have found inspiring but I’ve also read

kinds of behaviour?

books by people who are just really mean and desperate. Here’s what

“All I can do is transmit,” he says. “I’m pretty sure Lightnin’ Hopkins

I think: the world is filled with trash and I’m interested in not adding

never envisioned people driving around in a car, screaming along to

to that pile. I feel like a record you don’t listen to is a piece of trash, a

his songs. Once music is out there it’s out there. However, because of

book you’ve not read is a piece of trash, so if I make something I

this I’m completely opposed to ugliness and war, pain and violence.

want to make sure it’s something that adds value.

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Section 3

INTRO

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THE HISTORY

Fan quotes Member Projects Credits Index

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Fan

CHAPTER 6

Quotes YOU NEVER NEVER FORGET FORGET HEARING HEARING THE THE FIRST FIRST ROLLING ROLLING BASS BASS LINE LINE OF OF “WAITING “WAITING YOU ROOM.” ROOM.” IT IT WAS WAS UNLIKE UNLIKE ANYTHING ANYTHING I I HAD HAD HEARD HEARD AT AT THAT THAT POINT, POINT, AND AND SHATSHATTERED TERED MY MY CONCEPTION CONCEPTION AT AT THAT THAT POINT POINT

What first stood out to me about Fugazi is the way they really cared about what they did.

I discovered Minor Threat in high school but never explored Fugazi until I graduated. It surprised me how each album was without filler, amazing all the way through and how each seemed to progress. They never stopped moving forward.

— Brooks Peffer

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OFWHAT OFWHAT “PUNK “PUNK ROCK” ROCK” COULD COULD BE. BE.

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The first time I heard Fugazi, I wasn’t really sure about what I was listening to. I had listened to a lot of punk music for a very long time, so in a way I kind of expected them to sound a bit, or even a lot like everything else.

The thing was, they didn’t.

Somehow Fugazi managed to be a punk band without being a “punk” band and that was enough for me and apparently, enough for a lot of people.

— Vin Comparetto

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Seeing Fugazi live for the first time (1991, Chameleon Club, Lancaster) opened my eyes to the actual power of music. Just listening to “Suggestion” as a room full of people chanting along like a solemn prayer, considering, understanding the words being spoken, it was a far more spiritual moment than I had ever experienced. To this day, I don’t think any other musical moment has been nearly as powerful.

— Erich Lehman

Live at the Chameleon Club, Lancaster, PA, 1990.

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I was lucky enough to see Fugazi twice in the very early 90’s at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ. The first time I saw them I didn’t know their music. I found them to be overly opinionated to the point of being self-righteous. I ended up buying one of their records anyway and brought it home, willing to give them another chance and I’m glad I did. They became one of my favorite bands of all time and I realized that they were quite possibly the band I was searching for but hadn’t yet discovered, until I did.

— Chris Nostrand

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I was at my grandmother’s house for Easter in Western Pennsylvania, and for whatever reason, my dad took my brother and I to a local mall. I was maybe 14 or 15. I remember finding a record store and, while looking for tapes, came across the first Fugazi EP. Marooon cover with the pic of Guy upside down. I was still pretty new to skateboarding and hardcore, but I recognized the DISCHORD logo as something my buddy Kurt listened to, so I scraped up the $5 to buy it.

When I got back to my grandma’s house, I went upstairs to my room and put the tape in and, quite literally, my world changed completely. I listened to the EP on repeat for the rest of the trip, my mind blown.

— Quentin Smith

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All photos: Live at the Chameleon Club, Lancaster, PA, 1990.

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I think the most significant thing about Fugazi was their absolute commitment to staying independent from all the trappings of the music industry. Multiple times they were offered major label deals and signing with national promoters and every time they simply turned those offers down.

No music videos, no official merch, no ticketmaster.

Because of all this, the authenticity of the messages they spoke about in their music held more weight. — Trevor Graham

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FAN QUOTES

I always gravitated toward anything Ian MacKaye was part of. Like many hardcore punk and skater kids from my generation, Dischord Records and Minor Threat were a huge cultural force. Fugazi, to me, carried on the implicitly political, principled, and DIY spirit of punk but was freed from the self-imposed simplicity of the genre. Guy Picciotto’s presence, vocally and musically, perfectly complemented and countered Ian’s too. Fugazi was sonically, emotionally, and lyrically complex while preserving a “fuck you” attitude toward the influence of big record companies and pretentious cultural elitism, and it has carried through.

For example, all of Dischord’s music is now accessible for free streaming, which is really amazing given today’s ultra-commodified world. It didn’t feel like old-school punks trying to force a more weighty, commercial, or mature sound. It was totally organic. And for that era, when punk was becoming more predictable and formulaic, Fugazi was like punk’s pure ethos distilled into a more fresh and authentic form.

I love them and still listen to them all the time.

— Darren Barany

79

Member

CHAPTER 7

Projects

Ian MacKaye The Slinkees

The Teen Idles

Skewbald

Minor Threat

Embrace

Egg Hunt

Pailhead

Brendan Canty Deadline

Rites of Spring

One Last Wish

Happy Go Licky

Guy Piciotto Rites of Spring

80

WE SPEAK THE WAY WE BREATHE

/

HOW FUGAZI REVOLUTIONIZED INDEPENDENT ROCK

One Last Wish

Happy Go Licky

CHAPTER 7

Fugazi

/

MEMBER PROJECTS

The Evens

Joe Lally Fugazi

Decahedron

Fugazi

Girls Against Boys

Fugazi

Brief Weeds

Ataxia

The Messthetics

The All Scars

Garland of Hours

Deathfix

Black Light Panthers

Vic Chestnutt

81

Credits Band History

Joe Lally Interview

Appears courtesy of scaruffi.com

Appears courtesy of The Gothamist

Ian MacKaye Profile

Guy Picciotto Interview -

Appears courtesy of Dischord Records

Appears courtesy of psychicgloss.com

Guy Picciotto Profile

Brendan Canty Interview

Appears courtesy of wikipedia.com

Appears courtesy of The Gothamist

Joe Lally Profile

Ian MacKaye Interview

Appears courtesy of wikipedia.com

Appears courtesy of loudandquiet.com

Brendan Canty Profile Appears courtesy of wikipedia.com

82

CHAPTER 8

WE SPEAK THE WAY WE BREATHE

/

HOW FUGAZI REVOLUTIONIZED INDEPENDENT ROCK

CHAPTER 8

/

CREDITS

All images appear courtesy of Dischord Records, except where noted below:

Page 12

Page 63

Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Page 15

Page 69

Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Page 41

Page 71

Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Appears courtesy of Erich Lehman

Page 47

Pages 72-73

Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Appear courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Page 50

Pages 76-77

Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

Appear courtesy of Erich Lehman

Page 53 Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman Page 61 Appears courtesy of Benj Gleeksman

83

Index Symbols

F

P

13 Songs 8, 12, 21, 26, 29

Farina, Amy 18, 20

Picciotto, Guy 8, 9, 13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 26, 34, 43

Fort Reno 53

post-hardcore 21

A

post-punk 13, 48

Argument, The 16, 21, 27, 32, 48

I

Ataxia 18, 22, 81

In on the Kill Taker 21, 26, 31

R

Insurrection 4, 43

Red Medecine 31

B

Repeater 8, 13, 15, 21, 23, 26, 30

Bad Brains 4, 20, 40

L

Rites of Spring 4, 8, 21, 23, 41, 43, 44, 81

Bikini Kill 45

Lally, Joe 9, 18, 20, 22, 26, 34, 46, 81

Rollins, Henry 41, 57

M

S

Black Flag 15, 40 C

MacKaye, Ian 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 20, 22, 26,

Canty, Brendan 9, 20, 21, 23, 26, 43, 48, 81 D

27, 34, 40, 56, 80

Skewbald 4, 80

Margin Walker 8, 12, 21, 26, 29

Steady Diet of Nothing 15, 21, 26, 30

Minor Threat 4, 8, 9, 10, 20, 26, 41, 43, 44,

straight edge 65

Deadline 4, 21, 23, 81 Dischord 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23,

Skateboarding 56, 57

56, 62, 64, 65, 68, 80 Minutemen 15

27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 48, 56, 59

T Teen Idles 4, 20, 56, 59, 62, 80

N E

Nelson, Jeff 20, 59

Embrace 4, 9, 80

W Washington D.C. 4, 26

emo 10, 21, 49

O

End Hits 16, 21, 27, 32

One Last Wish 4, 21, 23, 81

Y

Evens, The 18, 20, 56, 80

Out of Step 62

yoga 34

Starting a Revolution Some legacies simply cannot be overstated. In the 1980’s, Washington D.C.’s internationally recognized punk scene had been globally worshipped and emulated in its sound, politics and attitude. The city had spawned an army of bands whose music and messages would reach angsty teenagers around the world, prompting the words “Minor Threat” to be spraypainted on any rail tressel or drainage ditch within 5 miles of the nearest person under 20 years old.

As the straight edge philosophy of abstinence from drugs and drink matured, so with it did the musicians who had preached the philosophy as their mantra. As a result, the birth of Fugazi — a band who was both adopted by alternative culture and praised by the mainstream alike; A band who showed the world that artists can remain honest while staying true to their convictions and creating a body of work that is both sought-after and life altering.

BROKEN MOON

PRESS