Though they are not a household name, Fugazi and its frontman, Ian MacKaye, possess a near-mythological status among those within the indie community. Since their hiatus in 2003, Fugazi’s stature among music obsessives has continued to grow and the legend of their live shows has ensnared a new generation of fans. Now, thanks to a combination of technological advancements and a favorably hobbled music industry, Fugazi is primed for a promising second life.
Last week I received an email from Ian MacKaye’s record label, Dischord Records, notifying me that a new batch of Fugazi shows was available for download. Fugazi, like many underground bands with a dedicated fan base, is a group whose career has been obsessively chronicled by its devotees. The band’s first show was taped by sound tech, Joey Picuri, and after a few gigs, the band decided to record all of their shows for archival purposes. Fans were encouraged to participate in the practice and soon, the band was flooded with tapes documenting the history of the band. Now, those tapes are available for download on a pay-what-you-can basis.
Ian MacKaye was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the affluent neighborhood of Glover Park. His father was a religion specialist and White House correspondent for the Washington Post and according to childhood friend, Henry Rollins (then Henry Garfield), the MacKaye homestead was progressive, intellectual and nurturing. While life at home may have been stable, the world outside MacKaye’s door told a different story.
The 1970s and 1980s were a period of extreme turmoil in the US Capitol. The crack epidemic and poor economy hit the city hard and racial tensions were escalating into outbursts of terrifying violence. In a marked contrast to punk’s first wave, the privileged children of the city’s intelligentsia were forming the emerging DC hardcore scene. For those youths, the racial and socio-economic disparities of the time could not have been more clear–they enjoyed a comfortable, private-schooled childhood while their peers a few blocks away suffered the negative side effects of the country’s move to the political right. As a result, Washington’s hardcore scene took on a distinct tone: it was angry, politically informed and considerably more sober than its brother movements in Southern California, New York and Boston.
MacKaye’s first band was a Bad Brains-influenced hardcore group called the Teen Idles. The band was short-lived and most of their gigs were as opening acts for other more established DC hardcore bands. The Teen Idles did, however, embark on one tour outside the Washington Metro Area: a trip to California. In Los Angeles, the group was dismayed to learn that the club they were slated to play (opening for the Dead Kennedys and Circle Jerks!1) had to deny them entry because they were under eighteen. The next show at San Francisco’s legendary venue, Mabuhay Gardens, presented the same problem. As a compromise with the show’s promoters, the Teen Idles had giant “X”s drawn on their hands to signify that they were not to be served alcohol. Shortly after that show, the band returned to Washington and broke up.
Following the demise of the Teen Idles, MacKaye formed a second band, Minor Threat and a record label called Dischord records. Minor Threat is an important group in the history of both the American punk movement and the musical culture of Washington but it is also significant for birthing the “Straight Edge” movement. MacKaye, repulsed and saddened by the wanton nihilism of punk culture, wrote a song for Minor Threat’s first album called “Straight Edge.” Its lyrics railed against drug consumption and the concept of sex as conquest. The song–and MacKaye–became emblems of this new youth culture, which rejected the use of alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, sexual promiscuity and in some cases, caffeine. The movement also became aligned with veganism. To signify allegiance to the lifestyle, adherents drew large “X”s on their hands as a nod to the Mabuhay Gardens incident. Minor Threat broke up in 1983 after a little over three years together and the release of two albums and three EPs.
At a 1984 Minutemen2 show, Ian witnessed his brother Alec get into an altercation with another punk. The incident forced MacKaye to realize how violent the hardcore scene had become and understand his complicity in its aggression. Disgusted by what he observed, MacKaye retreated to Dischord and decided to pursue a different creative direction. He would later argue that “hardcore left [him],” rather than that he turned his back on the scene he helped create. With the benefit of hindsight, this distinction does not seem to matter much, as Washington’s hardcore scene was beginning to stagnate. New bands sprang up from the ashes of those that had imploded but few of them added much to the scene musically or substantively.
As with many subcultures, people who self-identified as members of the punk scene tended to regard their involvement as a phase. They were punks for a while, and then they grew up and moved on. For MacKaye, this mode of thinking seemed counterproductive if you believed in the possibility of cultural pluralism. Rather than move on from punk, its members ought to figure out a way to grow up with punk, he reasoned.
Post-Minor Threat, Ian MacKaye dedicated himself to the day-to-day functions of running his record label. He produced records for the artists on his roster and lugged amplifiers to gigs for them. Around this time, MacKaye played in a series of short-lived bands, none of which managed to capture the fire that had distinguished Minor Threat at its peak. Wary of joining yet another band, MacKaye decided that he wanted to form a side-project that was “like the Stooges with reggae.3”
In September 1986, MacKaye began rehearsing with bassist Joe Lally and drummer Colin Sears (formerly of Dag Nasty). Sears left a few months into their rehearsals and former Rites of Spring member Brendan Canty4 replaced him. Canty’s Rites of Spring bandmate Guy Picciotto (“Guy” is pronounced the French way) began stopping by rehearsals. Picciotto later admitted that he had secretly entertained fantasies of joining the project but given that they already had a singer and a guitarist, he did not know where he would fit in.
The trio decided to call themselves Fugazi—a term taken from Mark Baker’s collection of first-person Vietnam stories entitled Nam—which was a slang term used among American soldiers in Vietnam to mean “a fucked-up situation.”
Stylistically, Fugazi was a unique entity in the post-punk scene. The band’s roots in hardcore were always evident but they defied the compositional orthodoxy of hardcore and borrowed heavily from music past and present. Their early albums utilize some key elements from hip-hop–such as the use of a “foil5”—and meld them with free jazz, anthemic classic rock, reggae and funk. Later, the band would experiment with feedback, ambient noise and employing a stop/start technique to break up harmonies with bursts of energy. Picciotto and MacKaye split lead vocal and lead guitar duty. The latter of which is significant because traditionally, two guitarists in a band results in one player assuming rhythm guitar and the other taking lead.
Music aside, the quality that most defined Fugazi was their unwavering commitment to ethical behavior. For their entire career, the band charged $5 for entry to their shows; the figure never changed in response to inflation or the cost of touring. Further, the band would only play all-ages shows because they felt it was of paramount concern that all fans have access to the music, regardless of age. Every fan that wrote to Fugazi received a hand-written letter in return as a sign of gratitude. The band refused to grant interviews to magazines they did not read and never sold merchandise because they felt it was gimmicky and treated music as a vehicle for consumerism. They played dozens of benefits for social causes and became outspoken supporters of third wave feminism and riot grrrl.
Fugazi’s shows were legendary for their energy but MacKaye was adamant that their shows would be violence-free. If an audience member got carried away or began hitting fellow attendees, the band would stop and MacKaye would lecture the offender—always in an elaborately polite manner. If the offender did not heed Ian’s warnings, he would be ushered out of the show and handed an envelope with $5 inside.
The band drove their own van, set up their own equipment and released their own records. The DIY (or “Do It Yourself”) ethos of punk resonated with the band and they applied the principle to all facets of their artistic and business ventures. To keep costs down, the band would often play gigs in unconventional settings, such as galleries, basements and even, an abandoned supermarket.
By the early ‘90s, Fugazi was selling hundreds of thousands of albums without any radio play or major label distribution. In 1993, Atlantic records head, Ahmet Ertegun6, approached Fugazi backstage at a New York show. He offered them ten million dollars and “Anything they wanted” to sign to his label. They refused. The band continued to release their albums themselves and tour unceasingly until 2003.
I cannot pretend to be objective about Fugazi or Ian MacKaye. Few artists in today’s music scene have the courage to stand up for their values and relentlessly pursue the realization of their goals in the way that Fugazi did. I know that people like Ian MacKaye and the guys of Fugazi do not exist for me or people like me, who gain a feeling of superiority from being their fans. But I feel immensely fortunate to know that Ian MacKaye exists and that it is possible to lead a life in accordance with your values, even if it means going at it alone. Silly though it may sound, Fugazi taught me that and helped shape my outlook on life.
Programming Note: In the wake of last week’s “Mr. Rollins Goes to Wal-Mart” photo, the next installment will be a primer on Black Flag. After that, I will be switching gears and covering another genre, so that this series does not begin to look like my bid to become the next Mrs. Azerrad.
- Like most underground music scenes, hardcore was incredibly incestuous. Circle Jerks frontman, Keith Morris, was Black Flag’s original singer and one of its founding members. MacKaye brought Henry Rollins along with the Teen Idles as a “roadie” on the tour that would include opening for the Circle Jerks. A few years later, Rollins would become Black Flag’s fourth and most famous singer.
- The Minutemen were a fantastic trio signed to Black Flag’s label, SST. SST was started by Black Flag’s guitarist/founder Greg Ginn and would go on to become one of the most significant and influential actors in the 1980s indie scene. At its peak, the label was home to Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Black Flag, Dinosaur Jr, Saccharine Trust, Bad Brains, Screaming Trees & fIREHOSE. If you have even the slightest interest in punk and indie music from the ’80s, there are at least twenty-five albums you should go out and buy right now.
- This description could apply to late-career Bad Brains.
- Rites of Spring were a mid-Eighties DC post-hardcore band and contemporaries of other post-Minor Threat DC bands, such as Embrace (of which, MacKaye was briefly a member). They are credited–somewhat dubiously–as being the originators of emo. The music retained strong ties to hardcore but their lyrics were intensely personal, as opposed to the broader themes of hardcore. Needless to say, their music bears little resemblance to the self-pitying music that would become known as “emo” a few years later and the members have been extremely vocal in their dislike of the term. Their eponymous album was recorded in 1985 with Ian MacKaye as producer and was released through Dischord Records. Kurt Cobain designated that album as #30 on his list of 50 favorite albums of all-time.
- Foils are the use of backing vocals in the form of a hype man, or someone to help keep the energy level of the audience high. Think: Flavor flav, minus the clocks.
- This name should be familiar to Led Zeppelin fans because Ertegun was a major force behind their career. The band reunited in 2007 for a one-time performance in his honor.
