6 Essential Fugazi Live Archive sets to hear
Fugazi played three times in San Diego while I lived there, but I never made it to one of those shows. I was either still unaware of the legendary Washington, D.C., post-hardcore group at the time, or didn’t have a car, or—well, yeah, those are the reasons. And when I was finally a proper Fugazi fan, independent and with a reliable set of wheels, on their final tour, the closest they came to my city was Phoenix—hundreds of miles away, across state lines. In hindsight I probably should have gone, damn the gas mileage, but then again, I didn’t think they were about to go on indefinite hiatus a year later.
Well, never say never—drummer Brendan Canty recently said that there’s always a possibility, even if it’s not likely. But for those of us who missed them the first time, Fugazi long ago started up the process of making as many of their live shows available as a $5 download back on Dischord Records shortly after their now-23-year hiatus began. By 2010, the archive included something on the order of 1,000 live shows, a veritable Dick’s Picks—Disch’s picks?—of roaring, $5 post-hardcore all-ages shows. For someone like me, who never got to see it firsthand, it’s a treasure trove, if one that only reinforces the fact that, yes, I missed out. (Though discovering that the San Diego shows were all at SOMA, easily the worst venue in the city, tamps down on that regret a little.)
Now that they’ve begun gradually transferring some of those shows over to Bandcamp and other streaming services, it’s a great time to revisit the Fugazi Live Archive. They’ve uploaded a handful of sets on Bandcamp so far, including their first and last shows, and a few from the mid-’90s. And just within that small batch of recordings, you hear how much of a force of nature they were, how they were able to harness such energy and intensity with a fairly simple approach (with minimal effects to speak of, they jammed econo, to borrow a phrase from The Minutemen). To ring in this era of a revived Fugazi Live Archive, I’ve picked three essential live sets available on Bandcamp and three from the Dischord archive (which I hope eventually make their way to the other platforms) as an introduction to the band’s legendary live history.
On Bandcamp:
Wilson Center, Washington, D.C. – 09/03/87
Fugazi’s inaugural live show, a remarkable enough document in itself, given that someone actually captured this historic night on tape without being able to gaze into the future and see just how massively influential Fugazi ended up being. Still, you can hear the spark catching fire as early as this first show. It’s not the highest quality recording, but it’s not half bad—the vocals cut in and out here and there, and it’s certainly lower fi than many of the later live recordings. All the same, when hearing the band roar into a moment like Repeater highlight “Merchandise,” we catch a glimpse of the incendiary energy that made them legends. But most of all what makes this interesting is hearing how Fugazi, as a concept, had yet to fully take shape—only a couple of their most celebrated songs are here, and one of them, “Waiting Room,” is played much slower. The raw elements are there, however, the beginnings of something incredible.
Roseland Ballroom, New York, NY – 09/24/93
Even before the band gets in gear at their 1993 Roseland Ballroom show, Mackaye and Picciotto offer a warning to the crowd not to do any stage diving. It’s far from the first or only time you’ll hear this in the archive, but depending on the show it can range from earnest to hilarious. (We’ll get to one of the latter.) But then “Smallpox Champion” kicks up, and it’s just loud as hell. Something about the recording of the show, or perhaps the live mix, give the guitars and drums an immensity that feels, frankly, overwhelming. Then again, this was the In on the Kill Taker era—their noisiest album—and fittingly the live permutations of these songs are appropriately ferocious. It’s a little messy because of that bombardment of volume and noise, but that’s also what makes it stand out: A total onslaught of sonic aggression.
The Forum, London, England – 11/04/02
When Ian Mackaye makes his introduction with “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, we are Fugazi from Washington, D.C.”, he sounds curiously formal, polite and cordial, almost like he’s about to give a keynote speech instead of playing the last show with a band that changed the shape of underground music both musically and culturally. But if the introduction doesn’t offer any indication of the gravity of the moment, the show itself is one worth documenting in the record books. Opening with instrumental “Brendan #1,” the group sound as ferocious as they ever have, letting no open space fill the vacuum before they rev up their take on “Sieve-Fisted Find,” which then bleeds into “Greed.” As the third night of a three-night residency at The Forum in London, they switch up the setlist from the previous two nights, having covered a pretty significant chunk of their catalog over the three nights overall, which here includes a messy but awesome “Waiting Room” and explosive closer “Glueman.” And somehow, up to the end, they were still in the habit of stopping mid-song to tell someone not to stage dive, with a cautionary tale about someone ending up paralyzed. And of course once they restart “Margin Walker,” they sound as uproarious and intense as they ever have. It’s the kind of live show that really reinforces how much we’re missing.
Not on Bandcamp (Yet):
Fort Reno, Washington, D.C. – 08/09/93
The “Ice cream eating motherfucker” show! It’s a legendary document in Fugazi lore (as included in the documentary Instrument), with a bit that anyone in the scene at the time could probably recite by memory. Two dudes start doing the thing that’ll get any Fugazi show to stop cold—harshing everyone else’s buzz with shitty, violent behavior—and they get a stern lecture. “It sucks to have to tell people to behave themselves,” Mackaye laments. But it’s Picciotto who steals the show: “I saw you guys earlier at the Good Humor truck … Oh you’re bad now, but you were eating an ice cream cone. And I saw you. The whole place fucking knows it—ice cream eating motherfucker. You are.” And the crowd goes wild. But the rest of the show—recorded at Fort Reno Park in D.C., where Fugazi played almost every year of their existence? Yeah, it’s one for the ages, from the early instrumental version of “By You” to the undeniable groove of “Long Division” to “Smallpox Champion,” which is in almost all of these sets but reaches peak intensity here.
Five Points Music Hall, Albuquerque, NM – 11/13/95
My favorite Fugazi album is 1995’s Red Medicine, so I’d be remiss not to include a set from that tour. And all the songs from that album are standout moments here, whether the chaotic urgency of “Do You Like Me,” the searing charge of “Bed for the Scraping” or the slow-burn and eruption of “Do You.” Here, it’s the bass rather than the guitar or drums that sound unusually loud, which is just fine—Joe Lally’s playing is a crucial element of the band’s sound. Naturally, there’s a lot of chatter in this set as well—Fugazi were a bantering bunch!—especially when they have to tell some violent knuckleheads to cool it less than a minute into the first song(!). They also kick off the set with a gracious acknowledgement of a cafe owner who hosted them before the show. Oh, also Unwound and Blonde Redhead opened the show—what a night that must have been!
Congress Theater, Chicago, IL – 06/23/01
A standout from the beginning of the end. Captured months before the release of their final album The Argument, this first of two nights at the Congress Theater in Chicago features a number of songs from that all-time great swan song, which the audience was very likely hearing for the first time. one of the strongest of the bunch is set opener “Ex-Spectator,” which builds tension spectacularly, erupting into an early explosion of aggression and controlled chaos. But the entire set—by no means pristine in its sound quality but still pretty good—is as close to a hits collection as you’re likely to hear in a Fugazi live show, featuring songs from just about every album they released: “Turnover,” “Cashout,” “Great Cop,” “Waiting Room,” “Bed for the Scraping.” Plus some deeper cuts from End Hits and The Argument. It’s not their tightest set either, with plenty of scrapes and screeches finding their way into the set, but even imperfect, Fugazi deliver something that’s forceful and mesmerizing.
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