Fugazi : Classic or Dud ?

it's a pretty grimy, spiny, unfriendly album in a way. like "combination lock" would have been a lot more...supple a couple years earlier or later. it's also my favorite album of theirs, but then i don't get tetchy when former hardcore dudes make grimy, spiny, unfriendly albums.

it's their pop album!

you're on crack

lol i like that you bused your insult in special from 1995

you still haven't explained your glitch

they were tight as hell and one of the best dance bands around.

― EZ Snappin, Monday, July 16, 2012 5:59 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

many many people are on crack in this thread

but none so much as the h8rs! talk to the hand h8rs!

Fugazi were totally a dance band! Live they swung like motherfuckers.

totally i recall doing all the dances, the twist, the cabbage patch, wild punching

do you mean dance as in what people do at dance clubs or dance as in what people do at phish concerts

i am a patient boy
i frug i frug i frug i frug

i dunno it's obviously a facetious statement but if not RM what is their pop album? i guess maybe Repeater, not really familiar with 13 Songs. but when i think of Red Medicine i think of catchy stuff like "Target" and "Do You Like Me" and think of "By You" as their epic power ballad.

hardcore kids talk about "dancing" even more than hippies (and mean it even more loosely)

i dunno it's obviously a facetious statement but if not RM what is their pop album?

would argue that 13 songs, repeater, kill taker and argument are all consistently more anthemic/catchy than medicine

fugazi were funky as hell. i mean they weren't *always* funky as hell because they were a rock band. but still.

13 songs and repeater are definitely the "pop" albums. argument simmers too long in the middle.

kill taker is probably the most pop in the sense that what they were doing was making mint for majors at the same time, argument the most lush production-wise, and yeah 13/repeater are non-stop anthems.

could see a couple of those. the noodly atmospheric stuff breaks The Argument's momentum way more than RM's for me (but in End Hits it feels all deliberately threaded into the songs in a satisfying way). maybe i'm just imagining it but i feel like RM has less of Ian's drill sergeant voice than a lot of the other records, a little less brute force in the riffs?

a lack of strong riffs doesn't make it their "pop album" by any stretch

end hits and steady diet are the outliers for me. hardly ever listen to them. high highs, but a lot of filler. (i probably saw this band like 900 times and i cant remember them ever playing a song from steady diet.) (ian also should have left the "singing" to guy.)

you didn't hear reclamation 500 times? it was a live staple for a good while

I've definitely heard Long Division live

actually I think I've heard a bunch of songs from that record live: Nice New Outfit, Stacks, Latin Roots, Runaway Return

xp yeah, I saw them maybe 5 times and heard "Long Division" at least twice.

Reclamation was a highlight when I saw them in like 98? 99?

Think I saw them do KYEO, too. Steady Diet and Killtaker are the only Fugazi records I listen to with any regularity.

The book Dance of Days has a lengthy bit about the centrality of Reclamation to their live shows for a while.

Interesting to see the Steady Diet love.

the only time i saw Fugazi live they played Reclamation first and held those first guitar notes for what felt like 5 minutes before the bass & drums came in. People were going nuts.

randomly, steady diet ended up being my first fugazi record, cuz i was just buying one at random and i liked the title or something...sort of a weird intro to the band

yeah that was kind of a fun thing of the pre-internet era, having these random and sometimes "wrong" entry points based on what was in the store or what had a cool cover/title

I would rather hear "Latin Roots" than haha no just kidding that song is terrible.

I know a few people who even at the time preferred Steady Diet to Repeater and 13 Songs (which is wildly uneven IMO, way more so than Steady Diet frankly). I'm not sure when critical consensus resulted in X is or isn't the Fugazi to have, but I don't think it really existed in 1991/2.

true

http://timetomeetjamaicans.ytmnd.com/

otm

http://timetoreadsomeeggers.ytmnd.com/

http://iliketoandimpaidto.ytmnd.com/

fugazi really are in the mondegreen hall of fame

"BLAME SISTER RAY! BLAME SISTER RAY! BLAME SISTER RAY!" - Fugazi, "Epic Problem"

on some other thread strongo notes the "wipeout" in "smallpox champion" can be mistaken for "white power" while i always heard "waffles."

mondegreen! i never knew what that was called

yeah nice vocab expander

"AUSSIE THUGS IN A PRISOOOOOOON! THEY SHOULD NEVER TOUCH THE GROUND!"

We just so happened to play Fugazi's first two EPs at Devon Record Club last week.

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2012/07/17/fugazi-7-songs-and-margin-walker-round-32-robs-choice/

Saw these guys at the Manchester Boardwalk in 1989, so fucking great. I know that Waiting Room is remembered as the big song of their early days, but Suggestion was definitely the highpoint of their set and the one that really blew the whole room up, so taut and yes, so funky.

I liked back in 88 in DC when Amy Pickering guested on some of the vocals for "Suggestion". Here's a Wilson Center version from that time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k1iK4nyS8o

Amy's vocals are good, Ian's are more predictable

WE SIT BACK
LIKE THE TORTOISE
WE KEEP QUIET
LIKE THE TORTOISE

I love that Wilson Center clip of Suggestion!

HERE COMES THE ONION MEN

ALADDIN ROOTS

This is all over FB now but figured some may not have seen (notice quote at top)

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7ciqpG23w1qjnw5fo1_500.jpg