Washington City Paper cover story - hatchet job on Fugazi

also, I don't think it's fair to pin emo and Dashboard Confessional on Guy because of Rites of Spring, a band he was in for a short period of time 20 years ago....it seems like blaming Kurtis Blow because you don't like the new Chingy album or something.

Dumbfuck.

Lally closed just closed the label, so maybe that says something else.

Hmph. I never got *that* memo.

If I didn't read the lyric sheet, I'd have thought "Cha-Cha-Cha-Cha-Cha-Cha Champion" was about a dance contest winner who liked "waffles! waffles! waffles! waffles! waffles waffles!"

Again, I love Fugazi and this article is shit, but what REALLY bothers me abou it is that the guy didn't rip on Fugazi for all the shit they SHOULD get called on.

"I could never really get into them. I like the Minutemen a lot more."

Now gimme $200

There was actually a sly article in that paper, bringing his principles into question just the other week (not online that I can find). Something about a tape box from the 1980's, addressed to CBS Records president Walter Yetnikoff with return address "MacKaye" at the old Dischord House address. MacKaye finally figured the box must have held a tape by an old piano-playing neighbor of his, and that Ian's mom must have sent the tape. The author of the piece made great comedic hay of the implied impugnity to his hard-core morality in an attempt to get a deal for Minor Threat with a major label.

were men's recovery project from D.C.? i really liked them the one time i saw them live. they were ex-hardcore types, right? i will look them up after i post this, thus making my post kinda meaningless. but thems the breaks.

Anybody ever check out the DC go-go/dancehall band "The Emperors"?

Which is even more hilarious because when I met Dead Meadow's rhythm section a week ago they looked, sounded and dressed like quiet, earnest folk who could just as easily been dismissed as being in a wimp indie band (if you didn't actually know what the music sounded like).

And there's been plenty of sexy, dangerous rock music made in DC in the last couple of decades: Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Deep Lust, Slant 6, etc., are all from or at least were based in DC for a while there. The problem seems to be that they are girls and girls don't rock. There's also go-go and Genuwine, but black people don't rock either. And there's Shudder to Think and the Dismemberment Plan, too, but weird arty guys who make twisted, oblique rock music obviously don't know how to have any fun. And then Dead Meadow, but, um, why doesn't he like them? Or Black Eyes? Are they gay or something?

But like I said earlier, this author cultivates a glam/sleaze rock image around his writing and his previous failed bands, and he probably wouldn't know an interestingly twisted post-punk band if it kicked him in the groin. (In the article he praised the Meatmen, whose primary contribution to the area was fratboys wearing "We're the Meatmen...and You Suck!" t-shirts.)

"Hey Ben: Mike Little here. I enjoyed your response. It
was nasty, brutish and short. I've always been an
underachiever, but never did I expect to write the
single worst piece of music journalism in the history
of alt-weeklies. I plan to frame your e-mail and give
it pride of place above my desk. Have a good one"

"Dear Washington City Paper,

Congratulations on publishing the single worst piece
of music journalism in the history of alt-weekly
ad-rags. Michael Little's piece on Fugazi reads like
a blog entry from a lonely college sophomore who just
discovered Lester Bangs."

Now I guess I kind of feel bad, for (1) being so extreme, (2) being the kind of creepy person who writes letters to magazines and newspapers just to disagree with someone's opinion, and (3) falling for the bait and buying into the whole reactionary nature of the article. But still, I feel so intensely connected to -- and protective of -- Fugazi, having grown up in suburban D.C. and discovering so many things because of them. Guess that's it.

Yes, and I recognized that because I've read your "Comely Mike Montana" ramblings in Snap Pop. But did you seriously expect your article to be taken in that manner by people who aren't familiar with your backstory?

So...ummm...presumably this is based on in-concert things that IM pretty much stopped doing five or six years ago, yes? Not to be smarmy but if there's anything "moralistic" about, say, Red Medicine, I didn't find it. One could fairly level charges of artsy-fartsyness, but "dour" etc. seem like they're attacking a target that hasn't actually existed for some time.

[straightedge can go eat a dick tho]
[or is that against the rules too?]

Only in the context of an established monogamous relationship between two consenting adults.
;^}

I would love to know what this means, could anyone fill me in?

Ha, no, that's the FMC, the Future of Music Coalition:

http://www.futureofmusic.org/

Anyway, just a point: Ian's concern about moshing/dancing at shows wasn't purtianical -- it was a response to the scary-ass skinhead 'bow throwing and steel-toed-boot stomping that used to go on.

Starting in 2003, Michael Little contributed live-music reviews to the Post Style section, earning as many as three bylines a week. But in the months after Little published a controversial article in the City Paper arguing that D.C. rock icons Fugazi were no fun (“In on the Killjoy,” 10/17/2003), his assignments from the Post, Little says, thinned out considerably—thanks, Little suspects, to the pro-Fugazi bias of a Style staffer. By the following spring, Little was down to about two assignments a month.
Kaufman discounts Little’s theory that the Post is in the tank for Fugazi. “I think Michael knows better than that,” he says. “We weren’t satisfied with the job he was doing. I really don’t want to go into detail on it.”
By June 2004, Little was frustrated enough to take it to his blog, Unremitting Failure (futility.typepad.com), where he wrote, “In an attempt to prove that we can work with no one, Unremitting Failure plans to tell the Washington Post...to eat (in straightedge photog Glen Friedman’s immortal words) a ‘bag of cocks,’” plus personal comments about the aforementioned staffer.
“Part of it was, I didn’t care if I got fired,” Little says. “Plus, I figured nobody would ever see it.”
Wrong: His boss, then-pop-music-critic David Segal, wrote him a few weeks later: “Your attempt to prove that you can’t work with us was a success,” he wrote. “You can’t work with us any longer.”
(Disclosure: “In on the Killjoy” also earned Little a brief vacation from the City Paper’s pages, after editors heard that he called Fugazi guitarist Ian MacKaye to apologize. [Little says he did not call to offer an apology.] “Thou shalt have the courage of your convictions” is Commandment 11.4(c) in the Washington City Paper Freelancer’s Guide to Not Getting Fired.)

link to the full article

It's part of an article in the City Paper that talks about freelancing for the Post.