QUICK! I need opinions on Fugazi's "Repeater"!

weirdness

Steady Diet Of Nothing is definitely my least favorite Fugazi LP, but Repeater isn't that far off.

And that line in "Target" is intentionally ironic!

Well, no. There is "Cashout." That would've been the obvious single if they were on a corporate label. "Life & Limb" is catchy, but too low key and moody. In an alternate universe in which Fugazi was signed to a major label, Red Medicine would've been their huge hit album, and The Argument would've been the rough commercial/critical equivalent of R.E.M.'s New Adventures In Hi-Fi or Pearl Jam's Binaural.

As for 'Repeater', it is fine with me. The single tagged on the end is a bit less than the rest, but hey I'm ok with it being there. "Shut the Door" was an absolute killer live.

'Steady Diet of Nothing' is probably my favorite. Couldn't get with it for awhile, but eventually those mid tempo songs got me like "Reclamation" and "Stacks", the latter maybe being my favorite Fugazi song.

I haven't listened to the last three like the first five, but they are all good even 'Soundtrack'. "Epic Problem" blew my mind, that is such a great song.

"You must remember that "Chop Suey" came out the same year as The Argument. With shinier production I think a LOT of those songs could have tapped that market."

today on TRL, we're gonna talk to Ian from Fugazi...

Shinier production *and* more powerchords, bigger choruses etc... let's not get carried away now.

Anyway: Repeater > Steady Diet > The Argument > 13 Songs > Killtaker > End Hits > Red Medicine, and I might even find a *few* things on Instrument that I'd put on a best of Fugazi CDR

Hey FBI-jus' kidding.

One hell of a read on the album here

http://thequietus.com/articles/17780-fugazi-repeater-review

enjoyed that, not sure I've seen Angus write about something that isn't hip-hop before

did Fugazi ever talk about veganism, as implied in the middle of that piece somewhere? the idea that it was necessarily a part of being straight edge was something that developed elsewhere in hardcore, at least it always seemed that way to me

not really important, just mildly curious

Version is a total career highlight geez

Repeater's good

Hard to come back to some of tracks on this after hearing this live eg "Shut The Door" on the Instrument film

did Fugazi ever talk about veganism, as implied in the middle of that piece somewhere?

I think early on in a zine interview Guy had mentioned how they survived those early tours when they realized a certain fast food place would make them a cheese sandwich and I just remember it was assumed they were vegetarians, but I don't recall them talking about veganism or straight-edge or really anything.

As the article points out they really did make the political personal in way so much political music/art fails to do.

They also didn't do a ton of interviews, so there were all kinds of crazy rumors about them. I knew someone at the time who was convinced that Ian was secretly a heroin addict and that she had heard about from "people who would know".

A high school friend's dad supplied a lot of Dischord bands with their musical equipment. I'm pretty sure I remember her reporting back that the Dischord annual picnic was a vegan affair.

lotta crazy opinions upthread

I remember really liking this album but haven't heard it in a long time. Going to listen to it again right now.

As the article points out they really did make the political personal in way so much political music/art fails to do.

Yes they really ran with "Actions speak louder than words" and I have tons of respect for that.

In that article he mentions the live shows & Ian & Guy dealing with the crowds..."Why you'd turn up to heckle a band remains something of a mystery to me"...those Fugazi shows, 5 bucks & all ages, were all-inclusive to a fault. There always were people there who didn't haven any interest in the band, they just wanted to slam dance and fight and yell at the band. Jocks from my rich white suburb would come to the shows. The second they started playing the first note the main floor would be a swarm of people pushing and shoving. And it wasn't just Fugazi, I saw slam dancing at a god damn They Might Be Giants show, it was just the tenor of the times, but it always gets up my nose when people would bitch about Ian for hectoring crowds, I was there, I was a short dude up front, I appreciated the band standing up for me, cuz shit could get scary.

And I can't even imagine what it was like for any women in the crowd (of which there were plenty).

lotta crazy opinions upthread

in every old ILM thread ever

xp: There was a wicked pit during Toad The Wet Sprocket at hfstival one year.

The second they started playing the first note the main floor would be a swarm of people pushing and shoving. And it wasn't just Fugazi, I saw slam dancing at a god damn They Might Be Giants show, it was just the tenor of the times, but it always gets up my nose when people would bitch about Ian for hectoring crowds,

haha yeah

does this still happen at rock shows?

I don't think so, even once I turned 21 I noticed there was far less of it.

Of course the shows I've been to recently are so lightly attended we would have really had to work to get a pit going.

I.e. the forty people at Six Organs of Admittance the other night didn't seem too interested bumping into each other.

Seems like audiences these days don't really care, and can barely be bothered to lift their hands to clap after a song.

If the band has recently been shown "freaking out morning talk show hosts" then some slam dancing will probably be indulged in.

Maybe it also depends on if the energy drink sponsoring the concert is giving drinks away for free or not.

did Fugazi ever talk about veganism, as implied in the middle of that piece somewhere? the idea that it was necessarily a part of being straight edge was something that developed elsewhere in hardcore, at least it always seemed that way to me

not really important, just mildly curious

― pull blart, maul cops (DJ Mencap), Friday, May 1, 2015 4:24 AM (5 hours ago)

Ian is but in interviews he has stated that his diet is not important/interesting to talk about.

otm

I think Minor Threat is really more the straight edge cultural totem pole as they pretty much wrote the song that named it all with 'Straight Edge', but Fugazi seemed to be a marked choice to take a different angle with the music from that sound and stance somewhat. That and the $8 Cds and $5 dollar shows definitely expanded their fans.

By the time Fugazi starts to get fairly popular, the bands really pushing the sXe/vegan stuff was more the NY/Syracuse hardcore bands like Youth of Today, Shelter, Earth Crisis, Gorilla Biscuits etc. As a total side note, I think one interesting thing that came out of some of those straight edge bands is that the sound of hardcore really started turning more to metal and away from punk sound with all the 'mosh breakdowns'. Obviously other east coast hardcore bands had that same metal/punk hybrid, but some of the younger bands definitely leaned more to a decidedly metal sound. Out of some of those scenes you get into the more mathcore bands like Converge, Botch, Dillinger Escape Plan which have ties back to the east coast punk scene, but their sound is very much metal and kind of changed the sound of American metal in many ways. Not to side track this Fugazi thread, but something I have noticed and found interesting.