OK, so what ARE Fugazi's "politics?"

If it's in the lyrics, color me stupid...

from memory:

these are our demands, we want control of our bodies
decisions will now be ours
you carry out your noble actions
we will carry our noble scars
Reclamation

No one here is asking, no one here is asking
but there is a question of trust
you will do what looks good to you on paper
we will do what we must
Reclamation

Wow I can't believe I remember those. What a great song, though.

actually, EVERY fugazi song is about working at haagen dazs.

against abortion? seems rather pro-choice imo

Your eyes like crashing jets
Fixed in stained glass
But not religious
You should pay rent in my mind
Say like the french say bon soir regret a demain
Do you like me, do you like me, do you like me, do you like me,
I guess

White witness moves to petition the state of virginia for 27 prisons
While in bethesda an office flaming youth group singing
Firemen calling in
Lockheed lockheed martin marietta
Do you like me, do you like me, do you like me, do you like me,
I guess
End of the lesson time for one question
End of the lesson time for one more question
I got a question.
Do you like me

grows so smoothly
moves so slowly
takes completely
it's as if they
belong and they've
been here all along

this one's ours
lets take another

check the math here
check in ten years
clusterfuck theory
buy them up and
shut them down
then repeat
in every town

every town will
be the same

this one's ours
let's take another

five corporations
there is a pattern

Everybody wants somewhere, somewhere!

is this really hard to parse?

That's fair enough, but I'd argue that it's not fading into a blur, but rather setting this love song in the context of what's going on around him. He's mentioning all these specific events happening around where he lives, citing the expansion of prisons in Virginia and the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta into what is now the world's largest defense contractor, an event that had a major impact on the economy of the DC area at the time, since they employed so many people and there were layoffs in the process. If anything, he's too distracted by these other things to focus on this romance - "do you like me? I guess."

-- DJ Mencap (lackofinteres...) (webmail), September 2nd, 2006 7:37 PM. (DJ Mencap)

having seen them headline numerous d.c. benefit shows in 90s for clinics (among other things - homeless shelters, anti-war protests, etc.), yes

Anyway, all this conjuecture kinda proves my point. "Do You Like Me" is a brilliant song, but political? Really?

The "Furniture" example above is no less political than something another even semi-literate indie band would write. Not exactly "Suck My Left One," now, is it?

I think it's just that Fugazi have been (unfairly?) plagued with the notion that they, as a band and as people, have no sense of humor, possibly stemming from Ian's, err, 'politics' while a friggin' teenager in Minor Threat.

Not that I mind a band being decidedly political, per se, even 'leftist,' if that's their trip - but I still can't make sense of Fugazi being synonomous with 'political band.' Still awaiting evidence.

No, "Do you like me, I guess" is about Lockheed merging with Martin Marietta - merger imagined as awkward teen romance. Of that I'm sure.

; ]

The lyrics to Do You Like Me are kind of a collage of 3 separate ideas. It starts like a love song then veers into a comment on prison construction as growth economy in the USA then derails into a fantasy about this defense contractor's headquarters burning down (Lockheed and Martin Marietta had just merged to create a defense industry titan of terrifying proportion and they opened their headquarters in nearby Bethesda), then the song just spirals back into itself.

Here he says:

We have a song, ‘Do You Like Me,’ people ask me about it all the time because it seems to be so fragmented. It’s like all of a sudden there’s political material in what had seemed to be just a love song. It is unsettling to them. I just don’t understand why there isn’t the same freedom afforded to someone who is trying to write something politi-cal as somebody who is writing something else. It’s kind of like why can’t ‘The Times They Are A Changing’ be like somehow impregnated with ‘I Am the Walrus’?

I don't think he necessarily backs any of our neat interpretations.

Anyway, to answer the original question, I'm guessing you do have a reasonably clear idea of what their politics are, at least enough to guess, say, that they don't vote Republican. The examples of activism that a few people have listed here definitely go some way to answering that question, and they've certainly done at least a couple of explicitly political songs ("Burning Too" is one that wasn't mentioned.) Their politics might be shared by a number of other artists, yes. (But I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're no more activist/political than any other artist.) Maybe the issue is that journalists have often focused so heavily on their politics and 'integrity', etc without spending enough time on what actually makes their music interesting, in which case I agree. They did really interesting things with guitar sound on Red Medicine but they're rarely talked about in the same way that Sonic Youth are when it comes to that aspect.

or maybe that backs all of them.

I think you mean "is no more political" but in any case: do you equate "political" with "strident" or "doctrinaire"? property rights/housing policy = explicitly, obviously political issue; one need not make one's point screaming to be engaging in clearly political speech, which is what "Furniture" is

-- Sundar (south.side.of.the.spamblockin'.sky.200...), September 3rd, 2006.

Yeah, exactly. OTMFM - though I have a weird feeling we've both said the same thing on another thread before.

Haha so did I! I was drunk :(

I've read a bunch of threads on here, some quite recently, where people rail against Fugazi for bring didactic and humourless. It's faintly depressing, but once upon a time I learned everything about music from the NME, so hey

Steady Diet of Nothing is my pop-it-in start-to-finish drive-around-angry classic though.