FUGAZI

Always Two Beats Off

Harlan Trachtenberg

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Washington DC? It’s probably the government. But what about the people who don’t work for the government?

“But I, like my parents, didn’t work for the government,” said Ian MacKaye, a prominent musician from the area, “I never had to do with the government. To us, people who live in Washington, the Government is really intrusive.” There were many people, mainly kids, who were living in this federally run city who didn’t get to have a voice, so they made a voice for themselves: Punk. Kids all over DC in the ‘80s were making bands, booking shows, and starting record labels. Ian MacKaye was one of those kids.

“It began with Ian and his entry into punk,” remembered Joe Lally, another prominent DC musician, “which was just that it was so much earlier than mine as far as being active because he played in a band and then they wanted to put out the single of that band or a documentation of the band having existed after it broke up.”

MacKaye and Lally were in a band together along with former Rites of Spring guitarist and vocalist Guy Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty. With both MacKaye and Picciotto on guitar and vocals, Lally on bass, and Canty on drums, they together made Fugazi in 1987. Fugazi? What does that even mean?

“I was reading a book by a guy named Mark Baker,” says MacKaye “It’s an oral history from Vietnam, and it includes people, Vietnam veterans, people in the medical staff, and even some Vietnamese people. And as in most cases, and especially in the military, there’s a lot of slang. So in this book, go to the glossary in the back of the book and in this particular glossary, it just said a f*cked up situation. That’s all it said, but I thought that in a way it was a really beautiful name because it was very obscure. Nobody would know what it really meant.”

“In 1996, we were playing a show in Singapore,” continued MacKaye, “and these two kids came up, a brother and sister, teenagers, and the brother, who’s probably 15, said, What does Fugazi mean? So I started to give them the same rap. And the sister, who’s probably 17 or 18, she said, f*cked up, got ambushed, zipped in. So in fact, it was an acronym, but she had found another source, and I was shocked. I had no idea until that moment that that’s what the acronym was. So that means you f*cked up, you got killed,

“I started listening to music pretty seriously when I was young,” said Lally, “You know, I was about nine or ten. I really got into Otis Redding and James Brown, and that followed with a lot of funk and soul and R&B of what was going on in the early seventies because that’s like ‘72 or ‘73 when that started. It’s kind of insane that I’m old as hell now is what that means.”

MacKaye said “I don’t really care whether it’s blues or jazz or seventies rock or soul or funk or afrobeat or tropicalia or gospel or hardcore punk or seventies punk. I don’t care. All I want to do is believe it. I just want to believe that the people making it mean it. And that’s what I find attractive. So at the time Fugazi started playing, Brendan, Guy, and I worked in a record store. So we listened to so much music all the time. It wasn’t as if we heard a band and wanted to play that type of music, rather, we wanted to play music and that was what came out of us.”

Lyrically, Fugazi differed from other D.C. bands, too. Generally, they were more introspective but also talked about politics and then you get zipped into a body bag.”

Sonically, though, Fugazi differs from other DC bands. They took more influence from classic rock, R&B, soul, jazz, and even some band called Scritti Politti.

Nicki Longoria, a fan from San Antonio said, “Minor Threat or other DC hardcore bands at that time would sometimes specifically call out politicians, like Reagan or Alexander Haig. Fugazi never really did that so much as just call out the political landscape in general.”

Something important about Fugazi is that they ran everything themselves (but of course with some help along the way). They released their records on MacKaye’s label, Dischord Records, they booked shows, they wrote the songs, they managed their own money.

“We never had a lawyer, we never used contracts, we split everything equally 25% each,” said MacKaye, “There isn’t somebody who gets paid more than somebody else. We did all of our own driving, we dealt with all of our own gear. We had people who work with us. We had friends who were part of our family… basically, we were completely autonomous”

Lally referred to this as learning to exist outside of the system.

If they’re so prominent, how come I never see any of their shirts around or something? Simple… they didn’t want to commercialize themselves.

“[commercializing] has no place in songwriting,” said Lally, “Then what else would be the incentive but the money or to sell a song to a commercial. There is no other incentive than the money. So if you had some respect for the song you wrote to not live in that place, then you just don’t want to put it there.”

They didn’t sell merchandise besides music for another reason though, according to Longoria.

“It’s more like putting the importance on the music. You don’t have to buy the shirt and adopt the uniform. You just literally let the song speak for themselves.”

Okay, now imagine this: you want to go see some new music live and the tickets are only $5. Yeah, $5. That’s the case with Fugazi. This helped attract more people to their shows and increased their wordof-mouth reputation. But how did that work?

“We said we want a $5 ticket,” said MacKaye, “So if we’re playing in a thousand capacity room and we’re going to say $5, so we say, okay, that’s a maximum of $5000 our gross. So we would never ask for a guarantee, we would ask mouth,” according to him.

“for instance, we played shows in Florida,” continued MacKaye, “and there’d be 30 white power skinhead guys. So if they’re slam dancing, they’re probably beating the sh*t out of people. We think of our audience as essentially our guests, right? They wouldn’t have been there had we not asked them to be there. So if I invite you and ten of your friends to my house for dinner and one of your friends pulls out a butter knife and stabs another person, I’m going to put a stop to it. It’s inappropriate behavior, right? People are being injured.” for a percentage. So we said we want 60% of the door. Now, the promoter no longer is taking a risk because if six people show up and there’s $30. That means we got $18. Right. We still only get a percentage. So there’s no risk to the promoter.”

Even though Fugazi is not that well known, their fans are devoted.

“I think and jokingly say this a lot when I think to myself: what would Fugazi do? I’ve done that lots of times throughout my life and I think it’s just really important.” said Longoria.

I imagine with low ticket prices and a loud band, these shows could get violent… Did they? Fugazi made sure that they didn’t. MacKaye, when he saw people slam-dancing, would break it up, because he was “the guy with the mic and the big

“ It was usually the other diehards with you in the front,” she continued later, “we were all like we’re in it together. We’re all excited. So it’s that kind of feeling of abandon and just singing along and dancing and whatever. It was great.”

Fugazi broke musical norms on multiple levels and people love it. They helped make punk take on a brand new meaning and a brand new sound and they functioned like no other band. Fugazi was different.