Wednesday, April 18, 2012

You Can't Be What You Were.


Ok, I was kinda wrong yesterday. Every time it's raining shit in your particular neighbourhood, you can always rely on Fugazi for shelter. So today I offer you La Musique Mercredi - the Fugazi version. And further to my own personal crap, it was Ian Mackaye's 50th birthday the other day! Man, he's closer to my dad in age than he is to me. That's weird.

No, I don't care if you think they're preachy.



 Actually, here's the entire Instrument film. It's one of the best band documentaries I've ever seen - up there with the Metallica movie, which was excellent for very different reasons. In Instrument I like how you get to see that the guys in the band are just goofy doofuses like the rest of us. Plus, it's rad fun to call someone an ice-cream eating motherfucker.



Ok, so here's the first Fugazi song I ever heard. I know it seems like an obvious choice, but it wasn't at the time. I was on a bus back from some drama performance in the city, and Petie Hyde commandeered the tape deck. On that tape was No Means No, Shellac, and this song. On our arrival back in Stawell we all went out to some party, and every time we couldn't find each other, we'd shout out the lyrics, like we were playing Marco Polo.



Incidentally, that footage is so well renowned that it even has a glee club mashup.



That same bunch of Portland Hipsters do a version of Where Is My Mind that is highly recommended, but not related to Fugazi, so it doesn't count right here. When I was younger and all about velocity, I was of course attracted to the louder faster yellier songs.



But as I age it become more and more about the slower, more introspective stuff.



I guess that's probably enough Fugazi for today. Rest assured I could go on forever. But you know that bit in that Sage Francis song where he's all like, "When the bomb hits / Whose music will you run to for shelter?" I'm like, "Shit Sage, haven't you ever listened to Fugazi?"

2 comments:

Dave said...

So, if someone, say er, me, had somehow missed the Fugazi boat and only ended up owning 13 songs, but wanted to hear some more, which album should I start with?

brendan said...

In On The Killtaker, for the best of both worlds - angry and introspective stuff. Then Repeater, for the song Merchandise, the best song to yell along to in the car ever. Then all of the rest of them. Then all of the live series.