My favorite album? In On the Kill Taker. The most powerful yet nuanced album. Maybe it lacks the most memorable songs, but it makes up for in raw guts, energy and production.

I guess I might be influenced in that the only time I have ever seen Fugazi was in Singapore, in 1993 or so, when they were touring for that album. One of the best concerts I have ever been to, and definitely the strangest. Singapore at the time was a terribly repressed country. A benevolent dictatorship controlled by one political party for 30 years (and still is). No free speech, and draconian laws. Performance art, of all things, was banned when I was there. In fact, the government loved banning things. Exactly one week before Fugazi played at a tiny community centre in a far off suburb, Henry Rollins played at a bigger venue in the city. While I’m not a fan, it was mental. Slam-dancing, crowd-surfing, Rollins punching and kicking the fans and the next day my best friend was pictured on the back of the main tabloid, crowd-surfing in front of the stage, with the headline “WOULD YOU LET YOUR CHILDREN DO THIS?”

Within a few days it was all over the news, and the government just as quickly banned slam-dancing and (as they said) “all forms of anti-social dancing”. I’m not joking.

One week later, Fugazi arrived, and I guess the government had been keeping tabs on the indie scene because there were more police than fans in attendance. Police vans, dogs, riot cops, the works. The actual gig was in a gymnasium, and if my memory is correct, I remember that there was a line of cops, locked arm in arm, along the second floor balustrade that made a ring all the way around the gymnasium. And the gym was only maybe a third full of fans…. who had heard of Fugazi in Singapore? Not that many.

Ian Mackaye came out and explained that there would be no inappropriate dancing so “find a new way to dance” and that the lights had to stay on and that they had to stop exactly at nine. Everything was so tense you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. And I think we all wanted to see something riotous happen…. but Ian said, hey, if everybody could just behave then they wouldn’t need to waste time talking between songs and “everyone can have a good time”. And that’s what happened. And it was amazing. And when they stopped silent in the middle of songs, as they like to do, we all stopped silent as well, in the full lights of the gym, and stared at the cops. By the end everything was very intense… but the last song Fugazi played was Sweet and Low, from In On the Kill Taker….. and we all behaved and smiled lovingly at the (literally) hundred or so police standing in a ring around us.

But the best Fugazi shows I ever saw were the first two, at First Avenue in Minneapolis in 1993, when they were touring for In On the Killtaker. They played three straight nights, and I somehow scrounged up rides from Northfield to Minneapolis for two of the three. Tickets were (of course) $5.00, but I was on the permanent guest list at First Ave at that time cuz the record store I worked at in Northfield was an authorized ticket outlet for them. (At that point First Ave was saying fuck you to the expanding Ticketmaster empire; you could only buy tickets at the box office or at one of two dozen record and book stores scattered around the Cities and outlying towns like Northfield.)

Anyway, Fugazi brought with them two sets of high-powered flood lights, the kind that highway construction crews use to work the night-shift. The brightest lights I’ve ever seen, and the only shows I ever saw at First Ave that didn’t feature the house lighting. The lights were placed on either side of the stage, elevated maybe fifteen feet off the stage and pointed down into the center, so the band members were bathed in the purest white light you can imagine. They couldn’t possibly have seen the crowd.

I have no memory of what songs they played, or of any lectures that might have been given by Ian or Guy. But the shows made such a huge impression on me that they remain to this day (compressed into a single event) on my list of 10 all time best shows.

Sorry, no good puns for you…

ps- Speaking of Fugazi, turns out there’s an EP I never got - “Furniture” http://www.amazon.com/Furniture-Fugazi/dp/B00005OMBK/ref=pd_bbs_12?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1203691919&sr=8-12

and there’s a book of Fugazi photos just out http://www.amazon.com/Keep-Your-Eyes-Open-Photographs/dp/0964191687/ref=pd_bbs_sr_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203691919&sr=8-4

pps- Part of the reason I stick with the “what in the hell ellipse awkardly phrased question” title format is to avoid having to think of titles. If I were to think of titles, however, this post would be entitled any of “Nate #512″ or “Post 512 is not a fuck you post, I’ll save that post for later on” or “This is not a Fugazi post.” Suggestions of other Fugazi puns for possible post titles which I won’t actaully use would be much appreciated.

I was really into these guys in high school too, and beyond. To this day I think the time I saw them in the student union at Victoria University in Wellington is the best gig I’ve ever seen. As for whether the encore was planned - I know their regular strategy during gigs was to take turns deciding which track to play next - there was no setlist, the leader for each song just starts playing and the rest have to work out what it is and join in. Very cool!