Jul 012020
Nine things I like. Do you have a tenth?
- The song rocks.
- It took all of 3 notes out of the bass to get all the bald heads bouncing and swaying in recognition.
- The matching stage wear of the band. All agreed; no shirts. We’re going for the escaped prison camp look. That’s some real dedication to a uniform look.
- Guy Picciotto, the hardcore hype man I find so entertaining to watch. He’s getting a lot work in for very little asked of him.
- The melding of band and audience. There are so many people next to them, behind them, and even over them. Everyone is giving the band enough room, and no one is tossing kids off speakers.
- At the 00:55 mark when it’s the sing-along I Wait, I Wait; from behind, the one hardcore guy puts his arm around the other hardcore guy and they look like they are singing along to a sea chanty. It’s sweet.
- Camera sweep over the audience, and you see how chill it is for a “hardcore” show.
- You can really hear the audience singing at the end of the song before a tight ending.
- It’s a joyous performance.
This is awesome – and makes me really miss being out with people in a club!
10. The guy in the plaited skirt, who’s actually dancing, like Hullabaloo dancing, behind the bassist.
Who’s got the 10 and a half?
The little segment from 1:25 through 1:35, where the hardcore hype man yells something into a mic, goes into a ska step dance, drapes his arm over his head while the band does a brief build up, and comes out of his pose with a mini-daltrey mic move that he catches right on the closing note of the build. He’s really feeling it.
I did not expect to like this at all because I really missed the Fugazi thing entirely and most stuff I’ve heard is kind of grey-prog.
That mic move is baller!
Right at the start, the cameraperson focuses on a punk kid who’s got a Mohawk yet retained his sideburns. My main issue with keeping a beard, whenever I’ve grown one, is the loss (through absorption) of my sideburns. I have long had the same hangup about getting a Mohawk. This kid had his cake and ate it too.
I always say I think this is greatest music video of all time. I love everything about it, and I was never a Fugazi fan when they were still a thing. I only heard them much after the fact. But I love everything about this clip. Especially when the camera zeroes in on the shadow of the kid dancing at the side of the stage (2:30-2:45).
Glad someone gave props to Shadow Dancer! Even the spontaneous handclaps that break out as the song begins – no one is instructing that trio in the t-shirt, next to Skirt Dancer, to start clapping. It’s like…people actually love music and are getting psyched for what’s about to happen.
Everybody in that room is throbbing to the music in union with one spirit. It’s a glorious thing.
We don’t get many hardcore heads dropping by the Hall. That’s a genre that came a little too late for most of this age group to be embraced like our favorite hyphen rock. (self included), but this performance is just soaked in the Power and Glory of rock.
I wouldn’t know Fugazi from a Fibonacci sequence (and I mean the mathematical concept not the band although I wouldn’t know them from a Fibonacci sequence either) but greatly enjoyed this.
Question for the hardcore heads. Can anyone sit down and put on an album of this stuff? Or does it have to be experienced live or with a video like this?
That has usually been my problem with hardcore.
I think Fugazi would be categorized a post-hardcore. They don’t really play at that super-fast hardcore tempo. They discovered that you could cut that rhythm in half and get at something approaching funk without really claiming to be funk. It’s easy to imagine Waiting Room being played as a hardcore song, but in my opinion it’s so much more powerful played this way.
Their albums are quite listenable, but for me they still left a ‘you had to be there’ feeling.
Yes, post-hardcore is a more accurate description. You can really hear on this song how Fugazi was a bridge between original hardcore and the Sup-pop label bands. That chorus sounds so much like a Nirvana chorus.
Granted, this was filmed some time ago, but it’s nice to see: no cell phones, no solo red cups sloshing beer all over the place, (and in the background somewhere out of sight, there is a tub of apples for the taking). I’m not sure where this is filmed, but if it was filmed in Providence, it’s possible I’m in the audience somewhere.
For al, Fugazi made quite a few albums, and there’s the additional I. MacKaye stuff. This track is off of their first, short self-titled albumette. For more fun, check out the track, “Give Me the Cure.”
The dude in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen with the Gorillas? (@ 45 sec) who could be dancing in a Charlie Brown Cartoon!