With the release of Fugazi’s epoch-launching 1988 recording “First Demo,” Dischord is also a stone’s throw away from closing the book on their extraordinary Fugazi Live Archive project. Here are 13 thoughts about What It All Means:
- The official statement: "[The release of Fugazi’s First Demo] will also coincide with the completion of the initial round of uploads to the Fugazi Live Series website. Launched in 2011, the site now includes information and details on all of Fugazi’s 1000+ live performances and makes available close to 900 concert recordings that were documented by the band and the public." The archive is expected to near completion sometime around the end of the year now.
- The series spun out of a series of 30 live shows released on CD in 2004. Those, plus 100 more, were added to the site in 2011. A few shows have been added every week ever since.
- A few things about the site didn’t completely pan out. There was some intimation early on that the Fugazi Live Series site could become a repository for photos and remembrances from fans. (Or maybe that was just wishful thinking on our part.) This has not happened. The site hasn’t turned into a punk message board, a repository of activist discussion, or arguments about sound quality. The comments are pretty much limited to stuff like "I was at that show!" and "this gig changed my life" and the eye-rolling "why aren’t these in FLAC?" Because they aren’t, dude.
- Song played the most? "Waiting Room". You can search by song on the Fugazi Live site, and I have not counted each individual instance, but setlist.fm has stats for more than 630 shows and "Waiting Room" shows up in about 400 of them, the pro-choice anthem "Reclamation" in almost 370. (Actually, the second most common track is "Interlude 1" which is Guy or Ian—and it’s usually Ian—yacking at the crowd, humor bone-dry. You may make your own complaint here about pit regulation or whatever people who like to run into each other at shows like to complain about in re: Ian.) No reason to think the stats would be any different across the remaining gigs.
- They also had a great sense of what songs worked. There are a few songs that were played once, including something called "NSA" that eventually became "Turnover". "In Defense of Humans", the only song from First Demo that made it to wax before now (on the Positive Force-benefiting "State of the Union" compilation) made it all the way to 1990, before being mercifully retired. "Polish" was only played six times; nobody misses it.
- But you can also chart the evolution of American indie rock throughout before and after the game-changing 1990s. Some early shows had fewer than 100 people. By the middle of the decade and beyond, they could play to thousands, capping interior gigs at around 3,000. Free outdoor shows could draw twice that. Openers moved from nth wave hardcore acts in the Reagan era to Blonde Redhead and Explosions in the Sky in the 21st century.
- A quick note on their famously low cover charges: According to the CPI Inflation Calculator, $5 in 1988 has the same buying power as $10.06 in 2014. $6 in 2002 has the same buying power as $7.94. Which is to say: Punk clubs really should charge at least between $8 and $10 at the door in 2014 for a three or four band bill and punks should pay it without whining about the scene selling out because have you tried to load out and risk a ticket then have to pay for parking these days Jesus christ.
- And we haven’t even talked about the cost of gas represented here. In 1988, gas hovered around $1.08 a gallon the U.S. In 1995, it was about $1.25. In November 2002, it was about $1.40. In 2008, it was about $4. Now it is down to a little over three. The 1980s and 1990s punk rock revolution, where bands could play 90 shows a year if they wanted to, was about cheap gas as much as anything else.
- In an era where bands are trying to figure out how to make money in an everything-is-free-all-the-time era, it is amazing to me that more bands don’t do this sort of thing, even on a smaller scale. These shows were literally sitting in an archive, doing nothing. Before 2004, a small fraction of them were being tape- or CD-R-traded.
- Now, assuming the shows have paid for the time and labor put into them, it’s a financial annuity for the band and a cultural one for us.
- How many bands have live tapes they can put online and charge a dollar for? Probably almost all of them. Will they be as popular as this thing? Unlikely. Will their serious fans be into it? Oh yes.
- We can hear songs evolve over time, all for as little as a dollar a show. We can make mixtapes of just the really jammy songs like "Glue Man" and "Shut the Door" and "Reprovisional" (raises hand). Or hear “Waiting Room” get faster and odder over the years.
- To hear all this laid out is to miss a band the confidence of their convictions. And we can mourn that they went "on hiatus" right as the country was plunging into interminable war and we all could have used a little leadership in popular culture. Now we find out that yes, the NSA is very close to mapping our veins and there are no rock bands, none who can draw a thousand people a night standing up and saying, "Yeah? Bullshit!" over and over and over again.