Tucked away farther east then even the notorious East Coast, Fugazi wasn't exaclt ythe kind of thing you just bumped against. While several people I knew growing up were into hardcore and punk, bands like Bad Brains, Minor Threat and Black Flag were never very popular. People I knew liked either Sick of it All, Life of Agony or (from the other camp) bands like Toy Dolls, The Exploited and their like.
When I finally stumbled upon Fugazi, it wasn't really a stumbling on, more like an ordering. By mail that is. I ordered Red Medicine basing my decision on my sole belief that the All Music Guide was god (this is about 1996-7) and if they thought this band was worth something, than they must be right.
I don't remember listening to it that much. Just the vague feeling that I liked it, but in a weird "I-don’t feel like listening to it right now sort of way."
Next time I was faced with a Fugazi cd was about 6 years later, when I had decided to unwind a bit (from all of this eastern climate) in the US. I saw The Argument, remembered this vague affection with their older cd and went ahead and bought it. And that was that. I was in.
The most significant fact about Fugazi, of course, whether the band's devoted army of fans likes it or not, was that, at one point, one Ian Thomas Garner MacKaye (a.k.a. harcore demi-god) was the leading man of one Minor Threat, the biggest, baddest, and smartest east-coast hardcore act outside of Bad Brains.
This fact was in fact significant enough for the band to have to suffer through countless punkers screaming MT song titles, or just pound the hell out of any indie kid in sight while they wait for "Cashing In" or, if they were super lucky, "Straight Edge." One of these absurd moments was poignantly caught on tape in the band's great doc "Instrument," in which one such hardcore wannabe gets slammed as a "ice-cream eating motherfucker" by Fugazi's jester/genius Guy Picciotto.
And to be honest, it's not like no-one was waiting for the MT Yang to kick in every time Fugazi went into their instrumental Yings, but somehow along the way, with their unique style and musical genius, Fugazi was able to be good enough and ground-breaking enough that most people, most of the time, didn't really care about their mythical past, which, by the way, is an achievement not many bands can claim.
But, with "The Argument," as the title may suggest, that discussion was not only over, it showed that the band, for once, stopped caring about who knew who back in 1982 (just liked the rhyme…).
Although Fugazi have forged their own path with impressive, almost unheard of, coherence and grit from the very first EP, and despite the fact that, as MacKaye himself stated in an interview I read somewhere, MT were smart enough as it is, with a new millennia behind their backs, Fugazi sounded like they just ejected themselves out of the silly MT debate and into the musical stratosphere.
It's not that sounding like MT, being influenced by MT, of being in MT is a bad thing. Being a part of a band that good, that clever, and of a moment that amazing, can never be bad. But there's something to be said about nuance, and in "The Argument" Fugazi have their MT cake, and leave an oddly and beautifully angry cake completely whole.
You have, of course, the usual combination a steamroller of distortion and pent-up rage (Full Disclosure, Nightshop, Epic Problem) along with quite, almost too quiet for comfort moments (The Kill), and the good ole' Fugazi tendency to just tinker with anything we ever thought a song could sound like while sounding like, well, a song.
But, unlike their other great works, Fugazi sound relaxed. Well, relaxed may be the wrong word. Maybe tense, in an "I-don't-care-if-you're-picking-up-on-the-tension" kind of way. Just listen to the drums that open the mesmerizing Life and Limb. Is it punk? Is it hardcore? It's Fugazi. And the guitars? Are they punk? They sound as if they could have come off of any of Sonic Youth's later albums, maybe Pavement. Who cares, when the end result makes you want to bash in the wall of a really high-end coffee shop, 5 minutes after you ordered your espresso, and not know why.
The best tracks on this album, a kind of impossibility in a piece that is so well balanced no track can be really pulled out of it without tempering with the whole, are as good as that word gets, and function not only as the best of a truly great band, but like a microcosm of American alt rock in the last 20-30 years.
Life and Limb, the slow-burning Cashout, and the amazing title track, which opens this brick-house of feathers and knives, prove how close Fugazi came to the impossible: hold a dignified, sensitive and complex burial for Minor Threat, while kicking the priest (Rabbi, Imam, Buddhist monk, or whatever) in the face during last rites. Without anyone seeing it.
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