Wed., March 18, 1998 10:04 PM EST ]

Black Light Panthers Sheds Old Light On Fugazi

B-side includes track from 1997.

Staff Writer Chris Nelson reports:

While Fugazi fans wait to see where the group is going on its new album, End Hits (April 27), they are being offered a glimpse of where it all started on the recently released Black Light Panthers.

The vinyl-only EP is a musical time capsule featuring a series of recordings that Fugazi guitarist Guy Picciotto and drummer Brendan Canty made in 1982 (a year after the duo met), along with a B-side track, "Golden Vanity", which was recorded in 1997. Approximately one thousand copies of the EP have been pressed on Picciotto's own Peterbilt imprint.

"The minute we started hanging out we started making tapes together," Picciotto said recently by phone from his home in Washington, D.C. "This is the first tape of anything that's even marginally releasable."

Listeners familiar with Canty's and Picciotto's intricate performances with Fugazi will likely be struck by the primitive quality of this session, recorded in the drummer's bedroom. The rudimentary execution of tracks such as "Hey Hey Hey!" and "Fuck You My Latino Lover" contrasts with the more sophisticated work that Canty, now 30, and Picciotto, 31, put together three years later for their debut release.

"The old stuff was recorded on two boomboxes that we stacked on top of each other," Picciotto said. "We'd record onto one and then play that tape into the other boombox and play again as a primitive overdubbing technique. It's just really lo-fi and raucous."

"Golden Vanity," on the other hand, should sound more familiar to fans of Fugazi, although the instrumental cut at times is more delicate than a typical Fugazi assault.

"Brendan [Canty] and I had gotten together when we were recording demos for the (new) Fugazi record, and me and him were just trying to write songs together," Picciotto said. "This song was just one of the many that didn't make the cut. But we liked it anyway, so we kept messing around with it and working on it."

While many fans know that Picciotto and Canty played with Rites of Spring before joining Fugazi, few could rattle off the pair's complete musical family tree. Picciotto himself recalls playing with Canty in Insurrection, One Last Wish, Brief Weeds and Happy Go Licky in addition to Fugazi, Rites of Spring and Black Light Panthers.

"Over the years, we've always done a show here or there as the Black Light Panthers, at parties or small clubs," Picciotto said. "The music is always really, really different. We did one tape that was just accordion [Canty] and clarinet [Picciotto]. Brendan can play almost anything he puts his hand on, and I'm always willing to try to learn."

If the stylistic and sonic range of Black Light Panthers sets listeners' heads a-spinning, then Picciotto said he considers his mission accomplished. "The two sides are just so radically different from one another. Everything about the record seems confusing to me, so I'm really excited about that. [On the 1982 side] we were recording it on top of a demo of this blues band that had one of Brendan's brothers in it, so between the tracks this weird blues stuff keeps popping up. It's like a multi-level, historical document."