By Eric Furst
Fugazi - f'ed up, got ambushed, zipped in. Maybe it's the sense of urgent desperation in our disconnected, commercialized world that has kept Fugazi playing and releasing music since 1987. The band sprouted from the roots of the Washington, D.C. punk scene, where members Brendan Canty, Joe Lally, Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto were involved with groups such as Teen Idles, Minor Threat and Rites of Spring. They are known for a relentless attention to the accessibility of their music, through $5 covers, all-ages shows and recordings released on MacKaye's independent record label, Dischord. Fugazi's commitment to creating continually evolving, challenging music has won them an enormous and diverse fan base all over the world. Now on a short tour with Holland's The Ex, Fugazi will perform on Sunday at the Edge in Palo Alto, co-sponsored by KZSU. Intermission had the opportunity to talk with Ian, who actually spent some time here at Stanford.
IM: My dad was working at The Washington Post, he was there for 20 years. In 1974 he received a [Knight] fellowship and was able to go and take classes at Stanford for about nine months. We lived in Escondido Village, in 140C. I went to a school called Terman Junior High, my brother [Alec] went to Escondido Elementary, my sister went to Gunn High. My entire life I lived here in Washington, I was born here, my parents live in the same house I was raised in. That's the only time I ever lived away from Washington, and it was quite a strange experience.
INT: How old were you then?
IM: I was 12. I turned 13 and [met my] first girlfriend. I think she's the daughter of a professor there. Where Gunn Senior High is, there used to be a really incredible motorcycle / motorcross kind of track there that we used to ride our bikes on. We used to go canoeing at Lake Lagun[it]a. Do you know where the computer center is? In the student union? That used to be a bowling alley. I used to ride my bike off the stairs at, well, it used to be called "UGLY" [Meyer Library].
INT: Were there any lasting impressions of Stanford you took back to D.C., or was it just a year out of your life?
IM: Well, I remember everything about it. It was really the only college that I ever spent any time in. I never went to school myself, so I guess to some degree all universities I've ever been to since then, or whenever I think about it, will be put through somewhat of a Stanford filter. I think it's changed quite a bit since I was there, but I actually think that universities have changed a lot in 30 years.
INT: In what way?
IM: My sense is that for a lot of universities, they're not so much places where people can fool with ideas, rather, it's more about how to get these ideas into line so that they're actually commodifications. I feel like the universities across the board, instead of a free space where people can play with ideas, it's been developed into training grounds for jobs.
INT: A lot of universities cut programs because they're not economically feasible and really focus on job placement.
IM: Which I find is discouraging. I mean, Jesus, you're gonna work the rest of your life, do you really have to learn only about getting a job? Why can't we learn about other things? I don't know, that's just the way I feel about it, but maybe I should go to college and really know what I'm talking about.
[Laughter]
IM: Actually something that did really have a great affect on me at that school. I enjoyed going to the Stanford football games and I think their team, I don't think was a very good team. It's irrelevant whether they were good or not, I just liked going. It was so crazy to go because it was just so alive, so wild and the crowd was so wild. What I really loved about it, and I don't know if it's still this way, but the marching band was so outrageous. I don't know if they still are or not.
INT: Yeah, actually they were banned from
IM: The Rose Bowl?
INT: Notre Dame last year.
IM: Well I found that so inspiring. No one wore uniforms, they just wore costumes and hats, and there was a guy that used to always dress up as a gorilla. I just thought it was insane! Their music was bad-ass, too. I mean, I really took it away with me like, man that is cool! I like it when people are unconventional. I find that refreshing. It gives me hope.
INT: That's one of the founding things behind Fugazi.
IM: Well, I'd say it's one of the founding things as far as my involvement with punk rock as much as Fugazi. From the very beginning, when I first got involved with punk rock, I was in high school. I felt really discouraged because the horizon seemed incredibly bleak. Everyone was worried about, oh what am I going to do with the rest of my life, and I'm like, god, what are you doing with your life now? That's what I want to know. We're alive, live, don't worry about the future! I felt like I didn't know what I was going to do. There was a radio station here called WGTB, which was Georgetown University's radio station. In 1979 that station was shut down, and there was a protest. That night there was a concert, ostensibly a benefit concert to raise money to create a legal fund to try to get the station back. The Cramps played. It was a punk show. It was that show that I realized, here it is. Here is what I was looking for, the place where conventions are being challenged and not just musical convention, but political convention, and ideological convention and sexual convention, all of the conventions. There was something at that show flying in the face of everything. I appreciated that, not because I agreed with all of those people. I don't necessarily agree with them, but because I agree with the idea that they have the right to exist, and people should think about it. It's not just to take things for granted.
INT: My experience is that I've challenged conventions ideologically, politically and it all stems from when I experienced music for the first time [that] challenged me. That challenge opened up more challenge musically, like the recognition of an aesthetic in noise.
IM: Right. Totally.
INT: And then, that breakdown of barriers in my mind where I organized things like, what's a good sound and what isn't. Then I started applying that to other aspects of my life.
IM: I would say it was exactly the same for me. I totally don't apply it only to music. What I found out was that there's pliability, that there's flexibility. The basic rigidity of someone's mind is not permanent necessarily. You can change your mind, you can learn. That's really a good thing to know. My first year of punk rock, I was like, this sucks. It just sounded terrible to me, but the thing about it, it was so immediate, so urgent, I was like, I should listen again. And then all of a sudden, the light came on. I was able to so clearly be aware of these two sensations, of great disgust and incredible passion for it. It just made me realize that sometimes it's the way the light is reflecting off of something, that you need to kind of look around. You need to study something a little bit longer, to give it a little more of a chance and also not dismiss something out of hand. It totally changed my life. I think that it has provided me with the tools that I continue to use straight on through.
INT: Your work has always been taking this element [of punk rock] that started years ago, and really kept it progressing and relevant to the time you're at.
IM: But there's always been a sense of responsibility, you know? I feel that it's not fuck everything, I'm just gonna do everything for now, I don't care about how it affects anything in the future. Even in my life I've felt like, hey, take responsibility. I guess I've always thought in terms of, you make life better because there is tomorrow. I knew a lot of punk rock kids who were just like, they had such a who-cares attitude. And of course, it parlayed into sort of disaster then later on. They no longer associate with that chapter. For me, I have a real sense of continuum. My life has always been a connected chain all the way through. It's like a flight of stairs. I couldn't have gotten here without the other steps. I think I take responsibility for where I've been, and therefore, I take responsibility for where I'm going to go.
INT: When you see people just dropping out [of society], they're unable to build things because they just don't take part in anything. It takes time to build...
IM: Right. It's an interesting point because I think a lot of people think, well, you're just lucky. And I always say fuck that, I am not lucky. Maybe I'm fortunate, but it's too much work to be lucky. Three years into Dischord, let met tell ya, things were not going anywhere. I wasn't thinking about going anywhere. I was just thinking about taking care of what was happening and just working on it. I wasn't thinking about future returns. I just work. And then there's the next thing and I work then too. Because it just seems what else? I wake up and, like, OK, here I am, let's go.
INT: It replaces what our schools are educating us today for - get a job and plug into the system. It replaces it with something that says, build your life by doing your thing and creating it.
IM: It's a little tricky for me, because the way I talk is sort of like, don't worry about it, fuck getting a job and that kind of stuff. It's bad advice because if they're not prepared to work, then they're gonna be very unhappy. I'm very leery of giving out that kind of advice, saying to people like, don't get a job, or it's bad to work for the corporations. It's not my place to tell people that. I'm just doing it for myself, the way I'm doing it. I think that what people probably don't recognize or realize about me is that I work ALL the time. I am working all the time. I work. I am my job in a lot of ways. We book ourselves. I book the band. I basically manage the band. We do all of our own kind of equipment work. Last Friday we spend the day loading all the gear, packing up all the gear, putting it in the crates, closing the crates, loading the crates into the truck to have them shipped off. We do it all. And I think that people probably don't have any sense, they couldn't know, really, how much work we do.
INT: With the self-made conventions, the DIY ethic, playing all-ages shows, and $5 [covers], one challenge is definitely the aspect of challenging your own self-made conventions.
IM: I think I'm in a constant state of review. I think that people should always review. The landscape is changing. Your life is changing. It doesn't always work the same way. Not whether or not it's right or wrong, but whether or not it needs to be modified given the new circumstances. I think that, if someone wants to ask me if you ever had a kid, what would you teach that kid? I think I would teach it that it's OK to be wrong. If it's ok to be wrong, then you can change your mind. But if you have to make a decision and stick to it, you're just going to have problems in life. I used to fight an awful lot. In 1980 to '83, early punk rock, it was a violent time. I don't really have any regrets about it now, but I'm also completely opposed to fighting and opposed to violence. I'm not going to pretend like I didn't do it. I'm also not going to pretend like I'm trying to somehow feel so bad about it. I just feel like it was something that I got involved with that I thought that I could rationalize. Then I realized I was fooling myself. I made a mistake. So, I knocked it out.
INT: What was the fighting and the conflict? Was it just at shows?
IM: Oh, just punk rock. It really started sort of under the premise of defense, which was true. In 1979 being a punk rocker had very serious ramifications, and I'm sure to some degree it probably still exists in certain places. At the time you were a freak. People would go crazy, [we were] chased through the streets by Marines in Georgetown. At the beginning it was sort of a joke for us. We'll put colors in our hair and wear children's sunglasses. What it really revealed was just how furious people were, and how quick they were to kick your ass about the dumbest things in the world. We were just sitting, having a Coke somewhere and the next thing you know people were throwing stuff at us. How about a way to tap into the human hostility, right? First thing we're like run away, run away. But after so long, we're like, fuck that, let's fight back. Then there was sort of this philosophical business that I got into. I was bruising egos, not bodies. I think that that rationalization, even as dubious as it was, usually did work for me. What I didn't take into account was how other people around me would interpret that, and how it would be handed down. By 1983 or '84, there were kids here that were incredibly ugly and incredibly violent, beating the shit out of people, and I remember saying to them, hey, what are you guys doing? And they're like, we're just doing what you do. Violence begets violence. It's a form of communication. It's a very, very powerful one, but it really only creates one response, and that's just not the response I was looking for. I think that there's still stuff going on like that, but I think that right now, this era is so crazy. Everything's ok now. It's like a giant stew out there. There isn't a dominant culture with a smaller subcultures. It's just all of these subcultures vying for position, and they're all commercially sponsored or something. It's very strange.
INT: You have a momentum that you've built up. Do you ever feel like you're carrying so much that...
IM: Yeah, in some sense I pull so much stuff that it has inhibited my movement.
INT: Do you feel that this one structure that you've built is nearing its end?
IM: With the band you mean? I don't really know. There has always been this certain aspect with this band, which is, all four of us have always had our hands firmly on the plug. Any one of us, should we decide that it's no longer interesting, that would be the end of the band. And that's something that's always been that way. We like this band. It's important to us. We've put a lot of work into it. We like each other, and we feel challenged, not only with music but just with situations. And it still has a sense of urgency. It still feels like it's important. I wouldn't say that I kind of used up this thing. For us, it still feels fresh, it still feels important.