Fugazi: C or D?

(and thereby remaining obscure for decades)

I guess SFA have to be in contention for (supposedly) turning down a "seven-figure" Coke ad.

The Mummies are a band that rejected multiple major label deals and refused to out their music on cd

What about Inside Out?

I wish I was old enough to have seen Fugazi when they were still going. I'm not preaching to anyone here so much as to my past self and some people I associated with who would interpret what they did as "politically revolutionary" instead of "pretty cool". I do think the tension between the liberal/radical/reactionary impulses in punk/indie is interesting though, there is/was just so much confusion and misplaced...everything going on in those scenes

― ftp (Left), Wednesday, January 6, 2021 8:19 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

As someone who was old enough to have seen them a bunch of times in their prime, I think you have to view them in the context of whatever "the left" was at the time. It was still the immediate wake of the cold war. Communism/socialism felt somewhat dead as an idea and limited to old cranks and campus weirdos. People with leftish politics were into Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn. There were strains of anti-globalism, anti-corporatism, anti-racism, gender critique and intense criticism of US foreign policy, but there wasn't really a unifying left economic theory with any popular traction.

I hate the word "problematic." I think it's a weasel word for when you want to say something is bad-ish but can't actually say it's bad. It falsely implies that there is someone or something in this world that is "unproblematic." MacKaye wrote "Guilty of Being White" when he was literally a teenager, and subsequently rejected it. Even as a teenager I don't think he had any intention of being anything resembling a white nationalist -- I think it was more just a confused kid's reaction to stuff he probably heard growing up in DC and attending heavily black public schools. What people might today call a reaction of "white fragility."

The "he owns a record label" stuff feels a lot like "Bernie has three houses." I guess in some limited sense it makes him a "capitalist." But the pejorative sense of "capitalist" usually means earning money for nothing by exploiting the labor of others. I suppose you could find some exploitation somewhere in the Dischord chain. Maybe there are underpaid interns, idk. Maybe the company who actually presses their CDs doesn't pay its employees well. I still think overall that the little ecosystem Dischord created was a great thing, and it also probably brought a lot of people into other types of left politics. I would bet that, among today's left who are old enough to have gone to Fugazi shows, you'd find a lot of Fugazi fans.

So, no, I reject the idea that they were "problematic."

yes

I didn't mean (assuming you meant my post) that "he owns a record label" as indication that MacKaye is the Man or anything. Just a statement of fact. He owns a record label that he founded decades ago, he owns a house in NoVa that he bought decades ago. They both have value. The only way he could *not* be worth some money is if he gave them away. And for that matter, he's recorded hundreds of sessions for free, spent lots of that money releasing those sessions, gave up no doubt even more money through more equitable (and not predatory) agreements with the bands on that label, let untold numbers of people crash or work in that house rent free, etc. I don't think he's "problematic" at all, certainly not by today's standards. If anything he remains some sort of platonic ideal of how to be an ethical businessman in a business that actively discourages such a thing.

TBC, I think it's worth interrogating the idea that DIY is any kind of substantive left politics. But I also think DIY can be a human thing that's good on a human level, like hugging or dancing or food that tastes good. I don't think we should extend it into a political philosophy or buy into any myth that we are better off with everything being smaller scale and less interconnected. But I also don't think the whole concept should be thrown out.

I'm not sure DIY is at its core necessarily close to a leftist policy. Just look at all the lunatics with "go bags" or survivalist gear or shelters full of wheat or whatever. I think the reason MacKaye et al. favored DIY was because it allowed them to (for lack of a better phrase) control the means of production, which some obviously branded as political. But in reality it was ultimately no more political than, say, Black Flag (no leftists) crisscrossing the country in a van finding new places for bands to play.

Yes DIY Capitalists who just charged $5 for gigs, reasonable price for cds, vinyl, etc and did lots and lots of benefits

https://dcist.com/story/19/05/06/data-punk-a-new-exhibit-explains-fugazi-with-graphs/?fbclid=IwAR1pTgCx3zstIELy27leCi89DorpPzGmUpUZ37q_K2EaJXz28Bh8D_PHBdI

One infographic maps the non-traditional venues where Fugazi played, from outdoor concerts at Fort Reno, to small churches in Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights, to the original 9:30 Club near Metro Center.

Another work illustrates how Fugazi raised some $250,000 for local charities by playing around 80 benefit concerts. D.C. organizations that benefited included the Whitman-Walker Clinic, Washington Peace Center, Alexandria Tenants Association and the Women’s Crisis Center

The above data is just regarding dc gigs

I also remember there often being organizers tabling at their shows, which was encouraged.

Being anti-capitalist/trying to live ethically under capitalism does not not require giving away all earnings beyond a subsistence amount, not owning property, or being bad at capitalism imo.

the only band of any repute I've personally seen eschew merch tables and distribute literature / fundraise instead is Propagandhi

Fugazi def did it

oh yes I was just mentioning to emphasize how rare that is

i mean...they could have easily doubled ticket prices and sold out every show no question....and sold merch instead of having organizer tables...i don't think it's crazy to think they left $10K on the table every single 21+ club show they played, not to mention all the all-ages gigs or non trad show

I remember when they played the Aragon in Chicago in the summer of '93, because Aragon was a Ticketmaster venue, they couldn't get around the service charges. So tickets were $5.30. I can't imagine how they were able to get Ticketbastard to agree to a 30 cent service charge, but they never played the Aragon again (opting for the far better-sounding Congress Theater in 1998...and weirdly, of the five Fugazi shows I saw, the two in Chicago were by far the weakest).

I don't think it was ever a strict rule to keep it to 5.... just low enough that normal people could afford it, costs were covered plus they could give someone their money back and ask them to leave it that person was a dick. the last shows they did in london 2002 were £8.

which is still mega low obviously

One thing I do remember is at their peak (91-93) when they sold out large venues (speaking specifically of the Hollywood Palladium, 3800 capacity) they would keep adding dates and shifting tour dates around to accommodate demand.

($6 though...)

lol ;)

I remember when they played the Aragon in Chicago in the summer of '93, because Aragon was a Ticketmaster venue, they couldn't get around the service charges. So tickets were $5.30. I can't imagine how they were able to get Ticketbastard to agree to a 30 cent service charge, but they never played the Aragon again (opting for the far better-sounding Congress Theater in 1998...and weirdly, of the five Fugazi shows I saw, the two in Chicago were by far the weakest).

MacKaye has famously cited the Aragon show as the only Fugazi show that actually *cost* them money.

I think it's in here:

https://www.soundopinions.org/show/722

Maybe they didn't lost money. Not from sound opinions but here's the story I found:

Now think about the fact that one of the skyrocketing costs of all the shows was security. I mean, there was a show we did in Chicago where the barricade made four times as much money as we did. The BARRICADE. And because you have a barricade, then you must have security people. You have to have security people - crowd management people - between the stage and the barricade. Because the barricade is a hole. So once you put a barricade in, then you have to staff the barricade. So it just costs more and more money, and this results in higher ticket prices. So these people that were just 'having fun' and just 'going off' - what they were really doing was they were perverting the peoples' music. They were creating a corporate climate. Do you follow?

This is something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. I mean, this barricade in Chicago - we played at this place called I think the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, and at that time there was these 'T' barricades. Are you familiar with that? It was a giant room that held 5,000 people, and the barricade was shaped like a 'T,' so you had the horizontal bit in front of the stage, but then right in the middle there was a barricade that goes straight down dividing the 'pit,' so to speak -- or the 'crowd,' if you prefer -- into two. But then you had to bring in even more security people to be in the middle slot. And we argued and argued about it, but the fix was in. The security people were connected, insurance rates drove up costs, and everything was just creating this insane confluence of things that jacked the cost of the show higher and higher and higher. I couldn't get them to waive it, so finally I said that I insisted that we include in the budget 100 balloons and a can of helium. And the guy was like, "What? What are you talking about!?" And I said, "If you're gonna have such a draconian set-up, and since when people are entering the room that's the first thing they'll see, it sets a contrary tone. So as a form of protest and an absurdity, I would like to soften it by having balloons tied to it all the way around." They did it! But I was just spitting in the wind, because that night we just got banged. We had 3900 people at that show, and we made less than the guy that drove the forklift. That's the risk we took by working percentages.

Didn't know that (nor do I have any recollection of the balloons)! I saw them again a few weeks later at the college I was attending in Vermont; it was VERY hastily organized, there were rumors that the band was pissed about the lack of publicity, the place was half full (maybe 250-300, if that)...and they apparently did better financially on that show than on a sold-out Aragon show.

And 3900 was "sold out" for Aragon shows until they started dangerously packing people in. I remember the '96 Sex Pistols show was shoulder-to-shoulder in the very back of the hall.

Left has already said they were just having some 'fun' with all of this. I knew Left must get some enjoyment out of life somehow somewhere sometime.

what I wanted to take issue with was the implication that all this was something more/less than what it is, the idea (which is popular, maybe more popular at the time, in these scenes) that running an "ethical" business, doing benefits, not merchandising in an obvious way, adopting a vegan diet, etc... is not just a (better?) way of operating within the system but is actually substantially outside of or against it. this way of operating sometimes then becomes a standard of purity to hold others to, something they could also have achieved if they'd really cared (and that part is where the ideological distance from neoliberalism becomes less huge than it seems at first)

also, even if these things were really difficult and a lot of money was left on the table, I imagine it was easier for MacKaye to be as successful within his own terms as he was, than it would have been without his relatively privileged background (which is also where GoBW comes in... still no excuse, now or ever)

sorry to keep with the politics but the problem with the "bernie owning houses" thing is that it's raised by people who have no opposition to capitalism or to people owning as many houses as they like - as an attempt to own people who sometimes might be expected to have at least some. not that bernie (or ian) isn't really a capitalist or isn't really bourgeois, or that this kind of wealth is actually ok as long as you're woke enough

"this kind of wealth" - ROFLMAO

stay focused on the 1% dude, eyes on the prize

I've seen enough.... Ian MacKaye is Elon Musk.

Not even the richest DC punk rocker .

sorry in what sense is this not wealth. I suppose he's less rich than a few guys

dude I'm probably worth $1 mil on paper and I have $2K in the bank and no retirement

(to be fair >50% of that is my wife)

upper middle class =! the 1%

I don't really understand the meaning of "ok" in that sentence. Socialism isn't kashrut, it's not a series of laws about what are "ok" individual choices.

(putting aside that one is his vermont residence, one is his DC residence -- something every member of congress needs -- and one is I believe a lake house his wife inherited from her parents. It's not like they're deliberately accumulating properties)

"socialism" is full of normative judgments (eg exploitation is basically a bad thing), some of the theory crowd has always been a bit in denial about this

so the defensiveness is really not necessary and there is not really an "ok" level of accumulation including what I engage in. I suppose there are some fundamental differences of opinion about what constitutes being rich. the fact that someone is a capitalist (as in "I've got my own business") or that they own more property than most people ever will should not be controversial though

lol are you a Maoist?

that's like one step away from Cultural Revolution shit IMHO

THE LOCAL SHOPKEEPER IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

Home ownership in America is somewhere around 65%.

And a home bought in 1981 or whenever in what has since become one of the most valuable real estate markets in the country is going to go way up, even if you never so much as mowed the grass.

thing is though, dischord just kind of *happened* like they put out their own 45s and then were like oh we should put out our friend's band and oh cool we broke even, so put out some more stuff and hey cool we made some money let's put out some more records

the idea that it was some kind of plan to be a capitalist and not just putting out music they thought should be heard that no one would put out - AND pre-internet when you had to get things manufactured and distribute physical products - seems ahistorical and unfair

and like you actually have to live somewhere, is owning a home morally wrong when the only option is to participate in the rental market? putting money in the hands of some real estate company?

Not everyone lives in America, believe it or not.