Steady Diet of Nothing is the only Fugazi album I don't have a digital copy of, which means it's had far, far less play then the others. It was also the last of their albums I heard having gradually picked them all up over the course of a couple of years. Beyond Repeater and the self-titled EP (the first two Fugazi albums I heard), I'd always found that each album had a handful of songs I really loved and a lot that I was basically a bit indifferent towards. The album I heard before this one, End Hits, I struggled with a lot, and looking at the tracklisting here, I'm not seeing any I've ever taken a particular shine to. Maybe I'd just rushed through their back-catalogue a bit too fast.
Recently I made a Fugazi mix cd for the car. I went through and found all my favourite songs and put them into a playlist. Just the ones I knew to be great songs took up 90 minutes, so I didn't even revisit the albums to see if I'd missed any (and had to find 10 minutes to remove). But because I didn't have mp3s of this album, none of them made the cut. The mix has been getting a lot of play in the car - they wrote some truly incredible songs.
Listening to Steady Diet of Nothing now, I'm aware of two things: I should play this album far more often and Reclamation, Latin Roots and Polish all would have made the mix cd if I'd had mp3s - they're all great songs. Reclamation in particular has this huge wall of guitars, and Polish is one of those slower Fugazi songs that works perfectly with Ian's tortured vocals. The fade out between Latin Roots and Long Division straddling the two sides of vinyl is strange, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it.
I say this a few times a year, but the point of this blog was to make sure I revisit all my records at some point, and every now and again that process unearths a forgotten classic. I should have given this album a lot more time in the past.
Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 25/10/08
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Don't worry" Side B: "This is the last one"
mp3s: none
