Fugazi - 3 Songs

A little while ago I realised I was within striking distance of completing my Fugazi collection - I had all the albums on some format and was just missing Margin Walker. When I picked that up from Specialist Subject, I also picked up The Argument and Instrument on vinyl, meaning the only outstanding release was the 3 Songs 7". Of course, I'd had the three songs themselves since 2005, tacked onto the end of the Repeater cd, an album I loved so much I got the cd two years after buying the vinyl just so I could listen to it on my mp3 player. So I know these three songs very well.

Still, in October 2019, just after the package arrived from Specialist Subject I went on eBay and bought the first reasonably priced copy of this I saw (at £4.50, it's not far off the £6 I spent on my vinyl copy of Repeater). The internet has made record collecting far less exciting for sure, but it's still nice to put that final piece of the puzzle in. These three songs are deserving of their own 7" (something that isn't universally true) - Song Number One is huge, and would easily fit on a best-of Fugazi, if such a thing existed (which it does in my car, and indeed is on there). The bass at the start of Joe Number One sounds amazing, as does the piano. I've never really had much time for it on the end of Repeater, but when you sit down and properly listen to it, it’s great. And finally Break In is just frantic. In just seven-and-a-half minutes, you have a perfect slice of Fugazi.

Format: 7", picture sleeve, insert
Tracks: 3
Cost: £4.50 second hand
Bought: eBay
When: 16/10/19
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing

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

Fugazi - Repeater

Repeater was my second Fugazi purchase, having bought the self-titled mini-album a few months beforehand. As much as I love the first one, I've always considered Repeater my favourite. There are a few moments in particular where the songs are so perfect in a way that I don't see as much on the other records. I think they all have some real highlights, but the highs here are huge and plentiful.

Three of my favourite Fugazi songs are on this record - Repeater (with the count-off in the chorus), Blueprint (with the huge outro) and Shut the Door (which broods like no other song they'd written before). On top of that, there are just little flicks of brilliance throughout - the transition between the speed of Greed into the riff in Two Beats Off, for example, is lovely.

I bought this record second hand in the market that used to be set up in the square at university every so often. I also bought a Pop Will Eat Itself record, making quite the strange pairing. The sleeve is in very good condition for a second hand record, except a few fingerprints on the picture sleeve, and a tiny knifed edge to it. I played the album a lot back in the day, so much so, I asked for a copy of the cd one Christmas as I wanted to have a digital copy too (plus, three extra songs - although I usually stop it on Shut the Door).

Just to dwell on Shut the Door for a moment - I don't remember it catching my ear as quickly as Repeater or Blueprint did, but eventually it bowled me over, almost in reverse - the outro caught my attention first, but I came to love the verses and chorus too - the simplicity of the verses contrasted so well against the thrashy chorus. Ian sings in a way I'd not heard before - really sung like a regular singer, not just a punk singer (if you'll excuse the distinction). The verses are also so brief that you want more of them, much like you'd normally feel about the chorus. They could have easily finished it on the bass line towards the end, but then they bring back the chorus riff with those perfect lines "Shut the door so I can leave / Shut the door". What a great way to end the record.

Format: 12", picture sleeve, insert
Tracks: 11
Cost: £6 second hand
Bought: Lancaster University Square
When: 12/02/04
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Fugazi - End Hits

My Fugazi collection is complete in that I have all the releases on at least one format, however I'd quite like to have them all on vinyl one day - I started out that way with the self-titled EP and Repeater, but then started buying them on cd for some reason; it was 2005/2006 and LPs weren't as easy to find as cds (even routinely in-print Discord releases, in the UK at least). I keep meaning to buy the albums I only have on cd on vinyl, and I'm sure I will one day, but it's far from a challenge, so I keep putting it off.

I bought End Hits from Damaged Records in the spring of 2007. I was buying an LP every week from Spillers, but felt like I should spread my business more widely, and Damaged seemed like a very complimentary record shop - I could only get punk there, but they always had all the punk records anyone could want. So I would go there once a month and buy an LP and have a nice chat with Welly, the guy who ran it. In April, I bought End Hits.

I've never got along with End Hits as well as I'd have liked to. It's still very much a Fugazi album, but focuses more on the areas I enjoyed less (free-jazz) and less on the areas I enjoyed more (shouty punk). Vocally, few songs have the ferocity of some of the early records, which is a shame. No Surprise is the first really good song on the album for me (mainly because of the guitar riff). I remember hearing a lot about Five Corporations before hearing the song and it's definitely a great song. It's certainly nice to hear Ian's vocals on such a frantic song. Closed Captioned is another highlight, as is Foreman's Dog. Pink Frosty and Recap Modotti, on the other hand, are good examples of the sort of songs here that I'm not fussed by.

End Hits hasn't had the amount of play as it probably should have, but that's a function of it being the era before mp3 download codes and me not having the songs digitally. That, combined with the fact that when I want to listen to Fugazi I tend to pick the self-titled or Repeater, means that I really don't know it as well as I should. Quite a few of the songs are familiar from the Instrument soundtrack, so always make me think I know them better than I do, but I don't know them that well at all. Anyway, a solid Fugazi album, but I doubt it's anyone's favourite.

Format: 12", gatefold sleeve, insert
Tracks: 13
Cost: £8 new
Bought: Damaged Records, Cardiff
When: 05/04/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no

Fugazi - Furniture

My friend Sarah has often said that Furniture is her favourite Fugazi record (mine is Repeater), which given that it's only three songs long, is quite the claim. She told me this a few times before I eventually bought a copy. They always had it in Banquet and I always ended up buying other records instead. I eventually picked it up, and I agree it is pretty good.

Furniture is a great Fugazi song, and if I had to write a top ten of theirs songs, it would be up there; clever lyrics, a strong beat and a sparse but perfect guitar. They had some nice instrumentals along the way, and Number 5 follows in that vein. Hello Morning is a little more scatty but still a nice listen. All in all, I'd say this record would work as a perfect Fugazi sampler, although I'd be tempted just to encourage people to listen to Repeater or the self-titled ep. For a Fugazi fan, it's worth it for Furniture alone.


Format: 7", insert
Tracks: 3
Cost: £2.50 new
Bought: Banquet
When: 22/02/12
Colour: Black
Etching: Side A: "Reluctant pharoahs", Side B: "Ancient Fruits"
mp3s: no

Fugazi - Fugazi

Man, that bass line at the start of Waiting Room never fails to please me. The whole song is perfect. I once saw a band cover it and it made me want to learn an instrument so that I could have as much fun as they were having playing it. I'm struggling to write this because all I want to do is drum along on my laptop.

My records are currently (lamentably) spread across two locations because I move too often to drag them all around. The ones I have here are generally the ones that I've bought in the last two years and the ones at my parents' house are the older ones that I mostly have mp3s of (not that mp3s are any sort of consolation). Anyway, this is one that was at my parents' but I brought back with me because it's just too good not to play all the time. I think I'd been having cravings for it so picked it up the next time I went back. It's probably the oldest one I have with me at the moment so it's going to be a good test of my memory to see if I can remember the details of when I bought it!

I bought it in a record shop in Manchester, although I have no idea if I could find that store again. I'd been at uni a few months and my friend Hugh had come up to visit. I'd given him the task of bringing up my record player that I thought I wouldn't miss whilst at uni. I was wrong, but he forgot so I went the entire first term without a turntable. Needless to say that didn't stop me buying vinyl. On the Saturday afternoon we decided we should explore the record shops of Manchester, only an hour away by train (no time by northern standards). After the Friday night out, we made a fairly late start to our record shopping, but found a street with a few places on. I reckon if I was in Manchester again I could find that road, but looking at it from above on Google, I have no idea. I think it was a second hand place, but my copy is mint (I say that based on the other record I bought that day, and the fact this one only cost me £4.50, less than the usual Dischord asking price). And what a classic sleeve it is. I do enjoy an excited live shot on a record sleeve.

I'd been wanting to get some Fugazi for a while. I'd known Minor Threat for a while; I think you absorb a lot of music knowledge without realising and there are some bands who I feel like I've always known about somehow - there was no point when I suddenly learnt about them. Minor Threat, and to a lesser extent, Fugazi were bands like that. I had a cover of "Minor Threat" by Silverchair and eventually bought a cd of the First Demo Tape. I knew what to expect from Fugazi a little because of this, but knew there was more going on musically. By the time I actually got round to listening to the record, I'm not sure what I was expecting. It was a grower, which amazes me given how immediately exciting it is as a record now. Maybe I just wasn't quite ready for it. I still struggle with some of the later Fugazi records. I guess it doesn't really matter that I didn't get it at first. This one and Repeater are among my all-time favourite records and I think that's what matters.

Musically there's little I can say that hasn't been said before. Fugazi is a stunning record. Short and to the point. How about this: in the time it's taken me to write this the record has finished and I want to listen to it all over again. That doesn't often happen. Once again "Waiting Room" has put a grin on my face.

Format: 12", picture inner sleeve
Tracks: 7
Cost: £4.50 second hand
Bought: Manchester
When: 15/11/03
Colour: black
Etching: none
mp3s: no