Posts Tagged live
Fugazi | Kansas City, KS USA, 8/28/93
This is my first dive into the live Fugazi vault. I never got to see them so one’s as good as any. I saw a lot of shows as a…youth. It was mostly a random thing back then. I remember mostly buying walk up tickets to shows that had no hope of selling out. Fugazi shows, unlike the band itself, always sold out, fast. They were popular and cheap. You had to have your shit together to get those tix. I did not, as they say, have the straight edge. Sometimes I think about how things might have been different…if I had gotten into one of these shows. It was that time in life when any little thing can Change Everything. I definitely had one of those moments when I bought my first Fugazi albums on cassette at the local comic book shop. First the Margin Walker EP, then Repeater. Mind-blowing stuff, but not the same as a live show. Certainly not the same as a Fugazi show, which by most accounts was a very guided experience. I used to get pretty wild at shows, not violent—I was not into the hardcore scene—but it got dumb. Crazy. A bit much, perhaps. Maybe if someone I respected gave my a stern talking to I would have toned that shit down. But for a time, getting completely retarded at shows was like all I had. It was a lot of fun. I could imagine instead that whole time just hanging back, shaking my head, feeling superior…everything coulda turned out different!
Or maybe not. I’m basing that whole idea on what I thought these shows were like. It’s a space that lives in my head, built up over the years by second-hand reports, that Instrument movie, bootleg tapes of out-of-context stage banter, and seeing Ian talk in person once at the Wetlands. He’s a completely reasonable man who seemingly can back up every suggestion with both a warm heart and cold logic. But you know he has this wild screaming alter-ego that can swing into this weird recess monitor mode. How did all these things resolve in reality?
I have looked for the answers in YouTube clips, as one does. Of course there’s plenty of live clips, but there’s plenty of Ian talks. They’re all pretty good if you need a general motivation boost, he’s good at that kind of thing, and you know he’s not bullshiting you with some positive thinking nonsense or made-up stories. It’s the real Punk ideas. But it’s even better when he gets real specific:
You’re gonna wanna watch this whole thing, but it’s at around the 40 minute mark that he describes the details of this Kansas City gig. With the magic of the internet and this meticulous archive, the full show was easily found, and upon the clearing of my meager paycheck, purchased and downloaded.
What comes through in these recent talks and the full shows in context is the band’s sense of humor. Even the strictly enforced $5 ticket price, which people are still today having friend and career-ruining arguments over after 20 years of inflation, was originally done because they “thought it was funny” (and perhaps more importantly for any note-takers: “because they could”).
Although there are some serious and practical matters behind some of the banter (around the 1 hr mark in the above talk Ian discusses some very real and unfortunate consequences of show violence), there’s times when you listen to some tapes of the stuff when you have to ask, “are these guys fucking kidding?” YES. When you listen to the whole show it’s clear they are at times actually attempting to lighten the mood. Like this thing with making the audience sign a petition? It happens pretty much exactly like he tells it in the story. And then turning all the lights off is just fucking with people—these guys are having a ball. That is Rock’n’Roll. That’s all Punk is, right? It’s about what’s possible with the reality in front of you. That’s so great that you can hear this story and then hear the actual thing and it all matches.
Oh, and there’s the music. I don’t know if they had any bad gigs, really, but this is good one. Great recording. I’m reminded that, even tho I’ve gotten all the albums over the years, I barely remember the ones that were not on Margin Walker (more commonly known now as the second half of 13 Songs) or Repeater. Played the shit out of those tapes, still have em. I’m also reminded of the song Rend It, which was put on a mixtape for me once. A mixtape I may have missed the point of, but which I also played the hell out of and still have. I’m not really a hidden message guy. It might seem stupid but my message is usually “check this music out”. I mean at times it could be “let’s have sex”, but that really seems better left to the moment, and would be said in those words. Rarely it could be “I am eternally devoted to you and there’s nothing you, or even I, can do about it” but that is almost always taken as deeply creepy, and rightly so. Never would you get that message in a Fugazi song. These guys are on that level level. Comparatively speaking. I’m way off. Sorry.
This is like when, uh, your lover turns over to you on the pillow and says ‘but now I can’t see your genitals’, it’s a lot like that. That ever happen to you?
—Guy Picciotto, on turning off all of the lights
Great version of Waiting Room. Bang, pow, smash.
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Maki Nomiya 30th Anniversary
Oh man, remember that Ustream of that promotional event from months ago for the real live event that already happened and you had no chance of attending anyway? Man…those were the days. That’s not happening again. (Because they took the video down.)
I guess I assumed they were bluffing about taking the video down. I didn’t try to figure out anyway to download it or take an audiograb. I took some screencaps, but figured I would go back later and get better ones. That didn’t work out. So I got all my mediocre screencaps and tried giving them captions, but the text started wrapping around all wrong. Attempting to fix it gave me this amusing overlap glitch which only got worse/more amusing. It would be more appropriate if it reminded me of unpredictably overlapping blogs of my youth but sometimes you’ve just got to grit your teeth and deal with something new happening. Here’s the whole mess:
So that was weird.
My main thought on this is that it contrasts pretty strongly with the attitude of Shonen Knife’s (really Naoko Yamano’s) 30th anniversary. That was more a celebration than a retrospective; the focus is really on the newest or newish material, with a few old songs (in the updated style) thrown in. It’s undoubtedly the healthier attitude to have as an artist still intending to continue putting out new work.
Both SK & P5 (with Maki) peaked around the same time in the mid-90s when they both crossed over onto major labels in America. Any live performance has to include something from that period. But Maki includes almost no post-peak P5 and not anything from her post-P5 solo albums—that’s four full LPs and change. I guess those albums didn’t sell that well, but neither did her early stuff, right?
I remember the original press for P5 and Maki was marketed as an ex-model, not an established singer for other groups. This whole thing stressing her early career seems revisionist. It’s probably more accurate, her modeling career is now relatively a blip. I was never impressed with that first album, and I never heard the songs of the old groups. They sound pretty good here, I gotta go back and check that stuff out for the songs. Thing is, she was a great singer for P5 and still sounds great, but she wasn’t great early on. Her voice was not there yet. Still, this is good for J-pop history to acknowledge that stuff and if the songs are good, I’m in. It’s similar to pre-Maki P5 in that it’s not quite the thing yet, but the ideas are there.
Still, a lotta time is spent down on the furthest part of Memory Lane. Maybe in another 10 years she’ll come around to her newer (now 10 year old) stuff.
Konishi Yasuharu makes no appearance, of course. Even tho he did do some production on those solo albums so I assume they’re on good terms I suppose performing live together would make it a P5 reunion gig, which he’s probably against. And he’s busy making songs with SMAP…ugh. Two talents going to waste there. I’m not saying that SMAP is so terrible and that covering your old songs is so sad, but it’s kinda terrible and a little sad. After a point.
Anyway, Tokyo’s Coolest Sound has a write-up of the concert itself. You can get most of the info about the musical guests there, except Miyavi didn’t show up. It sounds like it might have been a lot different.And they did this thing where you’re watching her watch old clips of herself. The whole thing was kinda creepy cause there’s a live audience in the studio but it’s only the event staff of like a dozen people. It had a weird tension to it. It’s like a new kind of live event they haven’t quite figured out to feel natural yet. It’s almost like they televised a dress rehearsal, but you’ve got the screen with the chatroom there, that’s like a New Aesthetic vibe. It’s weird, it’s like the acoustics are wrong or something when you just hear a few people clapping. The energy is wrong. Also, she started out with a house version of The Night is Still Young before the guests show up and she is just not that kind of diva. That never really worked for her did it? They tried to push that on some of the records but she’s just a pop singer, she’s not like Lady Miss Keir or something. Nothing against her, it’s just an energy mismatch thing. Really set the tone. The actual performances were good, I should have taken notes as I was capping. I think the old guy is the Pink no Kokoro producer. Is the guy in shorts Bravo? I can’t tell. That’s him is the fuzzy old VCR footage with the cheerleaders. I never saw P5 in concert, I guess it was always a weird thing.
The wait for an encore might be the most awkward I’ve ever felt watching a recorded event on the internet. A dozen people, tops, clapping in pre-planned unison while the chatroom goes berserk. This goes on for a solid 5 minutes at least. Creep city. Not necessary.
[OK, so apparently the Self-Covers album has all the versions of the songs as performed here so I should probably just get that.]
She’s pointing at MEEEEE. Oh! Uh…great show, Miss Maki. So…that’s all I have to say about that.
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