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After 11 years and too many albums to mention, we arrive at End Hits, the new album from Fugazi. End Hits is a progression through learning from 13 songs to now. I talked with Ian MacKaye on a couple of occasions about everyting from Vietnam to bootlegged t-shirts. This interview is a combination of the two meetings.


HOW DID FUGAZI BEGIN?

September 3, 1987 was the first Fugazi show. It was after about a year of playing with differnt people. Me and Joe decided that we weren't gonna worry about the band that we were just gonna play, so we played as a 3 piece, and since then, we've just been playing shows and making records. How's that for the short version.


WHAT EXACTLY DOES FUGAZI STAND FOR, I KNOW ITS A ACRONYM BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

I found it in a book called NAM, which is a book of recollections of Vietnam veterans, it was a slang word meaning f*ucked up situation, according to their glossary. Later I found out it was actually an acronym meaning "F*ucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In."


HOW DO YOU FEEL THAT YOUR WORK HAS PROGRESSED FROM SAY 13 SONGS TO NOW?

You know, it's very hard for me to talk about our own progression, other than to say that evolution is a natural thing.


MATURITY MAYBE?

I don't know, it's hard for me to discuss it. It's like we just work, for instance...if I was a cook for 11 years, I would hope and pray that my food that I was making would change. If I were a carpenter, I would hope that my trade had gotten better, that I would have built better things. So as a musician it just seems so obvious to me that if we've played for 11 years that our talents would have really developed. So it's hard for me to discuss it other than saying we we're there and now we're here.


I HAD READ AN INTERVIEW ONCE THAT HAD YOU QUOTED AS SAYING THAT YOU HAD TROUBLE BEING YOURSELF AROUND CERTAIN GROUPS OF PEOPLE. WHAT DID YOU MEAN BY THAT?

Maybe what I was referring to was that I often feel that in public, like at a concert, that I can't really respond in a way that I would naturally, I think just because of my profile. So many people know who I am that I feel that people are paying too much attention to my reactions to things. So I try to keep really low key. For example, I was watching this band and dancing around. Then later, someone told me "hey, I heard you were dancing to this band." It made me feel really weird, and really uncomfortable.


I WANTED TO ASK YOU A LITTLE BIT ABOUT PAILHEAD, IS THAT A ONE TIME THING OR IS IT SOMETHING YOU MIGHT WANT OT DO AGAIN?

Oh, I don't think so. The last time we did that was '89 or '90. I haven't seen Al Jourgensen for four or five years now. I don't know what he's up to. I haven't seen him or anything. That was really a fluke, those sessions. We had just bumped into each other and the next thing I knew we were putting these songs together, and I think they're good. I like that stuff quite a bit. I was pretty surprised how well we could work with each other, but we never knew each other before then, and we're not close friends or anything. It was just kind of a good collision. I'm so busy with the band and label that I don't have time to do music outside of what I'm doing as it is. I don't really have enough time to do my own music with the band. It does get discouraging. You know, the whole reason I do all this work, and the whole reason I have this lavel is that I want to be in a band, but it's a bit ironic and sometimes frustrating that all this work I do sometimes makes it impossible to play music because I'm so busy.


LET'S TALK A MINUTE ABOUT THE 'THIS IS NOT A FUGAZI T-SHIRT.' I HAD READ SOMEWHERE THAT THE REASON IT SAID THAT WAS THAT IT REALLY ISN'T A FUGAZI AUTHORIZED T-SHIRT.

Nothing is authorized. We don't have t-shirts. We don't make them, and we don't sell give anyone else permission to make them. So every piece of merchandise you see out there is unauthorized. That particualar situation, there was a merchandise company called Just Say Rock from Boston, and they made some Fugazi t-shirts. when I have the time sometimes I'll pick up the phone and go affter some of these people and tell them to cut it out. So I called them up and told them to cut it out and they did. Then about a month later, I received in the mail a This Is Not a Fugazi t-shirt, which I thought was pretty funny, it was a good play. So I called them and said that it was a very creative way to deal with this, but since you're still treading on our name, I think you should be creative with your accounting and give the money due us to a local charity in Boston. What ever you pick, just give some money to them. So they did and they stopped making the shirts, but by then there were other companies that had bootlegged that shirt. So now it's not even the same companies doing it.


WHERE DO YOU SEE FUGAZI GOING IN THE FUTURE?

I don't think about the future. I never thought much about it. I'm far to involved with the present. So, I don't really have any plans. I have no idea what we'll be doing.


DO YOU PREFER THE LIVE SHOW TO RECORDING?

They are two very different experiences. The live thing is one of the few opportunities that I ever have to completely lose myself, or attempt to. It's not very often that a grown man or woman can push their bodies as much as I do on stage. It's unlike most other activities. There are a few activities that I would say would come close.


A SEXUAL EXPERIENCE?

I would say that would be one of them.


WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH THE GUY IN THE CROWD?

Sometimes we play shows where there are just some people who are more energy than they are worth.


WHAT PISSES YOU OFF...OTHER THAN STAGE DIVING AND PEOPLE ASKING YOU ABOUT MINOR THREAT?

I think just people's disrespect for other people. I find it bothersome...but it''s not like I lose a lot of sleep over stage diving. I think that people play that up too much. I am concerned about the well being of the people in the audience, but people always construe it as if it really irks me to see people stage diving. That's not the case. I will let you in on one fact though, that shoud be considered by the people. We played as a band for 11 years. In those 11 years there are probable a 1/2 dozen people who will never walk agian because they came to see us play and somebody else jumped on their heads, and I don't give a f*ck about any dance style or fashions or whatever, to me there is nothing worth people losing the ability to walk. That's just totally absurd. So, when I see people like that, who are just concerned with their own entertainment, and that's fine, but the problem lies in that we have a mixed crowd, and if people want to be like that, they have to be considerate of the other people in the room.

END








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