‘60 Songs That Explain the ’90s’: Fugazi and the Making of a Hardcore Revolution

Grunge. Wu-Tang Clan. Radiohead. “Wonderwall.” The music of the ’90s was as exciting as it was diverse. But what does it say about the era—and why does it still matter? 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s is back for 30 final episodes (and a brand-new book!) to try to answer those questions. Join Ringer music writer and ’90s survivor Rob Harvilla as he treks through the soundtrack of his youth, one song (and embarrassing anecdote) at a time. Follow and listen for free on Spotify. In Episode 103 of 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s—yep, you read that right—we’re covering Fugazi and the D.C. hardcore revolution. Below is an excerpt of this episode’s transcript.

Ian MacKaye. Singer, songwriter, guitarist, label owner, zeitgeist creator. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1962. Do yourself a favor and don’t do the math. His first band in high school is called the Slinkees. His second band’s called the Teen Idles.

Ian’s playing bass there and doing backup vocals occasionally; he’s not the lead singer yet. When Ian MacKaye is leading the charge, you know it. That song is called “Get Up and Go,” and it appears on the Teen Idles EP Minor Disturbance, released in 1980, the first and last Teen Idles release that also has the distinction of being the very first release on Dischord Records: the revered and enduring and ferociously independent record label started by Ian MacKaye and his good friend Jeff Nelson to document the Washington, D.C., independent punk-rock scene, with which Ian in particular quickly became synonymous. But yeah, the Teen Idles quickly break up. A key facet of D.C. punk bands is that they often have the life span of, like, yogurt. Check the expiration date, my friends.

There’s this cool documentary called Salad Days: A Decade of Punk in Washington, DC (1980-90)—came out in 2014, directed by Scott Crawford, who’d grown up in the scene. And it’s a relentless barrage of cool bands and cool people and cool 45-second songs, each of which changed, like, 5,000 people’s lives. So this guy Jason Farrell, he played guitar in a late-’80s D.C. hardcore band called Swiz, and Jason is raving about an early-’80s D.C. punk band called the Faith, who put out one split album in 1982 with another D.C. punk band called Void—the Faith / Void split (if you know, you know)—and then the Faith put out one more record, Subject to Change, in 1983, and then the band, uh, expired. And Jason is rhapsodizing about how much this Faith album Subject to Change meant to him, and he says, “It’s such a perfect little moment, and it’s beautiful that it died.”

You said it, pal. Meanwhile, Minor Threat, led by our good friend Ian MacKaye, hangs in there from 1980 to 1983. Every year that a D.C. punk band stays together is a decade in normal rock ’n’ roll time, which in turn pretty much makes Minor Threat pretty much the most enduring hardcore band ever born.

In the classic 2001 book Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, written by Michael Azerrad, phenomenal book, Ian MacKaye talks about how he watched the Woodstock documentary over and over and over when he was a little kid—actual 1969 Jimi Hendrix Woodstock, not Limp Bizkit–ass, rock-bottom-for-society Woodstock ’99—and Ian carried that original Woodstock ideal with him, the dream that a rock band could foment a revolution or at least inspire a community, millions of people strong, who’d go out and smile on their brothers and everybody get together and try to love one another right now and eventually build a better world. Now, knowing what you know, or think you know, about punk rock as the antithesis of hippie-fueled classic rock, you might be tempted to think that perhaps Ian’s being sarcastic here, with this “inspired by Woodstock” business, but something to know about Ian MacKaye immediately is he’s usually not being sarcastic at all. And when he is being sarcastic, you’ll know that, too.

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Minor Threat started out as Ian on vocals; his Dischord partner, Jeff Nelson, on drums; Lyle Preslar on guitar; and Brian Baker on bass. They initially broke up in December 1981 because Lyle wanted to go to college, but turns out Lyle didn’t much care for college, so Minor Threat got back together in April 1982, but some people in the scene thought this was a cash-grab reunion, which is funny, first of all, because hardcore bands historically don’t make any cash at all. Why do you think they’re so pissed off all the time? But Ian didn’t think it was funny, and this song’s called “Cashing In,” and it goes out to the various haters of Washington, D.C.

Minor Threat break up for real in ’83, and meanwhile, D.C. hardcore overall is getting a little … this is glib, but bro-y? All the stage-diving, slam-dancing, mosh-pit action. The mind reels, trying to reaccess my 14-year-old mind as I tried to imagine what the classic D.C. hardcore environment might be like and tried to describe it in words. Slam dancing. I was a “How do you do, fellow kids?” type even back when I was actually a kid. But the heart, the soul of the D.C. hardcore scene rebrands in 1985, and a bunch of new bands form explicitly to play for each other or play for themselves, for their true friends, for the true scene. And that word rebrands is also glib but not not true, exactly, because the summer of ’85 is known canonically as Revolution Summer, and in that Salad Days movie—“Salad Days,” by the way, is another Minor Threat song about the perils of nostalgia—you get a few people quietly, good-naturedly scoffing at the term “Revolution Summer,” but you also [get] two separate grown men visibly tearing up as they describe how inspiring, how life-changing Revolution Summer was to them personally. J. Robbins, of the great D.C. band Jawbox, he says, and I’m paraphrasing just a little, he says it’s not very punk rock to say, Punk rock saved my life, but, well.

And right here, and only right here, I’m going to say out loud that some listeners referred to this more lyrically bereft and anguished and uncomfortably direct sort of music as “emotional hardcore,” or “emo” for short, and everyone in that Salad Days movie—and pretty much everyone everywhere else, within the D.C. universe at least—cringes, seethes, recoils, and/or scoffs way less good-naturedly at this term emo and all related terms, and let us never speak of this again, for now. And we’ve agreed to never speak of this again, for now, just in time, because here comes this guy.

Here we have Guy Picciotto, fellow D.C. resident and galvanizing front man for another major Revolution Summer band called Rites of Spring. Here we have Guy getting uncomfortably lyrically direct on a song called “End on End,” from the first (and last, yogurt) full-length Rites of Spring record, self-titled, released in 1985. “End on End” is seven and a half minutes long, or, if you prefer a less precise unit of measurement, “End on End” is roughly eight to 10 Minor Threat songs long.

Rites of Spring lasted from 1983 to 1986. It’s such a perfect little moment, and it’s beautiful that it died. We’re on the hunt now for a band that can crank up both the beauty and the ugliness and the perfection but stretch out the moment a little longer. Across a full decade, ideally. Across the ’90s. All right. I need you to promise me you’re gonna go watch this.

Fugazi formed in 1986, as a trio at first of Ian MacKaye on vocals and guitar, Joe Lally on bass, and a dude named Colin Sears on drums who lasted a few months but then went back to his old band Dag Nasty, another rad D.C. band with Brian from Minor Threat in it—don’t let me get bogged down in this. So Ian and Joe get a new drummer, Brendan Canty, from Rites of Spring, and Brendan brings in his old, bendy friend Guy Picciotto, who’s just singing and wildly contorting for now but eventually will play guitar as well. And there you have Fugazi: Ian, Guy, Joe, and Brendan. Did you see that tweet going around recently that pissed everybody off? The dude was like, Serious question: If the Grateful Dead is not the greatest band of all time from the United States, then who is? I try to avoid viral tweet fiascos, so I didn’t get involved—most likely I was too busy watching either Jury Duty or the new Justified show—but somebody proposed Fugazi, right, as the all-time-greatest American band, right? I’m gonna be big mad if nobody said Fugazi.

This song is called “Waiting Room,” and it’s one of the greatest songs, rock ’n’ roll songs, punk-rock songs, post-hardcore songs, [don’t say it] songs, pop songs, blah blah blah blah, whatever-you-wanna-call-it songs ever made. Let’s not belabor this. Holy shit. And it starts with that pause, where the band totally drops out and all the dudes in the crowd whoop and Brendan whaps the giant bell on his drum kit. I love the bell. The bell is crucial. That pause—the space it creates, the space you, the listener, fill with your surprise and/or confusion and/or delight, or the space that a rapturous crowd fills with whoops and cheers and whatnot—that pause is the most impactful interval of silence in the history of American song. I’ve been doing this a little while now, and I am entitled to a little hyperbole. For your reference, in the recorded version—“Waiting Room” is the first song on Fugazi’s first EP, self-titled, released in 1988, then came the EP Margin Walker in 1989, then those two EPs were combined into the album 13 Songs, released later in ’89, all on Dischord Records of course—in the recorded version of “Waiting Room,” the pause is longer, and given the absence of a whooping crowd, it’s also much, much quieter.

And if this song hits you right, at the right age, then that pause (and “Waiting Room” as a whole) is world-changing. It is personality-defining. It is revolutionary. When I go back in the time machine to steal all my 12-year-old shit and I leave just one Fugazi tape, actually the tape is 13 Songs. I want “Waiting Room” to redefine me. I want to create the alternate universe where Fugazi are immediately and permanently My Band. I wanna find out how that version of Rob turns out. While we’re just outright fantasizing, I want to be in this crowd, at the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C., in 1988, at a benefit for the National Coalition for the Homeless, when Fugazi plays “Waiting Room” and the whole crowd goes apeshit.

To hear the full episode, click here. Subscribe here and check back every Wednesday for new episodes. And to preorder Rob’s new book, Songs That Explain the ’90s, visit the Hachette Book Group website.