Photos © by Michael Ackerman
Fugazi, Palladium, New York City, NY USA, May 1, 1997
This show at the 3000 cap Palladium in NYC kicks off a string of just 6 shows on as many consecutive nights in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Richmond in the first week of May 1997.
The Palladium gig has been well documented and beautifully captured for posterity by friend of the band and acclaimed photographer Glen E. Friedman in his amazing book “Keep Your Eyes Open: The Fugazi Photographs.” A side note by the author reads: “Seeing Fugazi at the Palladium was an incredible event: besides the fact that I had seen fantastic shows there since the late 70’s, this was to be the last live show ever at the legendary venue. The promotor actually claimed he lost money even though the show was sold out (obviously due in part to Fugazi still insisting on a low ticket price); he did it just to be able to claim that he put on a Fugazi show! At this time they were too popular for any other (non-arena) venue in New York, and in fact played a less publicized show the following night just a few blocks away [at the NYU Loeb Center].”
Having not played in front of a live audience since wrapping up the US/Japan/Hong Kong/Australia tour on November 18, 1996 (with the exception of a show at the University of Maryland Baltimore a couple of days prior for which no recording appears to be available), it is remarkable and a testament to their hard work and ardor that the band came out swinging the way they did, firing on all cylinders and treating their NYC audience to another memorable performance.
Even though it is a pretty straightforward show and banter is sparse, the interplay is loose, joyful, with little mistakes dotted around aside from the first lines of Target getting flubbed. And while not heavy on all-out improvisation, the performance does include a number of drawn-out intros and bridges.
The set list flows really well and organically on this occasion, which is particularly striking since the set includes pretty much finished versions (with the exception of Recap Modotti which is clearly still a work in progress both lyrically and musically) of no less than 6 songs which would not see an official release until April of the following year as part of the End Hits album. And yet all of it blends in seamlessly and ingeniously here: Five Corporations (still dubbed Brand X at this point) into Place Position as part of a high-energy string of songs opening the set, Floating Boy into Long Division providing the audience a bit of a breather, Recap Modotti into No Surprise into Pink Frosty as a prelude to the main set finale by way of Target into Instrument.
The recording reveals some small cuts and slightly incomplete songs (Merchandise, Waiting Room) as well as some missing sequences in between encores. Still, clocking in at 1 hour and 44 minutes, it probably documents one of the longer Fugazi performances in the live history of the band. This includes several outstanding encores which had the band launching into a number of hard-hitting, early staples (Give Me The Cure! Suggestion!) to further baffle its unsuspecting audience. A third and last encore with Waiting Room into Bad Mouth closes out the night and tears the roof off, adding to the enjoyment and excitement of everyone participating - before exiting the stage, Ian accordingly addresses the crowd one last time, saying “that must have been the best damn time I’ve had in months, thank you.”
Note that footage of this Palladium show, as shown in Jem Cohen’s Instrument documentary [see picture tracklist: “‘Break’ (Demo), Portraits Of Ticket Line and Live Show: Palladium, NYC 1997”] actually is a mere “trick of the eye.” In the words of Ian: “the live snippet that appears in ‘instrument’ was shot on silent super 8 and the footage was roughly synched up with a demo version of “break". jem just lined up images that worked well with the soundtrack. this was also done with the b&w footage at the monument show that was set to ‘trios’ and the b&w footage from st augustines that was set to ‘guilford fall demo’. jem was spot shooting at the palladium, so there are probably a number of shots from that show, but not the entire performance.”
There appears to be no soundboard recording of this particular show, but there is an audience recording courtesy of John Fazio. While the sound quality is stretched thin, high on treble, suffers slight volume drops here or there and will not win over any audiophiles, it is still listenable and enjoyable. If anything, it adds to the liveliness of the listening experience and portrays a good sense and feel of the room and overall atmosphere. There are people singing and screaming along, there is small talk left and right, and it is fun to be able to eavesdrop on a couple of attendees contemplating and calling the encores as the events unfold.
The recording includes a total of 24 live songs and draws from End Hits (6), Red Medicine (5), In on the Kill Taker (3), Steady Diet of Nothing (2), Repeater (2), 3 Songs seven-inch (1), Margin Walker EP (1) and 7 Songs EP (4).
The set list:
1. Intro 2. Do You Like Me 3. Bed For The Scraping 4. Cassavetes 5. Interlude 1 6. Five Corporations 7. Place Position 8. Reclamation 9. Margin Walker 10. Song #1 11. Interlude 2 12. Floating Boy 13. Long Division 14. Blueprint 15. Merchandise 16. Interlude 3 17. Recap Modotti 18. No Surprise 19. Pink Frosty 20. Target 21. Instrument 22. Encore 1. 23. Give Me The Cure 24. Suggestion 25. Version 26. Encore 2 27. By You 28. Smallpox Champion 29. Encore 3 30. Waiting Room 31. Bad Mouth 32. Outro