Photo © by Brian P. Duss
Fugazi, 9:30 Club, Washington D.C. USA 4/25/2001 (FLS #0997)
One out of just two shows Fugazi played in Washington D.C. in April of 2001, this one a benefit for the Washington Free Clinic & Prevention Works at the 9:30 Club (their last performance at this legendary venue).
If you want to get a good feel of what Brendan is up to behind his kit, this recording will be right up your alley since the drums are dominant in the mix. Ian’s vocals and Guy’s guitar by contrast are more difficult to discern, at least up until Closed Captioned. Chalking up the overall sound quality as “excellent” is stretching it in my opinion, particularly since there is some distortion in the left channel as well after Reclamation (see below) until around Cashout.
The recording of the performance itself is complete (contrary to the introductory remarks by Mark Andersen of Positive Force and the other speakers) and documents 24 songs.
The band draws from The Argument album (not yet released at the time) (8), the Furniture EP (not yet released) (2), End Hits (4), Red Medicine (2), In on the Kill Taker (3), Steady Diet of Nothing (2), Repeater (2) and the Margin Walker EP (1).
You get 3 new and (at the time) unreleased songs to open up the set, which is actually very heavy on (at the time) unreleased material overall, while you get only a couple of songs off of their earlier albums and even nothing off of the 7 Songs debut EP. The set list further does include rare 2001 performances of Exit Only and Full Disclosure.
My personal highlights of this show are the elusive Strangelight, the dub-injected jam on Promises to close out the night, as well as a slow burn, crushing version of Reclamation.
Courtesy of Joseph Vesely, who attended the show,
“one thing from the 9:30 club that i remember though is that i think they played the best version of ‘Reclamation’ that i have ever seen. it was really out of hand!! by the end of the song, both mic stands had been knocked over, and guy and ian were on their knees, with ian just sweating like mad.”
Note that Joe and Brendan dabble in “Lusty Scripps” during one of the interludes, and that Ian touches on the issue of health care and the reasons for this benefit concert before going into Arpeggiator.
Grainy, shaky footage of a handful of songs from this show (including Reclamation) is available, courtesy of Marcus Costa.
The set list:
1. Opening Remarks 2. Ex-Spectator 3. Number 5 4. Nightshop 5. Break 6. Smallpox Champion 7. Bed For The Scraping 8. Oh 9. Closed Captioned 10. Walken's Syndrome 11. Furniture 12. Interlude 1 13. The Kill 14. Strangelight 15. Interlude 2 16. Argument 17. FD 18. Back To Base 19. Public Witness Program 20. Reclamation 21. Blueprint 22. Interlude 3 23. Merchandise 24. Full Disclosure 25. Encore 1 26. Arpeggiator 27. Cashout 28. Exit Only 29. Promises