Fugazi - August 7, 1993 Washington, D.C. (2xCD, 2004)

A few years back, Fugazi released a whole bunch of live shows under the Fugazi Live Series umbrella, and to this day, this is the only one I own. I keep meaning to order more, but then I forget. Chumps have 'em pirated all over the web, but I will not stoop to that level. I rarely do the illegal download thing anyway, but when you're stealing music from Fugazi, it's time to reassess your life, and I'm not ready to do that. So, until I hunker down and make it my mission to own the entire series, this remains my lone entry in the bunch.

Why do I have this one? Because I was at the show. I recounted most of the story in this entry, so I won't rehash it too much. But if you recall, I consider this one of the major moments of my teenage years, and the fact that it was released as Volume 8 in this series made me giddy with anticipation. My brother and I were so blown away by this show that we recanted our favorite moments for years, almost to the point where we weren't sure if we were remembering everything quite right. So, I was looking forward to hearing if the show was indeed as good as we remembered it, and also to having a definite track list.

I'm not going to song-by-song this one, because I've already covered all these songs in their album form. You can view the tracklist here; it should give you a brief overview of how long they played (a solid hour and a half), and what they played (if you care). Like I mentioned previously, In On the Kill Taker had just been released, so they were clearly ready to work those into the set. Eleven of the twenty songs were from that album, encompassing the entire record minus "Last Chance for a Slow Dance." Not bad. Of the remaining nine, they played two from Steady Diet of Nothing, three from Repeater, two from Margin Walker, and two from 7 Songs. You really couldn't have asked for a better representation of their work.

It made for an incredible show, and though the recording on these discs is pretty rough, it all comes across really well. Turns out the things we remembered really did happen: Guy knocked his mic over during "Turnover," and Ian had to pick up his "I'm only sleeping" line, which we thought was about the coolest thing ever, and Ian stuck a little jab into one of DC's finest when he introduced "Great Cop." There wasn't a lot of banter during the show, but the small talk between some of the songs certainly brought back some memories.

There was footage of the show included in the Instrument film, but it was grainy black and white, and didn't include the original audio. I was excited to see it, but also a little let down that there wasn't more. A few years ago I came across a YouTube video that was from the show. It was shaky handi-cam footage, but whoever filmed it seemed to be in the same general area that we were. I don't usually bug people I don't know, but I couldn't help myself. I hit up the guy who had posted the video, asking him if it was his. He said it was, and after he told me he had filmed almost the entire show, I asked him if I could buy a copy. Fifteen bucks later, and I had a bootleg DVD.

Put these together with the photos I took at the show, and I've almost become the unofficial historian for the damn event. Well, not really, but it's nice to have some documentation. The video confirmed what my pictures already had: by the end of this show, there were at least a hundred people onstage with the band, all being cool. I was, and still am, incredibly impressed by that.

"Waiting Room" from the show–the audio's a little out of sync.