If, in 1988, someone told you that the guy who invented emocore had started a band with the guy who invented straight edge, you could probably be forgiven for imagining that might be kind of cringey, but that band, Fugazi, were not just good, not even merely great, but transformatively, epochally amazing. Their anti-corporate ethos and their famous insistence on $5 covers for live shows often tended to overshadow their music, and that’s saying a lot, because post-hardcore masterpieces like In on the Kill Taker, Red Medicine, and their swan song so far The Argument are fucking hard albums to overshadow. Over the course of the ‘90s, they matured from a way-better-than-average hardcore band into a thoughtful, innovative, and insightful independent rock standard-bearer.

And I doubt it would be controversial to point out that they may well have ended up just another okay hardcore band if not for the brilliance of their rhythm section.

Brendan Canty’s drumming was effortlessly propulsive, but always bottomlessly inventive—even in his earliest days in Rites of Spring, he saw farther than most, resisting the simplistic polka beats that punctuate many of hardcore’s least inspired moments. Bassist Joe Lally favored wonderfully molten, dubby grooves that, intentionally or not, served as a conspicuous antithesis to standard-issue hardcore bass playing, and even if all he’d ever done was “Waiting Room,” he’d still be an underground immortal. A rhythm section like that is a foundation for growth, and accordingly, Fugazi’s first two EPs draw one of the clearest lines in the sand between hardcore’s past and post-hardcore’s future, just as Wire’s Pink Flag served as the bellwether for post-punk.

So imagine if you could just call up that storied rhythm section and get them to play on your album?

D.C. area guitarist and totally lucky bastard Anthony Pirog was able to do exactly that, and the resulting trio is called The Messthetics. Pirog is a versatile player, as comfortable in a free jazz improv milieu as he is playing roots rock or noise. His C.V. is pretty staggering, to the point that it’s frankly kind of amazing he isn’t better-known. His compositions on The Messthetics forthcoming self-titled debut LP are a kinetic tempest of noise, jazz, prog, dub and punk influences. The album is out later this month, and you can hear a couple of pre-release tracks below, including “Quantum Path,” which is making its debut here on DM today. But first, we talked to Joe Lally about how the new band came together, and his impressions of their new music.
 

 
Dangerous Minds: How long has Messthetics been a thing? The last band I recall you doing other than Fugazi was The Black Sea, and that was a WHILE ago.

Joe Lally: That was a really long time ago, yeah. I never even played out with them, and I think they changed their name when the record came out. I’d just had my daughter, and Fugazi wasn’t doing much, and Shelby [Cinca, gtr/vox: Frodus, The Black Sea, Decahedron] was just coming over and playing, and my daughter, who was just a baby then, would watch us play. It was just a project. Then I put out three solo records sometime after that, starting in 2006, I want to say? I guess the last one was 2011.

So I was living in Italy from 2007 ’til 2015, when we came back here. That’s kind of where this story begins, I moved back here, and I hadn’t really been playing for a while. My solo stuff wasn’t really entering a phase that I’d wanted it to, I’d had some instrumental stuff I’d worked on in Italy, but I didn’t really want to put lyrics to it, and I wasn’t that focused on it. It really didn’t matter. I moved back here, and I had songs to play, so that was a reason to get together with Brendan and play. He had done a show with Anthony, so when he was going to get together with me, he told me he had a guitar player who could get together with us, so I said “great!”  Once we got together and played, I was like why would we play MY songs when this guy can play that way? My songs were supposed to be quieter, and it was turning into such a totally different thing—which was nice, I was ready to do something new and do something as a group, but none of that was really on the table at the time. It didn’t really go beyond that practice.

Later, Anthony contacted us and said he wanted to make a record and he was looking for a rhythm section. Brendan and I were TOTALLY in, and I think it was the fall of 2016. The first show we played was May of 2017. But those guys both have projects—Brendan’s always leaving town to go play live film-scoring—but we managed to do a show in May, and Ian [MacKaye, vox: Minor Threat, Pailhead, Fugazi; founder/honcho: Dischord Records] was at the show, and he said our stuff would be great for a Dischord release. So then, whatever Anthony had in mind about who would releasing it, once he knew that Ian was happy with it the way it was, he knew he could keep doing what he wanted. We were recording the music where we practice, over the summer, we got it finished by September/October.

DM: So on the new album it’s Anthony’s compositions, none of the stuff you were working on? 

JL: No, it wouldn’t be, because the idea was Anthony was making an album. It wasn’t meant to be a band at first, as far as I knew it was going to be an Anthony Pirog solo record that we played on. We gave him the time, we were very relaxed about him taking the time he needed to write, so he appreciated that, and I think he took a longer time than he might have if he’d used a rhythm section he had to pay. So were were just happy to be playing with him, and we let the songs take shape, and over that time, we started to really become a band, and Anthony started to look at it as a band. I’d had music—we played a show in August, and it was going to be a longer set than we were used to at the time, so I kind of threw in some of my instrumental ideas at that show, but even at that time, we were already set on what the album was going to be. So anything we did like that is going towards the second record.

DM: How have older fans responded? With two members from Fugazi, I’m sure there must be sky-high expectations. 

JL: I guess so. I kind of throw all that aside when I do my own music. I am from that band, so people are going to expect some stuff but I have to do my thing and not really pay too much attention to that. If people like it, great. If they don’t, well, it’s definitely not Fugazi so I can see why. Brendan and I are who we are and we play the way we play, and we definitely brought ourselves into what Anthony was writing, and we retain our musical personalities with this music. But it is obviously something different, and it’s been so long since 2002 when Fugazi last played, there are people who come to see us now who were children then!

More after the jump…

 
In December 2015, the Smithsonian Institution began an ambitious crowdsourced history of rock ’n’ roll photography, calling on music fans to contribute their amateur and pro photos, launching the web site rockandroll.si.edu as a one-stop for accepting and displaying shooters’ submissions. One of the project’s organizers, Bill Bentley, was quoted in Billboard:

We talked about how it could be completely far-reaching in terms of those allowed to contribute, and hopefully help expose all kinds of musicians and periods. There really are no boundaries in the possibilities. I’d like to help spread all styles of music to those who visit the site, and show just how all-encompassing the history of what all these incredible artists have created over the years. What better way than for people to share their visual experiences, no matter on what level, to the world at large.

The project, sadly, is now closed to new submissions, but it’s reached a milestone in the publication of Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen, authored by Bentley. The book is a pretty great cull of the best the collection had to offer, full of photos rarely or never seen by the public, chronologically arranged, and dating back to the dawn of the rock era. Some of them are real jaw-droppers, like the concert shot of Richie Valens taken hours before his death, Otis Redding drenched in sweat at the Whiskey a Go Go, Sly Stone looking like a goddamn superhero at the Aragon Ballroom in 1974. From Bentley’s introduction:

Although the sheer breadth of the offerings was overwhelming, that fact only underlined the importance of an organizational strategy. The publisher sorted through the submissions, categorizing them by performer and date to create a complete historical timeline of rock and roll. Approximately three hundred photographs are included in the following narrative, many of them by amateurs whose enthusiasm and passion for their subjects are here presented to the public for the first time. The balance of the photos were taken by professional “lens whisperers,” whose shots were selected to flesh out this overview of rock and roll. The results, spanning six decades, aim for neither encyclopedic authority nor comprehensive finality, but rather an index of supreme influence.

Smithsonian Rock and Roll: Live and Unseen isn’t due until late in October, but the Smithsonian have been very kind in allowing Dangerous Minds to share some of these images with you today. Clicking an image will spawn an enlargement.
 

Blondie at CBGB, New York City, 1976. Photo Roberta Bayley /Smithsonian Books
 

The Clash at the Orpheum Theatre, Boston, September 19, 1979. Photo Catherine Vanaria /Smithsonian Books
 

Frank Zappa at Maple Pavilion, Stanford University, CA, November 19, 1977. Photo Gary Kieth Morgan /Smithsonian Books
 
Many more after the jump…

Photo of Object Collective by Henrik Beck
 
Object Collection, an experimental performance outfit from Brooklyn, has recorded an “opera-in-suspension” based on the Fugazi Live Series. Like a more pretentious “Having Fun on Stage with Fugazi,” all of the opera’s musical and verbal material comes from between-song ephemera:

Grounded upon the Live Archive series of the Washington DC outfit, composer Travis Just and writer/director Kara Feely’s work uses only the incidental music, text and sounds, none of Fugazi’s actual songs. An obsessive leap into 1500 hours of gig detritus spanning shows from 1987 to 2002, and encompassing random feedback, aimless drum noodling, pre-show activist speeches, audience hecklers, and the police breaking up gigs. All of this material is the foundation of an ear-body-and-mind-flossing 100 minutes for 4 voices/performers, 4 electric guitars/basses and 2 percussionists.

The press release describes It’s All True as “a radical incitement to action,” which sounds like a euphemism for massive audience walkouts during the first five minutes. But the members of Fugazi have given the production their blessing. Guy Picciotto says:

All of us were both blown away and disoriented by the work – it was well beyond anything we had anticipated when agreeing to Travis’ early request. We feel moved by Object Collection’s engagement with our archive material and salute everyone involved for their hard work and patience and for wrestling with such integrity with our sounds and words.

Continues after the jump…

 
The Fall 1989 issue of Flipside had features on Pixies and an obscure bunch of weirdos from Seattle called Nirvana, but it was another new combo called Fugazi that scored the cover, with just two EPs on Dischord and a release on the Sub Pop Singles Club to its name. Of course Fugazi started out with an impeccable pedigree: Ian MacKaye, the closest thing to the founder of the straight-edge movement you could name, combining forces with Guy Picciotto and Joe Canty from Rites of Spring.

Fugazi’s feature from that issue of Flipside featured five handwritten recipes from Ian, Guy, Brendan, and Joe, for oatmeal, pasta sauce, “dinner beans,” “spicy Pop Tarts,” and, for the closer, tea. If you think about it, recipes are very DIY, which maybe explains why the members of Fugazi so readily excelled at the art of recipe construction. 
 

 
The recipes are real recipes, but there’s a good deal of humor in there as well. Ian’s recipe for tea is an extended riff on being so busy that he keeps forgetting to turn off the boiling water, and when the tea is finally ready, forgetting to drink it. In his oatmeal recipe he strikes a similar note when he forgets to return to the pot once the water is boiling. The guys seldom use a proper measurement—this is fuel, not cuisine, and also not an exact science. (Brendan’s recipe for spicy Pop Tarts is just pure fun, though.)
 

 

 
Guy’s recipe makes a reference to vegetarianism, and in case you’re wondering, yeah, the whole band is vegetarian, a tough trick to pull off when you are touring the United States of America as relentlessly as Fugazi did. In a way it must have reinforced the band’s DIY instincts—if you can’t rely on Arby’s to make you a veggie burger—and you can’t—then you “fill up a cooler with decent food from grocery stores and simply picnic in their van,” as Michael Azerrad put it in Our Band Could Be Your Life.

MacKaye is somewhat famously vegan, although less vocal about it than, say, Morrissey. In 2010 MacKaye said, “Our society is centered around meat consumption, and our society fucking sucks.”

More after the jump…

 
If you’ve read “Understanding Trump” by the cognitive scientist George Lakoff, you might recognize aspects of “strict father morality” in Fugazi’s code. It was funny, escaping the hierarchies of home and school to attend a Fugazi show as a teenager: You didn’t know which songs they were going to play, but you could be sure they would deliver a stern talking-to about your behavior before the night was over. That was a new development in rock and roll; I doubt Gene Vincent’s audience would have stood still for such a lecture, even if Gene had been the guy to give it.

Don’t get me wrong, they were great. But the values we associate with Fugazi—discipline, hard work, sobriety, authority, frugality, self-reliance—are traditionally paternal.
 

 
That’s why it’s such fun to imagine Ween, the crowned and conquering child of 90s rock, opening for them at Trenton, New Jersey’s City Gardens on March 19, 1991. Then a crazed, wasted suburban duo backed by a tape deck, Ween was still pretty loose back then, and at least as irresponsible as the Butthole Surfers: On that year’s The Pod, they encouraged their fans to believe Scotchgard™ was an excellent high. It’s almost impossible to imagine them lecturing a crowd about stage-diving. All they demanded of their fans was to keep bringing them home-cooked food.

Apparently, the show is briefly discussed in the City Gardens oral history No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes. I had clean forgotten about it until last weekend, when, strangely enough, my copy of Flipside #84, in which I first read about this legendary bill, turned up during a long and fruitless search for my Pure Guava T-shirt. In Flipside reporter Ted Cogswell’s hard-hitting interview with Ween, conducted in January ‘93, Gener and Deaner cleared up some important points: if Pure Guava were a drug, it would be “love boat”; no, they had never really huffed Scotchgard™ (“Sorry kids”); and yes, they really had opened for Fugazi. All typos have been preserved out of respect for the indomitable fanzine spirit:

Ted: Wasn’t there an infamous show at City Gardens (in Trenton, NJ) once when you opened for Fugazi?
Gene: They hated us.
Ted: I heard that you guys just started, like, playing one note over and over again, and were staring into space,...
Dean: No, those are just rumors. We played that Ozzy Osbourne-Lita Ford duet, “When I Close My Eyes Forever”, They hated that. Then we did “Where Do The Children Play” by Cat Stevens.
Gene: And they hated that. It’s not a problem now anymore though, because people are starting to like our shows, so we can’t do “Where Do the Children Play”. We save that for, like, when we’re about ready to get shot.

 
More after the jump…

 
There’s a label based out of Sao Paolo called (with great self-awareness) The Blog That Celebrates Itself Records, which is (of course) an offshoot of The Blog That Celebrates Itself. This name of the operation derives from a sardonic comment made by Melody Maker’s Steve Sutherland in 1990 to describe the incestuous group of bands that was playing the Thames Valley around that time, including Chapterhouse, Lush, Moose, and Stereolab. The phrase “The Scene That Celebrates Itself” has since been taken to refer to the self-admiring shoegaze movement tout court. 

TBTCI has a knack for releasing compilations—they’ve recently released tribute comps honoring Sonic Youth, Ride, the Boo Radleys, the Pale Saints, Echo and the Bunnymen, and the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy, among many others.

But now the label has released something truly special, a tribute album about a band that isn’t exactly in that early 1990s U.K. wheelhouse and isn’t known for tons of pedal effects on their guitar—the groundbreaking D.C. band Fugazi. Now, Fugazi’s aesthetic and that of, say, My Bloody Valentine are pretty different, but it turns out that there’s a higher quotient of swarming guitars in Fugazi than you probably remember, and that helps make the combination all the more delicious.

The obvious name for such a thing: “Shoegazi,” of course.
 

 
The compilation is called Steady Gaze of Nothing, a reference to Fugazi’s second full-length Steady Diet of Nothing. The compilation ranges widely across Fugazi’s discography with a strong emphasis on the early stuff—you’re likely to hear your favorites represented here.
 

Track listing:
Soft Wounds - Waiting Room
Evvolves - Turnover
Sunshine and the Rain - Merchandise
The One2s - Bad Mouth
Diluvia - Life and Limb
Rei Clone - Smallpox Champion
Cumin - Shut The Door
Harps - Blueprint
Siwomat - Larga División (Long Division)
Coaches - Suggestion
Blacksalt - I´m So Tired
Savage Cut - Brendan #1
Petal Head - Arpeggiator

 
You can listen to the entire compilation below, but by all means go over to the compilation page on Bandcamp and send ‘em some cash for the mp3s.
 

 
via Vanyaland; thanks to Jeff Albers!

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Fugazi: Red Medicine for the White House, live in Washington, DC, 1991
Newly unearthed video: My Bloody Valentine destroy DC’s 9:30 Club, 1989

 
The Blue Ribbon Glee Club is a Windy City-based a capella group who’ve been performing covers of classic punk and indie rock since 2007. In 2009, they released their E.P., A Capella Über Alles, on Whistler Records, the house label of my absolute favorite cocktails-and-music bar in Chicago. It should be noted that both the group’s formation and the E.P.‘s release predate the debut of that one TV show. It was about, like, a choir or something? I forget what it was called.

For the record, The Blue Ribbon Glee Club has been around since March 2007. We’re predominantly a live performance group. For us, it’s not about whitewashing rock and roll, it’s about using our voices to embody the same power and dirt that ultimately drew us to the songs we cover. But sure, some of it sounds pretty.

Blue Ribbon Glee Club, “Dress,” orig PJ Harvey
 
More pure, untrammeled glee after the jump…

 
Gregg Foreman’s radio program The Pharmacy is a music / talk show playing heavy soul, raw funk, 60′s psych, girl groups, Krautrock. French yé-yé, Hammond organ rituals, post-punk transmissions and “ghost on the highway” testimonials and interviews with the most interesting artists and music makers of our times…

This week hardcore post-punk pioneer Guy Picciotto of musical revolutionaries Fugazi and Rites of Spring.

Fugazi, with their reasonably priced records and shows, demonstrated how bands could find their own way without the preconceived notion that you needed corporate label backing to have an impact (and a career!). The conversation explores the early days of DC punk, meeting the Cramps and legendary Atlantic Records mogul Ahmet Ertegun’s attempts to sign the band, the inspiration behind Rites of Spring and so much more…

 
Mr. Pharmacy is a musician and DJ who has played for the likes of Pink Mountaintops, The Delta 72, The Black Ryder, The Meek and more. Since 2012 Gregg Foreman has been the musical director of Cat Power’s band. He started dj’ing 60s Soul and Mod 45’s in 1995 and has spun around the world. Gregg currently lives in Los Angeles, CA and divides his time between playing live music, producing records and dj’ing various clubs and parties from LA to Australia.

Set List:

Intro
Merchandise - Fugazi
12 x U - Wire
Intro 1 -
Guy Picciotto Interview Part 1
Garbageman - The Cramps
Hey Bulldog - The Beatles
Song # 1 - Fugazi
Guy Picciotto Interview Part 2
For Want Of - Rites of Spring
Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys - The Equals
Intro 2 - Funky Kingston - Rx/Toots and the Maytals
Guy Picciotto Interview Part 3
Greed - Fugazi
To Hell with Poverty - Gang of Four
Police Truck - Dead Kennedys
American Ruse - MC5
Intro 3 - One, Two , Boogaloo - Rx/The Light Nites
Guy Picciotto Interview Part 4
In the City - The Jam
Spectra-Sonic Sound - Nation of Ulysses
I-94 - Radio Birdman
Intro 4 - Dedicated to Love - Rx/Vampyros Lesbos
Guy Picciotto Interview Part 5
(I Got a Catholic Block) - Sonic Youth
New Radio - Bikini Kill
Let’s Build a Car - Swell Maps
Intro 5 - Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag - Rx/JB’s
Guy Picciotto Interview Part 6
Ahemet Ertegun Tribute
Hold On I’m Comin’ - Sam and Dave
Memphis Train - Rufus Thomas
Intro 5 - Restless - Rx/The Cobras
Guy Picciotto Interview Part 7
Margin Walker - Fugazi
Intro 6 - Moanin’ - Rx/Art Blakey
Message via Lux Interior
Pay To Cum - Bad Brains
Outro
 

 
You can download the show in its entirety here.

This is the handbill for Fugazi’s first-ever show, at the Wilson Center, on 15th Street and Irving. “5 Dollars to Benefit Positive Force Compilation Records”—do you think they knew then how sick they’d get of hearing the phrase “five dollar show”?
 
The demos that the legendary DC punks Fugazi cut at Inner Ear Studio in January 1988 have led a fan-friendly, DIY existence as a tape distributed for free at shows, but with the exception of a single song, “In Defense of Humans,” which appeared on the State of the Union comp in 1989, they’ve never seen an official release. Inner Ear Studios got a bit of extra exposure last month when the D.C. episode of Sonic Highways came on HBO. Dave Grohl visited Don Zientara, owner of Inner Ear Studio, as well as Ian Mackaye of Fugazi and Dr. Know and Darryl Jenifer of Bad Brains.
 

 
That all changes on November 18, when Discord releases First Demo, but you can listen to them right this minute on Dischord’s Grooveshark account. (Actually, “Turn Off Your Guns” wasn’t included on the original cassette, but the rest of them all were.)
 

 
Dischord Records, the independent punk label of immeasurable historic importance founded by Minor Threat/Fugazi/Evens singer Ian Mackaye, made an intriguing announcement recently:

In January 1988, after only ten shows, Fugazi decided to go into Inner Ear Studio to see what their music sounded like on tape. They tracked 11 songs, ten of which were ultimately dubbed to cassette tape and distributed free at shows, with the band encouraging people to share the recording.

The only song from the session that has been formally released was “In Defense of Humans,” which appeared on the State of the Union compilation in 1989. Now, some 26 years later, Dischord is releasing the entire demo including the one song (“Turn Off Your Guns”) that wasn’t included on the original cassette. The record has been mastered by TJ Lipple and will be available on CD and LP+Mp3.

This release will also coincide with the completion of the initial round of uploads to the Fugazi Live Series website. Launched in 2011, the site now includes information and details on all of Fugazi’s 1000+ live performances and makes available close to 900 concert recordings that were documented by the band and the public.

 

 
The label’s coyness about the actual release date of the demos is a bit of a drag, but it may have something to do with the near impossibility of getting timely vinyl pressings done these days. Given that these are finally being widely issued, perhaps one can hope that someday we’ll get an official release of Steve Albini’s demos for the album In On the Kill Taker? They’ve been repeatedly taken down from various blogs, but if you can track them down, you may agree with me that they kicked a lot more ass than Albini or Fugazi ever gave them credit for.
 

 
Those Fugazi Live Series pages are worth a good, thorough combing-through if you’re a fan. They not only boast an exhaustive list of the band’s concert dates (what would you give to have been at “Jan 20, 1988, East Lansing, MI, USA, Matt Kelly’s Basement?”), but also offer recordings of many of them, some made by the band, some by fans. Where they exist, the recordings are offered for sale at the price of—all together now—five dollars per show, in a surely intentional echo of Fugazi’s eminently fan-friendly move of demanding that their concert admissions be capped at $5. One almost has to half-kiddingly wonder if Mackaye’s bed isn’t literally stuffed with five dollar bills.

Since the US is evidently going to be in Iraq for freakin’ ever, it seems fitting to punctuate this post with the show that serves as the subject of Fugazi Live Series FLS0308, the Gulf War protest in Lafayette Park, Washington DC, January 12, 1991. I was in DC for those protests, but to my lasting regret, I had no idea this show was happening right in front of the White House.
 

 
Fun photos of Henry Rollins (and Ian MacKaye) back when he worked at a Häagen-Dazs, circa 1981.

Apparently Henry was a model employee at his Washington D.C. area Häagen-Dazs franchise. He was promoted to assistant manager!

More images available like this in the book Punk Love by Susie J. Horgan.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:

Listen to Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye’s 2-hour DJ set on KCRW
 

 

 

 

Via BuzzFeed

Ian MacKaye at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC, 1983
 
Frontman for Minor Threat, The Teen Idles, Embrace, Fugazi and co-founder of Dischord Records, Ian MacKaye turns 50 years old today! So here’s a BIG happy birthday to you, Mr. MacKaye!

Below, Fugazi perform “Bad Mouth” live in 1991 at the Sacred Heart Church in Washington, DC.

 
Ian Svenonius of Nation of Ulysses, The Make-Up and Weird War interviews Ian MacKaye for Soft Focus:

 
After the jump, Fugazi documentary Instrument in its entirety…

 
John Belushi left Saturday Night Live in 1979 but agreed to appear on the show on Halloween of 1981 if one of his favorite bands, Fear, was hired as the musical guest. SNL, which was in a ratings slump, didn’t hesitate to agree to Belushi’s terms. Fear got the gig.

In order to create some excitement during Fear’s upcoming performance, Belushi contacted Ian Mackaye, who was fronting Washington D.C.‘s Minor Threat at the time.

“This is John Belushi. I’m a big fan of Fear’s. I made a deal with Saturday Night Live that I would make a cameo appearance on the show if they’d let Fear play. I got your number from Penelope Spheeris, who did Decline of Western Civilization and she said that you guys, Washington DC punk rock kids, know how to dance. I want to get you guys to come up to the show.”

Mackaye agreed to pull together some of his friends to go to New York. Little did he know that he would be in the center of one of television’s great rock and roll moments.

In an interview with Nardwuar, Mackaye describes what happened:

It was worked out that we could all arrive at the Rockefeller Center where Saturday Night Live was being filmed. The password to get in was “Ian MacKaye.” We went up the day before. The Misfits played with The Necros at the Ukrainian hall, I think, so all of the Detroit people were there, like Tesco Vee and Cory Rusk from the Necros and all the Touch and Go people and a bunch of DC people – 15 to 20 of us came up from DC. Henry (Rollins) was gone. He was living in LA at this point. So we went to the show. During the dress rehearsal, a camera got knocked over. We were dancing and they were very angry with us and said that they were going to not let us do it then Belushi really put his foot down and insisted on it. So, during the actual set itself, they let us come out again.

During the show – before they go to commercial, they always go to this jack-o-lantern. This carved pumpkin. If you watched it during the song, you’ll see one of our guys, this guy named Bill MacKenzie, coming out holding the pumpkin above his head because he’s just getting ready to smash it. And that’s when they cut it off. They kicked us out and locked us out for two hours. We were locked in a room because they were so angry with us about the behavior. I didn’t think it was that big of deal.

They said they were going to sue us and have us arrested for damages. There was so much hype about that. The New York Post reported half a million dollars worth of damages. It was nothing. It was a plastic clip that got broken. It was a very interesting experience and I realized how completely unnatural it is for a band to be on a television show – particularly a punk band – that kind of has a momentum to suddenly be expected to immediately jump into a song in that type of setting. It was very weird. Largely unpleasant. Made me realize that’s not something I’m interested in doing.”

Belushi was also among the moshers.

Fear’s SNL debut cost them future gigs with the show, clubs wouldn’t book them, and reputedly an offer from Belushi for the band to do the soundtrack of his next movie Neighbors was rescinded by the studio producing the film after Belushi’s death. All for the love of rock and roll.

“It’s great to be here in New Jersey!”