FUGAZI
A FUGAZI SHOW IS THE CLOSEST THING I know to going to
punk rock church. It is the nearest thing to a religious experi-
ence that you will find in this world without Jesus. Fugazi is
the ultimate sacrifice of four artists to their fans. They have
given up any normal lifestyle for endless touring and the
pressure of pleasing some of the most critical stage-diving/
slam-dancing/punk Fugazi heads that flock to the band's low
cost concerts in large hordes. The positive, powerful, gen-
uinely charged outpouring of emotions straight from the
souls of Fugazi live is unmatched. And don't even think that
Fugazi will end up yet another major label casualty sell-out. It
will never happen. Why? Well, when things are perfect, why
change them? Or if a thing isn't broken, why fix it? Why con-
taminate a clean, free-flowing stream? lan opens up his inner
cranium to bleed his past struggles, current successes, and
future schemes in this rare interview.
-Jon Stain
Why is your latest record called Red Medicine?
Basically we were just trying to come up with a name and it
was the most fitting name. You know when you're a little kid, and
there's like that cherry cough syrup and it's really bad tasting but
it's supposed to be good, and your mom told you to take the red
medicine, it tastes bad but it's good for you. That's why we called
our album Red Medicine. It may taste bitter going down, but it's
definitely what will cure you.
Why does Fugazi embrace so many causes like rape crisis
centers, animal rights, and homeless issues?
As individuals we have things we feel strongly about, things we
feel deserve support or deserve our work, or that we feel we
should be working for, and since our tool is music, then we can
use that tool to communicate our concerns and
our message to whoever wants to listen.
What was skating like for you back in the
beginning of the punk/skate movement?
I think the name of my first board was a Shark
It was a plastic deck with urethane wheels. That
was our first board we were skating with. Me
and my friends, what we did was a thing called
dog-fighting. This is where two people go to the
top of the hill and you ride down the hill and you
just try to knock the shit out of each other and
your buddies off their boards. That's all we did.
We did that for probably half a year before we
realized there was a skateboard magazine and
all these kids were doing stuff elsewhere, and
then we got our first set of Road Riders and that
kind of thing. But for us in the beginning, it was
all about dog-fighting. We also did catamaran-
ing, where you take two boards and two people.
you sit on a board sideways and the other per-
son sits on a board sideways facing you. You link
your legs, put your feet on their board, hold on
to each other's arms, and you go downhill, and
by leaning back and forth, you can steer. That
was just pure fun, skating for full-on enjoyment.
Why do you attribute such a large skater fol-
lowing to a Fugazi show?
I don't think you can identify skaters by the
way they dress, but there are kids that by the
way they dress they make me think of skaters. I
assume that there are skater kids who listen to
Fugazi. You know, I skated to Ted Nugent, I skat-
ed to Van Halen. And just the other day I was
thinking. I was skating when we had our team
which was "Team Sahara." It was a team with
86 TAR
me, Henry Rollins, Mark Sullivan, John Haragon
and all these people from the early DC years.
This was a time where they had contests, there
was like freestyle, downhill, speed skating, and
slalom. This was before ramp contests. People
used to do freestyle routines, you'd take a song
and try to work it with a routine like basically sort
of interlocking all of your various tricks, so it's
synchronized with some sort of music. And so I
worked really hard trying to put together this
routine to "Walkin' the Dog" by Aerosmith.
What is the worst fear that lurks deep in the
mind of lan McKaye?
The only thing I would consider a worst fear
would obviously be death, but death is some-
thing that's completely out of comprehension.
I'm not really afraid of anything. What would I be
afraid of? I'm not fearless, but I don't have any
acutely recognized fears, and if I did, I certainly
wouldn't discuss them in Thrasher Magazine.
Who are your musical influences that people
might be surprised to find out about?
Ted Nugent in the '70s was the person who
rocked with abandon. I don't know if that was
actually the case or if it was just my little 15 year-
old head trying to sort things out. Nonetheless, I
still think Double Live Gonzo is a totally great
record. Hendrix has always been my favorite and
he continues to rock far deeper than any other
musician I know of.
What about the lost generation?
I don't believe that there is a lost generation of
kids. Life is full of tragedy, man, get used to it.
It sucks, but deal with it. Who dreams up this
bullshit anyway, our lives are full of enough prob-
lems not to have some sociologist trying to put
us in yet another category, that's bullshit.
What is your advice to young skaters?
Nothing bores me more than people moaning
and complaining. "Oh, I can't do this, I can't do
that," because of some kind of bullshit reason or
excuse. Just quit your cryin' and shut your fuck-
ing mouth. Make a difference, do something.
MEATMEN
THE END OF THE WORLD in anti-social hate
rock is here and its Hades meets Las Vegas live
show must be seen in order to be appreciated.
The Meatmen blow most of today's pussy-shit
wannabe punk rock completely away. Tesco Vee,
punk rock's "Dutch Hercules," still does it better
than any frontman alive, and all you have to do
is shell out the six bucks to see the Meatmen in
action. Through fifteen years of changes, the
Meatmen have reared their ugly head in many
incarnations. Some critics have labeled them
heavy metal, others have labeled them socio-
pathic punk. What they do best is dig up soci-
ety's dirt and throw it in your face, and make
everybody think about what they believe in. No
race, creed, religion, or cross-section of society
is immune from their onslaught. The Meatment
are an Equal Opportunity Offender. -Jon Stain
What do you think about Henry Rollins?
I watched Henry grow up and I watched him
blow up and his ego turned into this gigantic Hin.
denberg size hot air balloon. All I can say is an ego
is a powerful force, and I don't begrudge anyone's
success unless I respect that person. I don't like
Henry, and I don't respect him either. I was friends
with him, but his ego consumed him. That's what
happens with someone of marginal intellect. I call
him Rod McKuen of the punk generation. Rod
McKuen is a sixties guy who had a gravely voice,
and told really bad poetry over music, and no
one who reads Thrasher will know who I am talk
ing about, but it does prove that history repeats
itself good and bad. Henry doesn't realize what a
windbag he has become. There's
only one thing that'll make him
realize it and that is death.
Were you really once a school teacher?
I taught school in a little town called Williamston, MI. I
taught third grade for one year and the fifth grade for two
years. I even was a substitute teacher, which totally sucked
because the kids, even if you were Sergeant Carter, and I
was-I was 6'6"-I never had a problem with discipline, but
even for $40-$50 bucks a day that was one long fucking day
with a bunch of monsters. Don't get me wrong, I loved to
teach, but I can't be Tesco Vee and a school teacher too,
the dichotomy is too intense. I'd be run out of town on a rail
or burnt at the stake. Our new album, Pope on a Rope,
wouldn't go over too well in a religious community.
What's a good Meatmen show?
A good show is all about vibe in the room, it's weird to
say but there's this fuckin' big hate in the room. Hate to me
doesn't have to be a negative emotion, to me it's just an
outlet for my rage and it's a healthy outlet. I'm in a room full
of people 18-25 and that generation's got a lot to hate too.
They're reaching out to me in new ways because I'm singing
about something they can relate to-alienation. People say
punk is this poppy shit that's goin' around but if you really
want to get down to it, it means alienation and it means
excess and telling society to shove it up their ass! But unfor
tunately, there are not enough people out there doing dan-
gerous music anymore, and to me there has to be that ele-
ment of danger, like something is going to happen at this
show, and it just isn't there anymore, something's missing.
Is it true that you once had your own show on MTV?
We had a Tesco Vee show on MTV for two episodes, it
was called Way USA, and it only aired once like at 2:00 in
the morning. The producer was a big fan of The War Of The
Superbikes album and he called me up to be the host of the
show. It was fun as shit, we did one from Baltimore and one
from Niagara Falls. We tried to put a budget in for twenty-
six episodes and they just said, "No, we're not interested."
They're a bunch of conservative dicks.
Explain force-fed media and society's trendy trends.
I don't consider myself an expert on trends because
everybody nowadays keeps blowing by me on their way
to super-stardom and I'm just still doing what I'm doing. I
don't profess to be an expert on what is the next big thing
or why kids follow the bands that they follow. It's all media-
fed, media-driven. We are not a media band, we don't cater
to that and conversely we don't have that mass acceptance,
nor will we ever. Since we have been around so long, we
have kind of a retro stigma, like maybe it's just another
comeback of a dying punk band and that's why we have a
better agency now. But we're goin' out with Gwar, and the
guys in Bad Religion saw us in New York and they loved it.
The singer from Sick Of It All was at that same show and he
came backstage and dug it and that's why we do it!
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