Much of the band’s chatter was also wryly funny, as evidenced by a fan-made collage called “Having Fun Onstage With Fugazi” that has recently made Internet rounds.
“There’s high entertainment value in these exchanges,” drummer Brendan Canty said. “That’s the very present, be-here-now aspect of these recordings.”
Sound engineer Joey Picuri, who recorded Fugazi’s first show in 1987 and most gigs thereafter, recalled a Rhode Island set in which MacKaye deftly defused tensions between enthused fans and local police.
“It’s not controlling the crowd — it’s having an intelligent conversation with them,” Picuri said. “It shows you that crowds don’t always have to succumb to the lowest common denominator.”
This ongoing conversation between Fugazi and its audience — as MacKaye put it, “We’re making a show with you, not for you” — makes the interactive aspect of the site apt. But the best reason to offer this many shows is that no two were alike. The quartet never followed a predetermined set list and often improvised during songs. Search the site for versions of one tune and the differences can be striking.
“They were constantly trying to keep it interesting,” Picuri said. “It’s like they’d want to see if they could lose their balance on the edge of a cliff and then pull themselves back in.”
Joe Gross, a veteran rock critic, saw the band play many times in Washington and elsewhere. “At times they reminded me more of song-based jazz than rock,” Gross said. “When they got a good head of steam going, you really thought, ‘Man, this is the best live rock band of their generation.’ ”
It might seem odd that a group so tuned to the moment would put so much effort into preserving its past. But Picciotto said that offering everything unedited does justice to all the moments.
“It helps delineate the line between creating a nostalgic document and a historic document,” he said. “That concept of the moment was how we approached shows, and I don’t think documentation can erase that fact.”
The members of Fugazi, which also includes bassist Joe Lally, still see themselves as in the moment, despite not currently performing or recording. MacKaye, who now plays in the Evens, said Fugazi’s “indefinite hiatus” status is no dodge.
“We are still an entity to ourselves,” he said. “We are still discussing things. I think what this [site] really reminds me to do is to write a song — to get back to work.”
Whether or not Fugazi ever plays again, the Live Series site could become a living entity of its own.
“Hopefully it will create some sort of overarching context that will make all the chaos make sense,” Canty said. “But I don’t know if it needs to make sense. Maybe it will ultimately show that the chaos is the story.”
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