Fugazi Preparing to Release 800 Live Concert Recordings

Fugazi, the legendary Washington DC post-punk band, is about to release a lot of music.  No, the band isn’t going to start recording again.  However, what they are going to do is release eight-hundred concert recordings.  See, Fugazi was recording many of their shows throughout the years, but never did anything with those live recordings.  They actually sat in a closet collecting dust.  Now, however, the band is going to make each concert recording available online.  And, in typical Fugazi style, each full length concert album will cost you anywhere from $1 to $100.  They’re letting fans pay what they wish.

To quote from the New York Times article where I first read of this story…

“Fugazi, the single-mindedly independent post-punk band from Washington, was famous for how it operated in concert. From its first shows in 1987 until it went on indefinite hiatus 15 years later, the group kept ticket prices low — $5 or so — and, to the relief of some fans and the annoyance of others, often paused when things got too wild in the mosh pit.

Less known was that the band fastidiously recorded almost every concert. After letting audio tapes for more than 800 shows languish in a closet for years, Fugazi has begun putting them all on its Web site, with the first batch of 130 shows going up next Thursday.

In keeping with its commercial principles of low prices and trust in fans, the shows’ suggested price is $5 each, with a sliding scale of $1 to $100, for the cheap or the philanthropic.”

The band says that they began recording their shows at the urging of one of their sound men, Joey Picuri.  Fugazi co-front man Ian MacKaye says the band really didn’t have a purpose for the tapes when they began recording them.  “I’d say it was for posterity, but to what end, we had no idea,” he was quoted as saying in the same NY Times article.  Guy Picciotto, the other front man of Fugazi, went on to explain that because the band never played from a set-list, the tapes were meant to help capture and preserve the spontaneous music that the band was making.  Joey Picuri, the sound engineer who came up with this idea, explained his reasoning behind wanting to record every show.  “I was working with a band that could the price of a cassette for every show.”

As for Fugazi, the band went on a hiatus in 2002 and, for the most part, hasn’t really done anything since.  The eight-hundred concert tapes will be available for digital download on the band’s website, Dischord.com, with the first batch being available starting next week.  Dischord is the indie record lable that Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto founded to help them distribute their music, and the music of other Washington DC area indie and hardcore bands, without having to go through a corporate label.  To help people better sort through all of that material (800 concert recordings is a lot), fans will be able to rate each of the recordings and then people can sort based upon these rankings, with the crowd-sourced best rising to the top.  The recordings themselves are unedited and the quality varies from tape to tape.  “You get what you get,” explained Picciotto.

So what are your thoughts on the release of this mountain of Fugazi material?  Let us know in the comments.