Instrument Soundtrack --- Fugazi

The original press release for this said it was a soundtrack that all previously unreleased, not-even-in-the-documentary music, which is a half-truth. The record is mostly instrumental (though not in all cases) and embryonic End Hits demos, although it features two or three Red Medicine outtakes that were featured in the documentary and therefore previously released.

The best songs on here are the RM outtakes, one of which, "I'm So Tired" was a crime not to include on Red Medicine. It's a two-minute piano ballad (!) by Ian that is absolutely gorgeous, every second of it. I'm sure they have more songs like this, and I'd love to hear them. This song caught my ear first when I heard it in the documentary, and the version in that seemed longer. Droney guitars and bass cut in after the two minute mark, whereas this ends abruptly after two minutes. So maybe it was previously unreleased after all.

There's another Red Medicine outtake, called "Little Debbie", that could best be described as Rollins-era Black Flag covering Red Hot Chilli Peppers. I know the song would be marked 'unlistenable' if you went by that description, but it's a really inaccurate portrait of this remarkable sound, one that, like much of Fugazi's work from the past five years, you simply can't catergorize.

Besides those two songs, the best cuts on this record are the drastic reworkings of End Hits tracks, like the few-second intrumental intro to "Caustic Acrostic" reworked as "Slo Crostic", also the track that plays over the first few minutes of the documentary.

This is the first Fugazi record I know of to have song line-ups such as drums/keyboard/bass ("Afterthought"), melodica/guitars ("Trio's") and drums/clarinet/voice ("Me & Thumbelina"). There is also a pretty insert of pictures and stills to go along with each song.

Before I go, here's a better description of "Little Debbie" --- Roger Miller's crazy wonderful harmonics-heavy intro to Mission of Burma's "Dumbells" expanded into a whole song and, for both lack of a better word and a bizzare urge to put this into one of my record reviews, "funkified". And Ian's vocals just drive home what complete and utter infants those talentless, "angry" corporate shill hacks in Korn and Limp Bizkit (you have no idea how much it pains me to write "biscuit" in such a manner) are. Like you needed more proof anyway. (Dischord Records, 3819 Beecher St, NW Washington DC 20007)

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Michael Keegan
8.5.1999