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First and foremost, Fugazi is a music group with no discernible antecedents. To understand Fugazi's sonics requires that one forego the reference-laden mindset which is so popular with rock 'n' roll bands today. Old genres are resuscitated rampantly as the new guard wraps itself in the tried
and true, knowing there's safety in history's cloak. Instead, Fugazi strikes
into the nether worlds of forms unfilled, chords unstruck, and questions
unbroached. As it's a new language, not taught yet in schools, it is difficult
to discuss, but easy to hear. It's ambitious music, performed in an exalted
and inspirational way, and recast at every concert. It's also invisible
music, unseen by the fascist scribes who construct history as accorded
by their stock sheet (See: any history of rock 'n' roll for the criminal
omissions of the truly underground artists). Luckily, other than their
own performances, but in fact inspired by them, Glen E. Friedman's photos
exist as testimony against a future perhaps as warped as our own time,
to bear witness against the official history of total passivity, to show
the glimmer of resistance. This resistance spills from the music, which
refuses a set form, into every aspect of the group, rejecting ultimately
the typecast role of the "rock 'n' roll" performer.
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