FUGAZI FIGHT THE POWER AT THE WHITE HOUSE, 1991
“PEOPLE WERE FIRED UP.”
Singer and guitarist Guy Picciotto looks back on people power, killer technology and media manipulation.
“Of all the protest shows we played in DC, that one had the most – there was just a rawness to it, because it felt like such a significant turning point. On the day of the show, it was muddy. A little bit of snow, a little bit of rain, it was really, really cold. Physically, playing the show, it was like, ‘Damn, this is seriously cold!’ It was kind of an intense show. There really was a feeling of outrage and anger, and dread. Everyone there who had participated in the protests leading up to the show, and the protests afterward, everyone was really engaged… people were really fired up. Then you had the added element of we’re out here in these extreme conditions. The show could have easily gone off the rails. If the kids had surged, the whole stage would have completely fallen apart. People are jumping up, they’re dancing, they’re super into it, but everybody maintained it. There wasn’t any need to try to control it. It just had this enormous, celebratory radical vibe. I remember this feeling of the stage being so wet, and the whole thing pulsing and moving around. But I remember having a really great feeling from the crowd. When the war did start, and it was being covered in such an intense way on television, and SCUD [missiles] were going into Israel, and there was a sense there was a nuclear disaster about to happen, and then the way the war unfolded and all the atrocities that happened – it was really a grim time. It really affected us in the band. We were working at that point on songs for Steady Diet Of Nothing and the whole vibe leaked into that session, and into the way we were thinking about politics in the country. There are lines in Nice New Outfit that were very specifically based on things that were happening in the war. There was this media celebration of the technology that was being flaunted by the US military. The idea of precision bombing became this trope. With the sophistication of these targeting devices we can aim at a specific chimney and drop a missile directly down it. The media really played up this incredibly propagandistic and ultimately completely erroneous idea that there was something precise about the bombing campaign. The war was being dressed up by the media. We wanted to do [a record that sounded] very, very stark. That was the mood that we were in, and the songs were like that as well. It was an intense period of time. But we love the songs. In concert, we pulled from that record an enormous amount. The songs were great on-stage. Now you could never have that concert there. Lafayette Park is strictly off-limits for protest. The idea that you could get a permit to do a show directly in front of the White House, at the time it was normal, but now it’s an absolute impossibility.” As told to Chris Nelson
Fugazi’s January 12, 1991 concert is available at.dischord.com/fugazi_live_series.