Rambling about the Classics: Fugazi – Margin Walker EP (1989)

What amazes me about Fugazi is not their much-lauded, often misconstrued “indie” ideals, but how far they’ve managed to go with them. Never mind the six full-length studio albums, the critically acclaimed documentary, or the heavy college radio play, take the fact that they’ve gone all over the world with their noise punk act without any major label backing. Keep in mind that in the early 80s, it was a big deal if the mighty Black Flag made it past the west coast for a week. Less than ten years later, the similarly radical Fugazi would begin a musical journey that took them to different countries numbering in the double digits. Not only did the band cover much geographic ground with their double guitar assault, so too did they cover an impressively wide musical spectrum, taking their monolithic, sometimes wholly oppressive fuzz-punk-meets-dub sound to darker depths with each succeeding record. Some praised the group for its daring originality and its raison d’etre of ignoring whatever the musical status quo was at the time, drawing a line in the sand between “music” and “the music industry.” Others dismissed Fugazi as a pet lamb of indie elitists, a group compromised of prog-punk bores that did a disservice in taking the punk genre away from its bread and butter of sub-three minute screeds, that took a good thing and made it too dull or too difficult, all the while being a bunch of preachy blowhards. You get all sorts of stories with Fugazi; whether they’re about the band fighting for all ages shows, rocking out for a good social cause, being active in their local community of Washington D.C., and supporting tiny musical acts when no one else would or whether they’re stories about Ian being uptight, hostile, and even intolerant, about kicking fans out for slam dancing or having a beer, about being downright rude to fans, and other cracks that show the group’s ugly humanity.

Still, there’s little denying that Fugazi is a bright beacon to aspiring artists everywhere, especially those in the punk community. Maybe the group has a way of rubbing people the wrong way, as either pretentious or grand standing or what have you, but the proof is ultimately in the meat, that being the music itself. The 1989 Margin Walker EP was a landmark for the group in establishing their popular, a springboard for later recorded triumphs, for later tours, and for later issues. Their 1988 self-titled debut established the band’s sound firmly, but in the wake of two failed groups in recent years (Guy Picciotto’s The Rites of Spring and Ian MacKaye’s Embrace), a proper follow-up was needed to establish Fugazi as a superior enterprise. 1990’s Repeater may have been the culmination of the group’s original, more straightforward aesthetic, before they got into extreme loudness and herky-jerky experimentation, but Margin Walker was an important brick in the road.

Though the debut and Margin Walker are pretty identical production-wise and had thus both been combined into the essential 13 Songs compilation, the two EPs actually manage to stand on their own as distinctive documents of the band. The former dealt in slower tempos, more emphasis on the dub, more attune to what would later become known as alternative rock. Many who I’ve exposed to “Waiting Room” and other songs off the first EP have mistaken Fugazi for a Rage Against the Machine-type band.

Margin Walker points a bit more toward the recent past, showing the band’s ties to their punk roots. The title track and “Lockdown” buzz and pulsate with the urgency of early 80s hardcore, played in these instances with a more elaborate lyrical vision and greater chops, not to mention a respectable production that doesn’t invoke the bargain basement. “And the Same” and “Provisional” deal in the same fuzzy sheets of guitar noise that were synonymous with Minnesota rivals Husker Du. Rounding things up, “Burning Too” is a dub based anthem that could’ve been on the debut and “Promises” is dark, richly melodic, and strikingly emotional, Fugazi’s contribution to the great wall of punk ballads that could be mistaken for Cure songs (see The Replacements’ “Will Power” and Dinosaur Jr.’s “Forget the Swan” for other examples from 80s post-punk).

So here we have a fairly diverse EP, as strong as any given album. Dig a bit deeper and there’s more to be offered here than variety. Margin Walker contains some of Fugazi’s most accessible lyrical ideas, by the virtue of the group not being in their impenetrably oblique phase yet. The title track could’ve gone this route, but instead is just refreshingly ambiguous, as a good song often is. I have little clue as to what a margin walker actually is, but the lines “you make yourself so beautiful/you make yourself oh so beautiful/I’m gonna set myself on fire” at first lull you into thinking of it as a Quasimoto anthem of sorts, the ugly punker cowering in jealousy of the rich and the beautiful. Then a darker turn is taken in the second verse: “I’m gonna set myself up in a window/this margin walker wants a clear view/this margin walker wants a clear shot/and now I’m shooting it right on you.” Jealousy has erupted into premeditated violence. In a sense, this is the quintessential assassin song; the killer with the ugly soul must eliminate the ones who make themselves oh-so-beautiful (i.e. popular politicians, media figures), the eternal embittered John Wilkes Boothes that have to go around killing the Lincolns. Images of Robert De Niro’s character from Taxi Driver come streaming in.

The other two Picciotto-sung songs are more firmly set in the political arena. “Provisional” was written from his experiences visiting a Nazi death camp, most nakedly revealed in the lyric “the last one comes just in time to clear out the chambers and sew up the lips.” The song doesn’t appear to be about World War II directly, but rather about how it’s in the nature of governments to conceal their atrocities (“cause that’s the price you pay/for hoping every slip’s not a slide”) from the general public. I listen to this song and I think about how the commanding officer at My Lai received temporary house arrest and then went on to sell insurance for a living. “Lockdown” is a cynical swipe at America’s prison systems and philosophy towards imprisonment, taking the stance that prisons are really glorified dumpsters for those deemed human filth rather than institutions that promote rehabilitation. A controversial stance, to be sure, with many points of argument, but then again, don’t the best political songs provoke disagreement, discussion, and exploration of the facts?

Ian MacKaye’s compositions are a bit more scattershot. In a sense, you can see people’s misgivings about Fugazi crystallized in songs like “Burning Too” and “And the Same.” “And the Same” contains the great line about “if you have to carry a gun to keep your fragile seat as number one,” but starts things off by telling us “this is an attempt to thoughtfully affect your way of thinking,” a somewhat obnoxious first note to start on. Then, the song doesn’t go on to discuss of any concepts of substance, just references to people lying dead and the difference between action and reaction. What thinking is it exactly that MacKaye is aiming to change? We all know murder is bad, so that can’t be it. Nothing specific is attacked, though an argument could be made for the song being about people “born in the right time and place” being raised to remain blissfully unaware of suffering elsewhere in the world.

“Burning Too” has a far clearer message, that being our human tendency to remain preoccupied with our own petty problems instead of being concerned about the larger problems in the world. At least until they affect us personally, anyway, and even then, we think someone else ought to fix the problem. Sure, annoying college kids who bother you for money on the streets tell you the exact same thing, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Search throughout poetry and literature and you’ll find this to be a common concern throughout the ages. In fact, the chorus “anytime but now/anywhere but here/anyone but me/I’ve got to think about my own life” remains one of Fugazi’s most biting and affecting lyrical gems. What might set off people’s “those preach bastards!” alarm is the “do it!! Now!!” that punctuates the song and MacKaye’s “it is OUR responsibility” verses. Certainly, one ought to think of the message itself over the presentation, but given that the late 80s was a time of major grandstanding in popular music (it would arguably get worse in the 90s) and the “holier-than-thou” stigma still surrounding punk and indie, one could also very well write off the group as bunch of self-righteous prigs.

Yet MacKaye remains one of rock music’s most passionate performers and much of that side to his personality is crystallized in the closing “Promises.” Here MacKaye pushes personal boundaries of nihilism and optimism, tackling the same problem from both ends. Promises are shit, he argues, because we speak as we breathe, that is, without thinking. Certainly, promises can be made in good faith with intention to follow through, but real life is different and more complex than mere supposition, situations change constantly, as do temperaments and opinions. In short, you can’t really depend on anyone for anything, probably not even yourself. But that doesn’t mean we still can’t get along; “You will do what you do/I will do what I do/We will do what we do/Rearrange and see it through.” Acceptance of these dismal facts, in turn, means that there’s hope for relationships to still flourish and grow in ways that will satisfy both parties. All that in less than four minutes. We truly live in amazing times.

Aside from being perhaps the group’s finest balance between the political and the personal, Margin Walker also sees the group in their most straightforward musical phase. Though the top notch rhythm section of Brendan Canty and Joe Lally was already in full effect from the very first Fugazi recordings, Guy Picciotto had yet to begin guitar duties, leaving these recordings with Ian MacKaye’s more concise, economical guitar playing, a marked contrast to the double axe frenzies found on later albums. Also, the group was still adhering to the “less is more” ethos of punk rock recordings, so experimental production and instrumentation wouldn’t come until later. If Red Medicine could be consider the group’s equivalent of Highway 61 Revisited, then this is their Freewheeling Bob Dylan, early bare bones anthems that both conquer in their own right and set the stage for later triumphs. One of the finest EPs of the post-punk era.

No related posts.

Tagged as: Fugazi

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.