This, after all, is the tension that holds Fugazi together so tightly: springing from a vibrant punk community in and around Washington, D.C., its members, who’d been members of some fairly well-liked punk bands of their day, decided to do something new. It was time for something new. The singer of Minor Threat would have looked pretty silly singing those songs in his mid-thirties. But when you’ve embraced some of the basic tenets of punk rock -- which, in the long view, are more passionately articulated versions of your basic left-wing tenets: that justice should be equally available to all persons; that community is preferable to the isolation born of an overemphasis on creature comforts; that it’s wrong to deprive a person of rights for any reason -- and really embraced them with both arms, so that their truths have gotten into your blood, you can’t just turn your back on the music whose milieu gave you an environment in in which to do experience their invigorating, life-changing truths. What to do? Is there a way to make sophisticated rock music that holds on to the vital spirit of punk rock without looking half-assed about it? |
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