Utne’s Jeff Guntzel and chunklet present a 40-minute “master class in stage banter” by Fugazi, the principled post-hardcore punk band.

Apart from their music, Fugazi is best known for community activism and an underground DIY ethos, holding their ticket prices to $5 and CD prices to $10, and refusing to deal with mainstream media, merchandising, or record companies.

The stage banter reveals Fugazi as full-on moral entrepreneurs, taking roles as both rule creators and rule enforcers. Though violent moshing and fistfights were pretty much standard practice in the hardcore punk subculture they entered in the 1980s, Fugazi were firmly and consistently anti-violent. And they enforced non-violence at shows, to the point of returning the $5 cover charge to fiestier patrons and sending them on their way.

To take but one example, the excerpt below draws a sharp line between the norms of the subculture (punk rockers) and a world (Fugazi’s world) of crusading reform:

“Why are you giving me the finger? Let’s talk about it. Because we walk out on stage, I say ‘Good evening ladies and gentleman’ and you give me the finger. What kind of people are you? Punk rockers? Oh! Fugazi is playing tonight. And in Fugazi’s world, we don’t use the finger to say hello.”
The clips are plenty profane, but consistently clever too. Other excerpts from Utne:

* To an aggressive audience member: “This is insane, unacceptable behavior. We do not provide a soundtrack for violence.”

* To a stage diver: “What’s your name? David? Please don’t come on the stage anymore… David, don’t apologize. I know you meant nothing by it.”

* To another aggressive audience member: “We were playing in Atlanta last night and everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time. People kept coming up and knocking my mic into my mouth. Finally, I lost a piece of my front tooth and that was a piece of calcium on my front tooth that my body had been working on for 24 years. And in a matter of one second, for this man’s kind of moment of ecstasy and fun, he took out that piece of calcium.”

* To two more aggressive audience members: “I saw you two guys earlier at the consumer truck and you were eating your ice cream like little boys and I thought, ‘Those guys aren’t so tough. They’re eating ice cream, what a bunch of swell guys! I saw you eating ice cream pal! You’re bad now but you were eating an ice cream cone and I saw you. That’s the sh** you can’t hide! Ice cream eating motherf*****. That’s what you are.”

Some viewed Fugazi as preachy and I can’t say for certain that they changed the music industry, the conduct of concert-goers, or subcultural norms. Nevertheless, Ian MacKaye et al. certainly provided an alternative moral vision of bandlife that continues to draw kids to the crusade.