keep your eyes open

A book of Fugazi photographs by Glen Friedman is available for pre-order for $30.

Updated

“keep” has asked for a review. Here goes:

Keep Your Eyes Open’s official release date is September 3, 2007, 20 years after Fugazi’s first show. I received my copy early on the 14th of August. The finish and binding of the book is nicely executed.

I’ve only seen Fugazi twice—once at Ft. Reno, and once at 9:30. The photographs captured by Glen Friedman, especially of the Ft. Reno shows, capture the energy that I remember of a Fugazi performance. I’m from the burbs. Seeing Fugazi in the District for a free show was a major event only possible for kids like us if we happened to be in the right time and place to hear about it. The band did not promote - a friend of a friend heard about the show that evening. All us happened to be working morning or day shifts at our crummy jobs and were able to leave in time to make it downtown for the show. The pictures in Keep Your Eyes Open had me looking at every face in the crowd.

I was surprised how many press-kit looking portraits were in the collection. Most of the pictures are captioned with comments from the photographer. The motivations for the portraiture is very likely not for press kit materials but wasn’t otherwise explained save a caption that non-obvious DC locales were often goals of the Friedmen and Fugazi shoots before local shows. Why shoot at all before shows?

My only other Fugazi experience was an all-proceeds-to-charity 9:30 show near the very end. Jerry Busher was on a second drum set, and Guy and Ian were electrified. My roommate and I were on stools stage-right at the bar remarking over and over again on the musical interaction between the two guitar players. It was amazing.

I’m probably not a serious Fugazi fan. I love the music, the lyrics, and the energy. I liked that I could enjoy a show without the moshing and crowd surfing already going out of fashion. But I was young and late to the scene. I had a FUGAZI t-shirt that I picked up at a merch-booth at a Moody Blues show of all places, not knowing that the band didn’t “do” that sort of thing and that it was bullshit. I had another one styled after the Repeater artwork that I bought from a rock-T’s magazine. Wearing a FUGAZI shirt wasn’t that much different to me than wearing a NIN shirt or a Led Zeppelin shirt.

I was approached twice by strangers about the shirts. In Bethany Beach a Vietnam veteran asked if I knew what fugazi meant. In Frederick, MD outside a store an older ex-punk approached to tell me that Ian MacKaye was an asshole, and that they’d worked together flipping burgers before Minor Threat formed and that Ian MacKaye was a sell-out-motherfucker.

Only a band so set on their ideals and on their message can have that sort of effect on people. “Fugazi fans are pretentious assholes”. “The guys in the band are assholes”. Wait, what? “Fugazi sucks because they yell at people starting pits at their shows”. So?

Back to the book, and the foreword written by a pretentious asshole Fugazi fan and one of Glen Friedman’s “favorite people on the planet”, Ian F. Svenonius. The introduction is not to my taste. I would like to think I can dig somewhat strange music writing; I enjoyed Paul Morely’s Words and Music for whatever that is worth. Svenonius gives us an essay in the format of an interview with a person with multiple personalities, in a DC coffee shop. Hip. Long. Not enlightening about the band to any fan; and not adding anything to the book. The man’s words about Fugazi carry to me the maturity of a young adult. Maybe I’m not getting some sort of slathered on irony? When a character in the interview describes avoiding early Fugazi shows because they were too popular, or finally going to a show but only due to laziness bothering to not listen to it from the bathroom of the club, I think: this is the kind of asshole I couldn’t stand in that fucking scene. This is the kind of douche that would swear off local groups as soon as conformists got into them. That’s the kind of dick I failed to avoid being, I’m sure. The ultimate poseur or the worst? I haven’t read anything else by Svenonius. I don’t know his relationship with Friedman or the band, or the community. I’m specifically reacting to the introduction of Keep Your Eyes Open.

Friedman’s closing remarks are much more aligned with what one would expect for the introduction and would have served well in Svenonius’ place. I wish the textual content provided more insight into the group. I wish there was more than just name dropping Rites of Spring and other pre-Fugazi groups, which carried more of their sound forward into Fugazi than any of Ian’s previous bands; maybe I’m just a Guy-fan.

The font used on the cover and in all of the captions works nicely. The same font (I think) is used in the body of the introduction and in the closing remarks. It is a poor selection in those formats and doesn’t work well with the page size or line length making for difficult reading.

The book cost me thirty bucks. Is it a thirty dollar book? Definitely. It’s great. Don’t buy it to gain any insight into the band, buy it for the pictures. You can see more of Friedman’s work on his website.