Fugazi - ‘Fell, Destroyed’ from Red Medicine (1995)
This is pretty stupid and embarrassing to admit, but I inadvertently bought Red Medicine on vinyl today. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Tower Records in Dublin had a bunch of Fugazi LPs in stock, one of them being The Argument (which I’d always thought was the only post-Repeater/maybe Steady Diet Fugazi album that I really liked) and which I intended to pick up. And to my intuitive visual mind, two albums with fairly abstract, textured covers look quite alike… so when I came home and unwrapped it, I found I had Red Medicine instead. And I love it!
I’ve previously thought of this era of Fugazi, and this album in particular, as pretty inaccessible, but whether it’s because the LP format breaks it up somewhat, or I’ve finally reached the age of maturity when I reckoned I’d appreciate Fugazi more fully, it’s really clicking with me. The fact that it’s chronologically sited in the period where my favourite noisy, abrasive, emotionally and technically adventurous post-hardcore comes from (‘94-‘95, albeit a little late… but it’s close to halfway between Indian Summer/Hoover and Hot Water Music) makes sense to me, because it’s not like I don’t like noisy, apparently disjointed music - in fact I love it - but I never felt like Fugazi presented itself to me in the right way. Instrument was a help in that respect, but it hadn’t really transferred to proper album listening until now.
I love this song at the end of the first side, a very Slinty-sounding little number that nevertheless adds a few extra layers of space (you can still kinda hear Repeater in this, I think) and twists itself around the lyrics of mental health and medication: it’s time to fake resignment. Except my excitement for this is as genuine as anything can be.
(and there’s a space-jazz dub track called ‘Version’. of course!)
![tomewing:
There’s nowhere to go for the Express after this one: the zen essence of Express-ness has been located.
“Opponents fear the plan [“for merging the jobs currently done by Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission”] could create a modern-day equivalent of the European empire envisaged by Napoleon Bonaparte or a return to the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne that dominated Europe in the Dark Ages.”
I’m only vaguely interested in seeing the rest of the article and how it justifies the headline - probably the very last paragraph, which no-one reads, factually contradicts it. No doubt the plan to merge the two top bureaucrats isn’t even really true (and wouldn’t that be an efficiency - or is the Express above that sort of mere quango-burning?)
On a historical note, the Holy Roman Empire and Charlemagne could be said to be the end (or at least the beginning of the end) of the Dark Ages, and the start of the medieval period. And it was more advanced than the Saxon kingship in ‘Britain’ at the time - among other things, the early renaissance of the medieval ages brought about the rediscovery of Roman law and jurisprudence; much like the Napoleonic conquests spread the basis of the modern (non-Anglo-Saxon) European legal system, the Napoleonic code, across much of the continent.
Of course, not only are those two things obvious precursors of the EU, they’re both pretty French (or Frankish, as the case may be)… obviously the Express is still stuck in Agincourt, although the “shady Berlin group” is a masterful piece of updating their political coverage to the Second World War.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3htguRIRp1qznhs5o1_1280.jpg)
