This week, for the first time in “Wasted Life,” we’re opening Moe’s mailbag. It contains bills. Also, a letter from a friend: “If Ian MacKaye were killed by slamdancers at an Evens show, do you think he’d have a pre-taped recording chewing out the crowd at his funeral?”This got me thinking, and the more I thought, the sadder it seemed. When the bell tolls for Ian MacKaye, who will scold the survivors? Who could possibly take the former Egg Hunt frontman’s place when that fateful hour arrives, and the women fill the air of our nation’s capital with sorrowful ululations and solemn plaints? In their grief, who will shame them?
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No, my friend was right. Though it seems like MacKaye has been scolding people forever—most entertainingly himself, on that Embrace album—still, no matter how healthy his diet, no matter how abstemious his personal lifestyle choices, no matter how unyielding his DIY ethic, the day will come when the man can scold no more. Alas, like all of us, Ian MacKaye will return to dirt, and when he does, he will leave behind a finite number of harangues.What will the last one be? What lucky person or group will receive the ex-Fugazi member’s final stern, moralistic upbraiding? We can only hope that it will come many years hence, weakly addressed to the person providing the hospice care at Dischord House: “Excuse me, sir, would you please step the fuck away from my I.V.?” But, like my friend, we should prepare ourselves for less happy endings. I would like to think that MacKaye already has, with safety deposit boxes in banks throughout the D.C. area, prepared for every unthinkable contingency—death by mosher, heckler, cop, skin, zoo animal, hamburger, sexism, malpractice, act of God, ass failure, drums, involuntary whiteness, and so on—each with a special tape berating the responsible party or parties, then offering them $5 to go away.
For the younger readers, Fugazi was a traveling comedy act led by MacKaye and his slapstick foil Guy Picciotto during the 1980s and 1990s. Their routine went like this: The troupe went from town to town charging $5 a ticket, then—at every single show!—affected great surprise at the bad manners of the crowds that turned up. It was hilarious! If you never saw Fugazi and want to know how it felt, or if you’d like to remember the experience, skip the documentary and the records and go pick a fight with your dad about money. Or you could listen to “Having Fun on Stage with Fugazi,” a 45-minute collage of stage banter chosen from throughout Fugazi’s career and edited together by someone named James Burns. Burns documents MacKaye and Picciotto’s road-perfected comic timing with loving attention. The heckler who interrupts MacKaye’s story about Fugazi’s last show in Miami with “Shut up and sing!” gets a fatherly rebuke: “Where we come from, when you say ‘Shut up,’ that’s impolite.” MacKaye’s next words come from a different show: “Now, everyone shut the fuck up!” Wait—if he was wrong about that, maybe he was wrong about heroin?Previously - EAZY-E–>BOB DOLE–>SAM MOORE