 |  |
When the time came to head off to college (way back in 1989), I left small-town Indiana for the University of Houston. While I was looking forward to whatever the "college experience" was going to be, I was also rather nervous about the whole thing, as I was leaving my familiar region and all of my friends (plus of course the requisite summer-after-graduation girlfriend) for uncharted territory - in Texas of all places. I hoped I'd like the school, I hoped I'd make friends, and I hoped I had a cool roommate. While the first two on the list turned out to be no problem at all, I was not so lucky with hope #3.
Glen was a sophomore, which I thought would be great, as I'd have someone who could kind of show me the ropes and make me privy to all sorts of great information. As it turned out, Glen didn't really speak much (in fact, he ended up only directly addressing me twice the entire year). He only left the room for classes and meals - otherwise, he was there, doing homework or watching terrible TV shows (Family Matters, Harry and the Hendersons, etc.). He didn't talk on the phone, he didn't have friends over to our room, he didn't drink, he didn't listen to music, etc. He also didn't like it if I did anything from that list, meaning that our room was silent at all times, with the exception of the previously mentioned televised entertainment. One time, a friend of mine was hanging out in our room and threw away an empty Pepsi bottle in the trashcan next to Glen's desk. The next day, the bottle had been moved into the can next to my desk. The guy was a borderline sociopath. I'll always remember the mug that he kept on his desk - one of those kinds with a person's name and a little poem about it. His read, "GLEN: Like a secluded valley, hidden from view / You share yourself with precious few." Amen to that.
Anyhow, the only thing Glen did that I liked was go home on the weekends to see his girlfriend. He had arranged his schedule so that he only had a couple of classes on Friday morning, and could then take off to wherever it was that he went. This meant that I would come back to my room after classes were done, and it truly became MY room for the duration of the weekend - the only time that I could actually relax and live normally. My normal way of kicking off this blissful time leads us to the reason for this post.
While I liked Minor Threat just fine, I didn't own any, and didn't listen to them much. When I read about Ian Mackaye's post-Minor Threat band Fugazi in MR&R, though, they sounded pretty interesting. I took a chance and bought the "3 Songs" 7-inch, and fell in love. They were punk, but took a sort of brainy and more adult-seeming approach to it, which instantly appealed to my pretentious "arty" side (a pretty large side, unfortunately).
The first side of the record, "Song Number One," starts with a stuttering guitar riff before everyone comes crashing in with the sort of fists-in-the-air-and-yell-along kind of chord progression I was familiar with from Chicago stalwarts like Naked Raygun at that point. Simple, yet effective. The song is about scene politics, which at that point in life, were important to me. They effectively trashed the notion of trying to be cool, saying that all of these things that seemed so important - haircuts, hometown scenes, 'zines - meant nothing.
Break-In.mp3
Side Two is where my weekend truly began, though. It starts off with the instrumental "Joe Number One," which begins with a dubby sort of bass groove. After a statement of the guitar melody, the drums kick in and a piano doubles the bass riff. After a few repetitions of the melody, along with some dramatic pauses, the "chorus" riff comes in, and we begin nodding along, FEELING it, man. It continues in this sort of mellow vein until the abrupt ending, at which point the opening riff of "Break-In" comes crashing in. While it's akin to the band's hardcore past in its fury and energy, it still has the feel that made Fugazi different to me. The lyrics deal with sex, but in a different way than anything I'd listened to up to this point did, really: "And he's happy because she's got skin / And she's happy just to let him in / When he asks will you let me in? / And from a place where they share skin, they say / Come inside" Much different from "Let me cut your cake with my knife" (which I also love - it's complicated), to be sure.
This record was perfect for my sense of myself becoming an adult and dealing with the world in a new way, but more importantly, it fucking rocked hard, and I could turn it up real loud and flail about the room freely. Whenever I hear these songs, and "Break-In" in particular, I remember the feeling of freedom and possibility that came over me every Friday afternoon, when I had my own place for at least a few days.
