Seminal Washington DC punk band Fugazi went on ‘indefinite hiatus’ some eight years ago, with little hint of the band reconvening since then. However, fans can now take solace in the fact the group are to make their entire live career available.
The remarkable news comes from an interview given by frontman Ian MacKaye to Approaching Oblivion (via Consequence Of Sound), who said he is preparing “a database of thousands of live recordings we have”. The process involves transferring the footage over to digital from cassettes and DAT, with MacKaye saying, “I’m editing and fixing things up, we’ve been working on this project for 2 years now.”
He added, ““It’s a fuck of a lot of work. We’re hoping it will be up in the near future. The idea at the moment is to start it with 100 shows. Then put 20 more on every month or something.”
Elsewhere in the interview, MacKaye explained the nature of the band’s break from music with, “It is entirely possible that we will play again and it’s also possible that we won’t. We have the desire to play, but there’s a geographical issue. Joe currently lives in Rome and that makes it hard to practice. There’s also a time issue. Everyone is super busy. You’ve got to remember that when Fugazi was actually working we usually practiced 5 days a week from 4-6 hours a day.
“[W]e’ve been offered an insane amount of money to play reunions, but it’s not going to be money that brings us back together, we would only play music together if we wanted to play music together and the time allowed it.”
