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anothersievefistedfind · 8 years ago

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Fugazi, Belo Horizonte Independent Music Festival, Brazil 8/94 - Photo © by Nino Andres

1994 Brazil tour

With Brendan spending months and months away from home in 1994, Fugazi did not tour much that year, focusing on writing new music instead and playing just a handful of local shows. In between, the band did manage a short string of 8 dates in Brazil, an experience which appears to have left a lasting impression.

In an interview with Thicker Magazine, Ian elaborates,

“[the 1994 Brazilian tour] was cool, it was like the model Fugazi experience. We did this one huge festival that was 4000 people, it was the first ever Brazilian music festival. It was sponsored by the city, the city paid for everything. It was a free show in the plaza, and thousands of people just came out to check it out. Then we did a couple of gigs in Sao Paulo, which was two nights at a rock club, with a thousand people each night, and everybody knew all the songs. Then we did a show in this village where no foreign band had ever played, 4 or 500 village kids were just totally going crazy, just because they were so pumped up on the music period, they hadn’t really heard of us. Then we did a gig at this sort of punk club with a lot of Sid Vicious guys screaming, “Fuck you” and starting fights, and we did three nights at this little basement club, one night was like 50 people, and we played for two hours. It was great, we did eight shows and every show was so different, and such a perfect analogy of our experience.“

In a 1995 interview by Tunde Oyewole, Guy notes,

”Man, I tell you, it was different every night. Some nights we were playing in tiny villages, like one-generator towns, and then other nights we played in big cities. So it was incredibly different every night. But the kids there-I mean the whole situation down there was just incredibly strange. Just really, really strange. I would say Brazil was a serious mind fuck. It’s the most extreme place I’ve ever been, on every level. You go there and you’ll see the most intense natural beauty and the most intense pollution of nature that you’ve ever seen in your life. You’ll see the most incredible rich communities, and you’ll see the most unbelievably fucked up poverty. It’s really strange down there. And so the shows were kind of the same way. It was just very weird.“

Find below a rundown of some personal thoughts and observations related to this particular tour:

Belo Horizonte Independent Music Festival, Belo Horizonte, August 15, 1994 (FLS #0628)

First ever Fugazi gig in Brazil, set at the Belo Horizonte Independent Music Festival in the presence of some 3000 attendees.

While the band appears appreciative of such a unique event and the performance is overall tight, little is left to chance. In fact, most of the set list pretty much gets sorted in-between songs, as the band members audibly suggest and discuss what to play next, which is quite a departure from the organic, spontaneous modus operandi.

Even though the volume levels are a bit low, the mix is quite evenly balanced and enjoyable (note that the sound is pretty much reduced to mono during Rend It and Great Cop).

The set includes the live debut of both Birthday Pony and Target (two songs featured on the 1995 Red Medicine studio album release). Other highlights in my book include Nice New Outfit, Turnover, Waiting Room, Margin Walker, Give Me The Cure, Target and definitely Promises.

To top things off, it can be noted that this is Joey Picuri’s (soundman) birthday show!

The set list:

1. Intro 2. Brendan #1 3. Facet Squared 4. Public Witness Program 5. Interlude 1 6. Reclamation 7. Interlude 2 8. Nice New Outfit 9. Interlude 3 10. Birthday Pony 11. Turnover 12. Interlude 4 13. Waiting Room 14. Margin Walker 15. Song #1 16. Interlude 5 17. Give Me The Cure 18. Interlude 6 19. By You 20. Instrument 21. Rend It 22. Interlude 7 23. Great Cop 24. Interlude 8 25. Target 26. Interlude 9 27. Promises 28. Outro

Circo Voador, Rio De Janeiro, August 18, 1994 (FLS #0629)

One of my favourite recordings from this particular tour, considering it is one of the better sounding ones (maybe a bit rough around the edges) but also because the event played out at a smaller venue, the Circo Voador in Rio De Janeiro in front of a rowdy crowd.

The result is a more tumultuous gig and lively event, which gets interrupted repeatedly because of people stage-diving and the security issues arising from this. Listen close as even Joe loses his temper at one point.

You can pick up on quite a bit of Portuguese as well, as some of the locals step up to translate for the band and mediate.

The recording includes 16 songs total. Steady Diet of Nothing provides most tracks (5), with the 7 Songs or S/T EP (3), Red Medicine (2), In on the Kill Taker (2), Repeater (2), Margin Walker EP (1) and the 3 Songs 7 inch (1) following suit.

Personal highlights include Stacks, And The Same, Waiting Room, Give Me The Cure, Exit Only and Shut the Door.

The set list:

1. Opening Remarks 2. Joe #1 3. Merchandise 4. Interlude 1 5. Walken’s Syndrome (aborted) 6. Interlude 2 7. Reclamation 8. Runaway Return 9. Interlude 3 10. Stacks 11. Smallpox Champion 12. Interlude 4 13. And The Same 14. Interlude 5 15. Bulldog Front 16. Waiting Room 17. Give Me The Cure 18. Long Division 19. Target 20. Birthday Pony 21. Interlude 6 22. Exit Only 23. Shut the Door 24. Outro

Col. Leao XIII Hall, Itaborai, August 19, 1994 (FLS #0630)

This one sounds like an average audience recording at best. This is unfortunate, since it hints at a phenomenal, intense performance, and because the set list includes one-off live renderings (this tour) of both the Steady Diet instrumental and KYEO.

Forensic Scene, taken from the Red Medicine album, makes its live debut after Guy notes that ”you’re probably gonna hate this song, but we’re gonna play it anyway.“

In-between song chatter features more praise for the Brazilian journey, and Guy taking pleasure in getting his hair cut at a local spot that day.

The set list:

1. Intro 2. Steady Diet 3. Exit Only 4. Greed 5. Interlude 1 6. Turnover 7. Interlude 2 8. KYEO 9. Forensic Scene 10. By You 11. Interlude 3 12. Repeater 13. Two Beats Off (w/ Summertime / The Place I Love tags) 14. Interlude 4 15. Bad Mouth 16. Bulldog Front 17. Waiting Room 18. Interlude 5 19. Blueprint 20. Interlude 6 21. Instrument 22. Public Witness Program 23. Sweet and Low 24. Outro

Aeroanta, Sao Paulo, August 20, 1994 (FLS #0631)

This concert showcases tour exclusive live renderings of Latin Roots and Sieve-Fisted Find. Fell, Destroyed, another cut taken from the (then) upcoming Red Medicine album is added to the live repertoire in instrumental form.

The mix takes the opening song to settle, but once it does, the sound quality of the recording is quite good and balanced. Note however, that the audience is rather low in the mix, that Guy’s guitar cuts out occasionally, and that there is a bit of distortion (buzz) crosscutting some of the quieter parts.

An enjoyable performance overall, featuring 21 tracks total, favouring the Repeater album (6), followed by Red Medicine (4), Steady Diet (3), Kill Taker (3), the S/T EP (2), Margin Walker EP (2), and 3 Songs 7 inch (1).

The set list:

1. Intro 2. Styrofoam 3. Latin Roots 4. Facet Squared 5. Sieve-Fisted Find 6. Reclamation 7. Interlude 1 8. Two Beats Off (w/ Summertime / The Place I Love tags) 9. Interlude 2 10. Birthday Pony 11. By You 12. Margin Walker 13. Bad Mouth 14. Break-In 15. Waiting Room 16. Interlude 3 17. Smallpox Champion 18. Interlude 4 19. Instrument 20. Blueprint 21. Interlude 5 22. Long Division 23. Target 24. Repeater 25. Encore 26. Fell, Destroyed Instrumental 27. Promises 28. Reprovisional

Aeroanta, Sao Paulo, August 21, 1994 (FLS #0632)

Second night at the Aeroante, Sao Paolo, according to Guy “an amazing city you live in, this is like 37 Manhattans all put together, it’s totally crazy.” This is arguably the best sounding recording from this particular tour, even though somewhat high on treble (note that Joe’s bass, ironically, is low in the mix on Joe #1).

The set list features a number of strongpoints in my opinion, e.a. a vibrant version of Exit Only, Long Division (which appropriately addresses a fight that broke up moments before), Returning The Screw, and the powerhouse combo Shut the Door into Glueman to close out the night, yet my absolute highlight is Runaway Return, i.e. specifically Ian’s guitar playing out against Joe’s bass which catches some eerie reverb on the go.

The recording captures an outstanding performance, even though Guy’s vocals sound a tad fatigued, and adds up to 18 live tracks, drawn from In on the Kill Taker (5), S/T EP (4), Repeater (3), Steady Diet (3), Red Medicine (2), and the 3 Songs 7 inch (1) respectively.

The set list:

1. Intro 2. Joe #1 3. Exit Only 4. Interlude 1 5. Merchandise 6. Interlude 2 7. Cassavetes 8. Repeater 9. Interlude 3 10. Rend It 11. Interlude 4 12. Long Division 13. Runaway Return 14. Interlude 5 15. Waiting Room 16. Give Me The Cure 17. Suggestion 18. Interlude 6 19. Forensic Scene (“a slow, slow, sad song so you might look to your neighbour and do a nice slow evil Lambada”) 20. Returning The Screw 21. Smallpox Champion 22. Interlude 7 23. By You 24. Interlude 8 25. Great Cop 26. Encore 27. Shut the Door 28. Glueman

92 Graus, Curitiba, August 25, 1994 (FLS #0633)

First out of three consecutive concerts at the 92 Graus, a small underground bar in Curitiba. The instrumentation, the drums particularly, are rather low in the mix, the overall sound coming off suppressed or muffled. As such, it pretty much fails to engage in my opinion.

Note the tour exclusive live performance of Dear Justice Letter and a solid take on Shut the Door.

The set list:

1. Intro 2. Joe #1 3. And The Same 4. Interlude 1 5. Cassavetes 6. Merchandise 7. Public Witness Program 8. Interlude 2 9. Instrument 10. Walken’s Syndrome 11. Interlude 3 12. Birthday Pony 13. Dear Justice Letter 14. Interlude 4 15. Suggestion 16. Give Me The Cure 17. Waiting Room 18. Interlude 5 19. Forensic Scene 20. By You 21. Interlude 6 22. Stacks 23. Runaway Return 24. Shut the Door 25. Outro

92 Graus, Curitiba, August 26, 1994 (FLS #0635)

Previously released as part of the original hardcopy Live Series (volume 11), this here is a recording I’ve always enjoyed listening to.

Admittedly Guy’s Rickenbacker partially drowns out the rest of the guitar play or instrumentation, yet otherwise it’s deliciously right up there in your face, as are the vocals. Add in some altercations or puta musings, and you have a recording which demands attention and favours repeated listening.

Personal picks include Exit Only (a couple of people address the audience in Portuguese at the beginning of the song), Two Beats Off (w/ subtle The Place I Love / Summertime hints), Blueprint, Reprovisional (w/ Roadrunner tag) and - pretty much as per usual - Promises to close out the set (Ian plays a handful of introductory notes to Sweet and Low right before ending the gig).

Returning the Screw, on the other hand, surprisingly falls flat here in my opinion, as the band doesn’t seem to get the pacing quite right.

The Repeater album provides most tracks (6), followed by the Kill Taker (5), Steady Diet (3), Red Medicine (2), Margin Walker EP (2) and the 7 Songs debut EP (1), adding up to a total of 19 live cuts.

Footage of this concert (mistakenly dated August 25) can be found here.

The set list:

1. Intro 2. Brendan #1 3. Facet Squared 4. Rend It 5. Great Cop 6. Exit Only 7. Greed 8. Turnover 9. Reclamation 10. Two Beats Off 11. By You 12. Waiting Room 13. Margin Walker 14. Long Division 15. Blueprint 16. Birthday Pony 17. Reprovisional 18. Returning the Screw 19. Smallpox Champion 20. Promises

92 Graus, Curitiba, August 27, 1994 (FLS #0636)

On paper, hands down my favourite set list from this particular tour. The Red Medicine instrumental Version makes its live debut and is served as set opener to boot (note that the song did not make another appearance until the October 8, 1995 gig in St. Louis, Missouri).

It has been mentioned that the quality of the recording is subpar due to the sound cutting in and out. And while this is true, fortunately only the first couple of songs are affected by this. As soon as Merchandise, everything pretty much balances out, and leaves us with the bulk of the recording to enjoy even though the overall sound remains a bit thin or shrill, atleast up to Two Beats Off. The cassette gets turned after this and once Song #1 kicks in, the sound quality improves some more (technical hindrances do persist).

Probably the longest show of this tour, with 21 songs total (note that Glueman is cut short before the final breakdown or finale), slightly favouring the Repeater album (6), followed by Steady Diet (4), 7 Songs or S/T debut EP (3), Red Medicine (3), Kill Taker (3), and the 3 Songs seven-inch (2).

The second half of the show, i.e. the whole Bulldog Front into Glueman streak is pure bliss, and includes the only live rendering of Last Chance for a Slow Dance from this Brazilian string of shows. Plus, Interlude 3 essentially is a rough cut of Lusty Scripps as featured through the 1999 Fugazi documentary and subsequent soundtrack Instrument.

The set list:

1. Intro 2. Version 3. Exit Only 4. Interlude 1 5. Merchandise 6. Interlude 2 7. Turnover 8. Reclamation 9. Interlude 3 10. Nice New Outfit 11. Styrofoam 12. Target 13. Interlude 4 14. Birthday Pony 15. Two Beats Off 16. Song #1 17. Interlude 5 18. Bulldog Front 19. Bad Mouth 20. Break-In 21. Long Division 22. Blueprint 23. Instrument 24. Last Chance for a Slow Dance 25. Sweet and Low 26. Encore 27. Repeater 28. Glueman

#FLS1994 #fugazi #dischord #brazil #belo horizonte #rio de janeiro #itaborai #sao paulo #curitiba

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ddrkirbyisq · 6 years ago

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Let's see...what has been going on these days...? Dance Music and JaSmix I guess let's start off with what is probably most interesting (?) to the majority of readers. March JaSmix is only 1.5 weeks away! You'll be hearing more reminders and announcements from me in the near future as I wrap up all of the logistics, but in the meantime I've been trying to put together music for the night, as well as going through a bunch of new music and editing it accordingly. I'm quite particular with not only my music selection but also my music quality and editing and I'd like to think that it really makes a difference in the quality of dance events when that sort of attention to detail is taken. Given that I'm relatively well-versed in both dance AND music (as in audio production, not just music in the general sense) I've always felt that I have a bit of a unique perspective on curating music for dance. (Not to mention some of the songs are tracks that I produced myself...) Let's talk about a couple of different things: Tempo modifications We're all familiar with it. Often times it becomes necessary (or even "interesting/exciting") to raise or lower the tempo of a song to better fit a social dance form. The track may (probably) have not have been written explicitly with dance in mind. Or the dancers you are catering to might be more comfortable with a certain range of tempos. This presents a unique dilemma as you are forced to make some compromises between "danceability" vs song feel and the original intent of the song. First things first: I'm firmly in the camp of timestretching without pitch-shifting. As a composer and producer it just gives me a really weird feeling to alter the pitch of a song, *particularly* if I'm not doing it in musical increments. Okay, I get it, most people probably won't notice if you resample a song so that it's 50 cents off (i.e. halfway between "normal" notes). But it still just gives me a really icky feeling, and can you imagine being someone with absolute pitch who is bothered by off-center tuning? Ugh! I admit this is probably not a huge deal, but really, unless you have a specific reason to change the pitch of a song, just don't do it. PLEASE do not just change the playback speed of a song and call it a day, use a quality timestretching algorithm. There is one unfortunate exception to this rule which is if you aren't going to use a quality timestretching plugin or algorithm in the first place. =( For small adjustments, I'd rather hear something that's just resampled with an odd pitch than something that's poorly timestretched. There are several very good timestretching algorithms out there these days. Unfortunately you aren't going to get the best quality without using a proprietary solution, but for example the Elastique Pro algorithm comes =standard= in most DAWs (FL Studio, cubase, etc etc). If you are going to just run your edits in Audacity, at the very least use the higher quality SBSMS algorithm, please! It's worth noting that you can download the demo version of a DAW like FL Studio for free and do all of your editing in that -- the demo limitation is that you can't save your project files, but you won't need to! Ok, but before the actual execution of the tempo modification, we also need to decide how much we are going to shift the tempo. This is where =your= judgment comes in, and this is a compromise that I find really interesting because I'm constantly struggling to balance different factors: - What tempo most people would find fun to dance to - What tempo I personally would like to dance to - What tempo allows less experienced dancers to comfortably dance - Staying true to the original "feel" of the song The first common problem here is tempos that don't actually work well for dancing. This is really common for less experienced dancers/DJs who have a hard time visualizing a dance. Or even more experienced dancers who are picking out songs for a dance form that they're unfamiliar with. If you've never touched west coast swing in your life, it's going to be really difficult for you to know what a good tempo for that dance feels like, (let alone what makes for a good WCS song). If you are having this problem, you probably ought to really try and dance to the songs yourself (or at least pretend?), or ask a partner-in-crime if you don't have the feel for it. The second and in my opinion more sinister problem is a tempo that is perfectly danceable but kills the spirit of the song. This is especially prevalent for songs which have been shoehorned into a dance form that they weren't intended for, the most common example of this is "let's take this fast waltz and turn it into a cross-step waltz". I really hate this because it commonly flies under people's radar and leads to a really sluggish or unnatural song that is really disappointing to hear and/or dance to. If your approach to tempos is to say "oh, cross-step waltz is supposed to be 114BPM, right? So let's make this song exactly 114BPM!" I'd strongly urge you to compromise more towards the original tempo of the song. I will always strive to modify the tempo as little as possible in order to hit a good compromise because I think the further you go the less fun a song becomes. As a composer, I write my music in such a way to fit the BPM and feel that I'm going for, and going significantly astray is really going to muddle up the intention of the song. There is plenty of dance music out there -- if you want a slower cross-step waltz, you can find a different song...don't just shoehorn a track into a given tempo. That said, I understand I'm also a more advanced dancer and as such might feel more comfortable with a wider range of tempos than others. In the end it's all up to your discretion, just don't forget that you should always be trying to make a compromise. Of course, if you happen to also be the composer of the song, you can just edit the original project file itself and reconstruct at the new tempo directly without any time-stretching. Woohoo! Music editing I pretty much edit all of my own music, regardless of whether I have a version on hand which has already been edited by some other source. I wish I could settle for trusting other people's edits but there are just too many faults which I see commonly: - Low quality timestretching and/or awkward tempo (as described above) - Obvious and/or awkward cuts - Low quality source or resulting render (this isn't the year 2000, 128kbps doesn't cut it anymore!) I also have a bunch of other things that I like to do, including: - Trimming leading/trailing silence - Adjusting fadeins and fadeouts. For fadeouts, I like to use nonlinear fadeouts so that it's obvious that there is a fadeout starting at that point. (ease out) - Manually automating volume adjustment if the different sections of the track have levels that vary too much for the dance floor - Dynamic range compression/bringing volumes in line with other tracks in general (think about of those classical tracks with tons of dynamic range that are way too soft compared to all the pop songs) Some of this is getting into territory that is harder to do without a working knowledge of audio processing. For example, you can't just "turn the volume up" on a soft piece of music (if it is already normalized) as that will just lead to a bunch of clipping. So there you need to understand what a limiter/compressor does and how to apply one. Of course, this is extremely standard stuff in the world of music production, so it's as simple as dragging around a single slider in my izotope ozone mastering suite. If you are still working in something like Audacity this is going to be a lot more cumbersome. ReplayGain is another option, of course.

I don't know how other people go about doing their edits, but for cuts, repeats, and crossfades, I really believe in taking the effort to make the edit seamless. This requires some level of understanding of the underlying music, but mostly just knowledge about how to edit precisely. "Guess and check" isn't good enough here, you want to actually line up the waveforms:

This is even easier for songs with prominent drum transients, but even for more acoustic works you can quite visibly line up the beats as shown above. This will ensure a seamless edit. If you're working in Audacity you have the benefit of being able to be sample-accurate with your splices -- use it! In FL Studio unfortunately you're limited to the midi timebase, but setting PPQ to 960 and using a high tempo is definitely good enough. Of course, in the cases where you can't directly splice together two sections, you'll need to crossfade them together, but the same thing applies -- line up the transients and waveforms visually before adjusting the crossfade. You'll know if you have things lined up if you can hear a proper "phasing" effect when overlaying the two tracks on top of each other. I realize this is mostly just me ranting about how music editing ought to be more precise, but if anybody actually wants anything explained in a more instructive way I can do that too. Snowboarding Went to Tahoe with a group for some snowboarding action this past Sunday! It was quite fun, though also extremely exhausting. I brushed up on some things beforehand that I wanted to work on and I think it really helped, and the powder was super nice as well which was nice. Of course that doesn't mean I didn't fall on my face + butt a lot, actually I had quite some epic wipeouts as well as I was getting a little more confident. I felt like I was really getting the hang of turns more, especially turning to toe side for some reason (I had an issue with over-rotating and not being able to control speed for my heel side turns, maybe just need to lower myself more and be more in alignment), and even worked on linked a few of them together, though I think I would need to just be better at controlling speed before getting more confident and successful with it. Overall though I was pretty happy with how I progressed, despite sort of worsening as the day went on (not to mention being super bad at getting off the lift this time for some reason). The trip really took a lot out of me though, I feel like I've just really recovered from it, eugh. Cooking Made pizza again! This time with premade pizza dough, which was much easier. Tried to really pile on the toppings this time, to good success:

Um...I haven't really made too much other exciting things so I donno why I even had a section for this, but ok. Gaming Quite a lot of progress here! First off, I finished normal difficulty of Dead Cells! I haven't unlocked everything yet (still need quite a lot more cells to do that), but I did go through the different biomes afterwards and visit each one at least once, as well as getting all of the different runes, so that was fun. If I decide to keep playing the next thing to do will be trying to do runs on higher difficulties...we'll see. I also finished Mega Man Unlimited! Quite a fun fan game, and it really felt quite true to the spirit of Mega Man, while still offering up some new things here and there as well. Rainbow Man's stages (with the Quick Man-like beams) felt a bit BS but once you know them they're fine...I guess quick man's stage is sort of like that as well, but this felt a bit more obnoxious since at least with Quick Man's stage it's more instinctual ("just get to the next screen as quickly as possible") whereas Rainbow Man's stages are much harder to read at a glance so it feels almost impossible to survive some of them on a first try. Regardless, it was a fun experience overall! There are more game modes to go through but I think I'm done with the game. As of now I've moved onto mostly playing Unavowed, which has been pretty enjoyable so far! (I just got to the "twist"). I wouldn't say anything has really floored me yet, but it's been overall a great package when considering it all put together. Some things I've appreciated: - Optional exposition through hover text is an interesting idea that I think works well for the genre - Being able to customize your experience by both choosing your background, dialogue choices, and team has been great - The moral / philosophical dilemmas presented at the end of the chapters have been interesting to compare and contrast with each other, and I think being put into somewhat similar "choice" situations with very different contexts is elucidating in terms of what factors into these decisions in my mind. Cool stuff. Unfortunately none of the choices have really felt "impactful" in terms of game effect so far, which is something that we only really saw in Life Is Strange, but that is also something that is quite difficult to pull off, so I understand. Still, there are some really pivotal points in the story where it would have been really interesting to see a choice given instead of being forced down a specific path. Our group also started playing Wandersong! What a great energy and spirit to have in a game. I think it's something that a lot of developers and designers could learn from. We've only just started, but I think it's been pretty inspiring so far. Super fun! Sleep (or lack thereof) Been having troubles with my sleeping schedule these days (though last night was not too bad). I guess it's a bit difficult without a job forcing me to maintain a regular schedule no matter what, but I'm hoping to fall into some good habits again hopefully, as it's really annoying/unfortunate to not be able to sleep at night sometimes. Half of it is getting back onto a good rhythm and the other half is trying not to stress out about really random silly things like "I should really try to dye my hair in the next week do i have enough time to do that" ... Hopefully I'll find some success...

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