that damned fly wrote:Marsupialized wrote:You are nuts. They were great till the very last show.
yes, they were. if you subtract out "the argument" songs and substitute them with songs from the three previous albums. then yes, they very well would have been great 'til the last show. not how it happened though.
i saw them 7x. first show in '99, last show in '04 (possibly '03, i forget) either way, once the argument came out, they had joe sing "the kill" instead of doing "by you" or "recap modotti" which are both far superior songs. especially "by you" when done live. immense is a good word for a live "by you." any performance of "the kill" is at best tedious.
this trend followed once "the argument" came out. better songs were substituted for newer, lesser songs. most of which at best were tedious. and as i said, once "the argument" came out, you were going to hear almost every track of that album at the show. most of which were subpar fugazi songs and successfully killed any momentum they built up everytime it went to a weak "argument" song. take that into account happening several times within a three hour show. everytime that momentum is killed you realize how long you've been standing there. and how obnoxious it's getting to be to be standing there.
when you first saw fugazi, and if they were "on" that night, it was fresh. after awhile though, it seemed standard. right, the politics part. right, the asshole in the crowd part. maybe a funny story (hardly). maybe a unique moment (none come to mind). mostly though, the same old shit.
i've seen 7 TJL bootlegs (never saw 'em live). two were recorded on two consecutive ("down" era) nights. none of these are replaceable with any other. not the one i saw with james kimbal instead of mac, not that one show from dec of '94 in texas (where duane beats the guy up) with the very next show the following night. not the one where david yow get's pissed at the new jersey crowd in '93 (i think) and stomps and kicks all the beers sitting on the front of the stage, neither show from '91, one from DC (so much "goat" material!) and the one in NC from a few days earlier (they played "pop song!") none of these shows could be switched with any other.
a friend in town went on tour with them early on in their career and saw many TJL shows, and every time they passed through town afterwards he had the dilemma of "do i really want to see the jesus lizard
again?...yeah, i do."
if it only boiled down to who has more solid albums? fugazi.
if only live shows were measured? in my mind, the jesus lizard. easy.
if band politics? fugazi.
if which band had the more monumental album? the jesus lizard.
if which band had more of a visceral impact? the jesus lizard.
musicianship? the jesus lizard. if you think joe and brendan have anything on dave and mac, and guy or ian seperate or together have anything on duane alone, or if guy or ian had anything on "frontmanship" against david, you would be all kinds of hilarious wrong.
more emotional content in songs: fugazi.
more fun: the jesus lizard
here's a fun way to measure: the pedigrees.
fugazi: the teen idles, minor threat, rites of spring, happy go licky, one last wish, the all scars, the black sea, the evens. (did i miss any?)
the jesus lizard: scratch acid, rapeman, mule (i think, right?), tomahawk, qui. (again, did i miss any?)
to me, it's not going to be the jesus lizard every situation, but it's going to be them most of the situations.
i didn't hear fugazi's last show, but i did hear several leading up to it. i did hear the jesus lizard's last show, it should have been released as "bang" because that's how they went out. find that bootleg.
