Jerry Busher's trumpet playing adds a lot to the performances of Floating Boy and Version featured here.

So pleased to see this here. Fun story: I was fortunate to spin records between bands this night. I played a set of '70s soul between the Thrones and The Ex, and then did an all-DC set between The Ex and Fugazi: P-funk's "Chocolate City," Trouble Funk's "Drop the Bomb," random go-go bands, Bad Brains and so on.

The lights went down and I had "Show Me Your Firetruck" from the Backdraft soundtrack (aka the epic NHK Iron Chef theme) cued up for this moment, but for whatever reason the band took forever. The song was nearing the end, Fugazi was still not onstage, so I had to pull the nearest record I had, which was "Naxalites" by Asian Dub Foundation (it was 1999 after all). Fugazi came on, lights up as is their wont, they crushed, night made.

I remember this show. I remember going by my self and really just taking it in, and it was like my 4th or 5th time seeing them. Regarding your comment above, I remember thinking Ian seemed really bummed at this point, and sick of watching his audience act like assholes. Might explain your thoughts above.

According to some sources, Ian MacKaye, born and raised in Washington D.C., spent some nine months in 1974 in Palo Alto, after his father had won a fellowship at Stanford University, leading the MacKaye family to pack up for California temporarily.

This recording relates to the only concert Fugazi ever played in Palo Alto and dates back to the 1999 West Coast tour I have been covering recently. Part of the introductory remarks are missing but the recording does capture Ian mentioning “(…) here in Palo Alto when I was 12 or 13 years old, so this is about as close to a homecoming as I am ever gonna have other than Washington D.C.” before the band eases into Break to open the set.

The people at Dischord mark the sound quality of this recording as “excellent”, and while this arguably applies to most of the show, I find that the guitars especially are rather low in the mix for the first couple of songs, while there are some volume drops or piercing reverb to be noted as well (e.g. Facet Squared). Things pretty much balance out after Do You Like Me though, leaving the listener to ride the wave for the remainder of the gig (note that the beginning of Arpeggiator is missing).

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Even though the performance is quite solid and enjoyable, it doesn’t really win me over for some reason. I feel it never really takes off, while I do take pleasure in the toned-down tracks Floating Boy or set closer Version.

Perhaps the lack of banter is illustrative of the rather lukewarm ambience as well, even though Ian tries to engage someone in the audience at one point, only to conclude that “the verdict is that he was trying to get my attention but he really didn’t have much to tell me other than to play Steppin’ Stone, unfortunately we don’t do that song so I’m afraid we won’t be able to appease you.”

Find enclosed some 22 live tracks, culled from the End Hits album in particular (8), with only a modest selection of their other work thrown in for variety: Red Medicine (3), In on the Kill Taker (3), Steady Diet of Nothing (2), Repeater (3), Margin Walker EP (1), 7 Songs EP (1) and Furniture EP (1).