Stumbling upon the astonishing pictures taken by Joey Lin recently, posted through the Fugazi live archive Instagram feed, I had to visit this particular recording to find out it is up to par with the sheer force and energy emanating from these stills.

And it is.

This recording documents the last of 4 performances in the state of Texas in 1990, including the infamous Dallas warehouse or “outside” gig a couple of days prior. It is set in San Antonio, and the band finds itself in front of a select, yet very lively and welcoming audience, or as Ian puts it “what the fuck, did they give you voice lessons down here or what man… noisy motherfuckers.”

The band appears to be in a very good mood, engaging the audience throughout most of the performance and taking whatever the patrons hurl at them in stride, all in good humour.

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In this regard, note that Fugazi perform a little improv and ode to the “most beautiful sunset” the members got to share in San Antonio, and later on in the set even consider breaking up and settling down in San Antonio following the generous sharing of the water amongst the participants, apparently a novelty in the course of their extensive touring, “this is unbelievable, this is the first time ever that people have not grabbed the water and thrown it all over each other, this is amazing, this is truly a friendly town, we’ve travelled the world wide, posing as a rock band just to try this test, we play a set and then we hand the water out to the crowd to see what kind of reaction we get and I’m telling you in every country throughout Europe they threw water all over each other, in every state throughout this great continent they just threw water all over each other, and San Antonio, why, you are truly… […] I think we can put our instruments down now, and settle here, we can finally stop being a band and just move in, does anyone know a good house for sale, would you all have us if we were to come to live here?” (triggering Brendan to “quit” the band though).

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The guitars and bass are a bit low in the mix for the first couple of songs, whereas the vocals are clear and upfront, the audio quality being occasionally just slightly marred because of some hi-hat distortion.

The set list is Repeater era, and draws proportionately from the incredible early work, i.e. 7 Songs EP (5), Margin Walker EP (4), Repeater (8), 3 Songs seven-inch (1), and adding 1 song off the yet to be released (1991) Steady Diet of Nothing album.

Not considering a slight mishap during Blueprint (which is still the slow version at this point in time, true to the album version), the performance is pretty much spot-on and very enjoyable.

Highlights are plenty. Two Beats Off (Guy ingeniously references the “water sharing” and “settling down”), Repeater and Reprovisional make for a great sequence and the band throws in another two bangers, Suggestion and Give Me The Cure, as the “first encore [they’ve] done the whole tour” to close out the night.

Note Ian’s introduction to Repeater, “in Washington D.C. […] we do have a lot of kids running around, selling crack, and shooting each other every day, everyone’s always talking about how they’re bringing into this, is to have a war on drugs, but really, it’s not really about a war on drugs, because in the end these kids are just selling it to make enough money to live, so we should be talking more about a war on poverty, we should talk about kids who need money and will resort to anything to get it […].”

Great stuff.

Entertaining show. Interesting interludes in addition to sharing the water.