Punch & Judy

Lyrics

The first single from Fugazi, and the only one with a hint of commercial appeal. It's somewhat of a departure from the territory that Fugazi usually treads; it's still somewhat nightmarish, but it's a middle age, middle class, mid-life crisis nightmare rather than that of a drug fuelled rockstar. But perhaps it's the same thing; the rockstar fearing the mediocre life of ennui that could befall him if he doesn't press on with his hedonistic, self-destructive ways. Wherever the idea stemmed from, though, it's a pretty huge success. Not commercially -- it stalled at #29, which was a bit of a dip following "Garden Party", which hit the top twenty -- but artistically it's a pretty big triumph, at least as far as I'm concerned.

The song was first released in 1984, which shows how much some things don't change, because twenty three years later, the picture of a stereotypical suburban lifestyle painted by the verses sounds extremely familiar; "Found our nest in the Daily Express/Met the vicar in a holy vest/Brought up the children Church of E/Now I vegetate with a colour TV". It's all fairly lighthearted and dripping with satire, which leaves you wholly unprepared for the disarmingly earnest chorus that plainitevly wonders where it all went wrong, "Whatever happened to pillow fights?/Whatever happened to jeans so tight, Friday nights?". It's a surprisingly touching reminder that inside every miserable, balding, overweight office drone is a boy with real passions and dreams that somehow fell by the wayside.

Of course, much like the domestic abuse in the puppet show the song is named for, there's an unexpected sinister tone to it all; with Fish's frantic vocals dropping in and out of falsetto all over the place, it's pretty easy to miss the fact that the final verse ends with the line "Just slip her these pills and I'll be free". That's pretty bleak.

Video: Punch & Judy (and Assassing, but that's not what the link is for)
Way to flub the second verse there, Fish.

Incubus

Lyrics

Fish's favourite song from his seven years with the band, apparently (or at least, it was in '97, and ten years of reflection time is probably enough to reach a fairly concrete conclusion). Not that I ever had any illusions otherwise, but this demonstrates that he and I are very different men; it's one of the Fugazi tracks that I absolutely cannot get my head around, for the most part.

It's got the same sort of Arabian vibe as "Assassing" going on, which I really dig. "No flower to place before this gravestone" is quite possibly the most fantastically poetic description of masturbation I have ever seen (and, trust me on this, in the context of the verse, that meaning is clear. A lot moreso than most of the lyrics in this song, at any rate). I love the tone of whatever instrument is whistling along in the background in the "You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask" bit, I think it might be a keyboard pretending to be a flute.

I have to talk about little snippets like that, because... that's all I've got. I really can't see the forest for the trees. The vast majority of this song is thoroughly impenetrable to me, and believe me, I have tried. To penetrate, I mean. No, that last sentence fragment was not necessary, and neither was this'n.

Video: Incubus (live)
"What the fuck? seriously is this even music its so fucking boring. those anybody know the meaning of music?"

Assassing

Lyrics

From the band's sophomore album, Fugazi, which is not named for the band, who formed a few years after the album was released, or vice versa; both took the word from the Vietnam war, it stands for "Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In". It's by far their least accessible album, with Fish taking his lyrical cryptography to the extreme and the band pairing it with some decidedly unsettling music.

"Assassing" (says Fish: "Why I put the ‘g' on the end remains a mystery to me!") is the opening track, and sets the mood quite nicely with some arrythmic sitar twangs before marching forth inexorably forward in the general direction of nightmares. It'll take a couple of tracks to reach the really good ones, so I hope you're well packed. Much like the rest of Fugazi, I'm pretty much clinging to whatever floatsom of comprehensibility I can find in the sea of fever dreams and LSD; the venomously spat "my friend"s at the end of every line are my main handholds here. If you can find them and grip on tight Fugazi is a hell of a ride, but chances are you'll get lost along the way.

Hilariously, this song was released as a single, which hilariously reached number 22, and was, most hilariously of all, accompanied by the following video. Nothing else in the world could possibly have dated as badly as this.

Video: Assassing
"Tonight's winner is Derek W. Dick, with a Krypton Factor of 45!"