Daniel Kessler on Fugazi.

“When you’re growing up, you go through so many different phases and stuff, but I think Fugazi are still one of my favourite bands. It wasn’t about the guitars [Guy Picciotto and Ian MacKaye’s] as much as the way they really twisted the angle on how you can write songs, and on finding new ways of making sounds. And they kind of twisted around a lot of ideas I had about, like, verse-chorus things, and about supposedly having to go with how ‘one’ is supposed to begin a song, or end a song. And they paid a lot of attention to dynamics, and they just always seemed to do things really differently. That really sort of turned my head around a lot, as a songwriter as well as a guitar player.
“I don’t even really have a favourite album, ’cos they’ve always been one of those bands where it’s not like, ‘Oh, you know, they peaked, here.’ They’ve always just gone ahead. There’s always this great sense of natural progression, and of new discovery.
“And I think they’re definitely, you know, a band for bands to follow, on multiple levels - like their work ethic, and their business ethic, as well as how they make music.
“When I first heard‘Waiting Room’, for example – and I don’t even think this is their best song – you know, if you’ve ever heard that song, off 13 Songs, it came out around 1989 – it’s this great fusion of rock, and punk, and dub. And it’s just really – the different ideas in there, and the dynamics of it – it just really hits you pretty hard. I’d never heard anything like that before. I heard that right around the time it came out, and it was definitely a big influence on me.”