The earliest recording of the song in the archive appears in February of 1990, but the song likely debuted before that. It’s hard to pinpoint the very first live performance of the song. LISTEN: “Repeater,” Mechanicsburg, PA, Decibels, 8/19/93 It’s a duality that makes for a powerhouse of a tune. That contrasting chaos and melodic simplicity reinforce the lyrical themes of gun violence and detachment butting against real human loss of life. It’s so light, it’s like a Smiths song,” says Clark. “There’s this really simple clean arpeggio that’s so simple at the heart of the chorus. “If you play back there instead of over the pick ups like a normal human being and find the right notes on the fretboard, some weird dissonant harmonics shoot out.” Of course, it’s not all dissonance. “It’s a sound that came out of playing a Rickenbacker, which has a really long gap between the back of the bridge and the thing that holds the strings at the base of the guitar,” he explains. Imitating those climbing bursts of noise, Picciotto developed an unusual technique. “There are people around them being forever changed, and the tendency we have as a culture to stand back and blur our eyes, I saw that being exercised in a really intense way in our city.” “With every death, there are people who had lives,” says MacKaye. The song goes on to address the detached response of someone reading the papers. LISTEN: “Repeater,” Frederick, MD, Weinberg Center, 2/16/90 The capturing of that voice is such a profound accomplishment.” You know what I do? None of your fucking business.’ It’s actually an authentic reading of that character-that’s exactly what he would say. Chad Clark, who worked on the 2005 remaster of the album of the same name, notes, “People love this line, ‘You say I need a job. Lyrically, MacKaye takes on the persona of a dealer. People would become numbers….it was a repeating situation.” The frustration spawned the searing song that would become a hallmark of the band’s live show. In the papers, they started to take a count. During the late ’80s in D.C., “Crack came in, and then guns-there was a serious bloodletting, a big spike in gun homicides,” says MacKaye. According to MacKaye, it all started with drugs. “If you play a song over and over, it starts to evolve.”įor my feature this week on Fugazi’s new online archive of live shows, I discussed some of the subtle changes you can hear in live version of the song “Repeater.” Since then, I spoke to some of the people involved with the song about its inception and development. “Playing music is like handwriting,” says Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye.
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