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33⅓ Main Series #129
In on the Kill Taker
By June 1993, when Washington, D.C.'s Fugazi released their third full-length album In on the Kill Taker, the quartet was reaching a thunderous peak in popularity and influence. With two EPs (combined into the classic CD 13 songs) and two albums (1990's genre-defining Repeater and 1991's impressionistic follow-up Steady Diet of Nothing) inside of five years, Fugazi was on creative roll, astounding increasingly large audiences as they toured, blasting fist-pumping anthems and jammy noise-workouts that roared into every open underground heart. When the album debuted on the now-SoundScan-driven charts, Fugazi had never been more in the public eye.
Few knew how difficult it had been to make this popular breakthrough. Disappointed with the sound of the self-produced Steady Diet, the band recorded with legendary engineer Steve Albini, only to scrap the sessions and record at home in D.C. with Ted Niceley, their brilliant, under-known producer. Inadvertently, Fugazi chose an unsure moment to make In on the Kill Taker: as Nirvana and Sonic Youth were yanking the American rock underground into the media glare, and "breaking†? punk in every possible meaning of the word. Despite all of this, Kill Taker became an alt-rock classic in spite of itself, even as its defiant, muscular sound stood in stark contrast to everything represented by the mainstreaming of a culture and worldview they held dear.
This book features new interviews with all four members of Fugazi and members of their creative community.
Few knew how difficult it had been to make this popular breakthrough. Disappointed with the sound of the self-produced Steady Diet, the band recorded with legendary engineer Steve Albini, only to scrap the sessions and record at home in D.C. with Ted Niceley, their brilliant, under-known producer. Inadvertently, Fugazi chose an unsure moment to make In on the Kill Taker: as Nirvana and Sonic Youth were yanking the American rock underground into the media glare, and "breaking†? punk in every possible meaning of the word. Despite all of this, Kill Taker became an alt-rock classic in spite of itself, even as its defiant, muscular sound stood in stark contrast to everything represented by the mainstreaming of a culture and worldview they held dear.
This book features new interviews with all four members of Fugazi and members of their creative community.
- GenresMusicNonfiction
185 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 19, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
May 3, 2018
Fascinating read - would have rated it more highly if it hadn't been so appallingly copyedited.
August 13, 2018
I enjoyed reading this a ton, and some of the history and particularly interview excerpts from the band helped me find ways in to this album. But some of the analysis was a little surface level and, much more egregiously, I think this was the most poorly edited book I’ve ever read - probably at least one or two misspellings or typos on every page, INCLUDING misspelling Ian MacKaye’s last name 3x and referring to his band The Evens as “The Evans.” Come on man. I’m so on board for the 33 1/3 mission of elevating albums like this as deserving of critical/analytical attention, but the lack of even basic copy editing is a bummer and doesn’t help the cause.
August 30, 2026
Fantastic source of information about the band Fugazi and their pivotal album “In on the Kill Taker.” Much of it consists of insightful interviews with the band members and collaborators done exclusively for this book. The author does an excellent job of situating the band in this era that saw the indie icons surrounded by, but not swept up in, the major label gold rush driven by grunge and the sudden discovery of a scene that had been thriving for years just fine on its own. Along the way, Gross highlights so many other related bands and albums the reader can and should explore – playlist inspiration galore!
Note: yes, other reviewers flag the copy editing and proofreading but it’s exaggerated. If you’re a fan or just want to learn more about an indie music ethos that has largely disappeared, don’t let that put you off – this is well worth the read.
Note: yes, other reviewers flag the copy editing and proofreading but it’s exaggerated. If you’re a fan or just want to learn more about an indie music ethos that has largely disappeared, don’t let that put you off – this is well worth the read.
April 1, 2019
First the negatives. There are quite a few typos in this book, missing words, etc. Sloppy. The writing isn't horrible, but it isn't polished. There are some sentences that are just plain poorly and confusingly constructed. Not sure if an editor ever looked at this.
The positives: It's about Fugazi. Great stories. Great work getting in and talking to the band, and great job researching the history of the band and the songs. The enthusiasm of the author easily overcomes the sloppy editing. A real pleasure for a Fugazi fan to read.
The positives: It's about Fugazi. Great stories. Great work getting in and talking to the band, and great job researching the history of the band and the songs. The enthusiasm of the author easily overcomes the sloppy editing. A real pleasure for a Fugazi fan to read.
February 13, 2021
Fun read about the last great Fugazi album. Lots of good info regarding the writing and recording of each song on the album.
July 25, 2018
A good book about my favorite Fugazi album.
May 13, 2026
7/10. I think I would’ve preferred another album of theirs to have been written about in depth, but being that In on The Kill Taker marks the halfway point of their existence, it made for a logical and sensible jumping off point to be able to explore the before and afters of IONTK
March 31, 2024
Solid book if you love Fugazi. The more you love them, the more solid it will be. Was definitely an interesting read and cool to own this vinyl and the book about it.
August 31, 2021
Passively had this on my coffee table for a while and finally read today. Definitely a lot of stories I had heard before the Instrument documentary but some new stuff as well. Easy, enjoyable read.
September 24, 2026
"Instrument"
3:43
Could it be / That loss could weigh?"
Ian MacKaye: "There's a line from a Mississippi Fred McDowell album, "Some people don't ever feel nothing until they lose somebody in their family." "Instrument" is about trying to feel things before that happens."
"That one is predetermined / That one, it finds another / That one comes in one window / Sliding out the other side."
Ted Nicely: "Instrument is a tour de force. That thing is an Ian masterpiece in every way."
In 1990, the year Repeater and its title track appeared in stores, there were 472 murders in the District of Columbia. In 1992, the year Fugazi started to play "Instrument," which is essentially the sequel to "Repeater," there were 443. In 1993, there were 454.
Indeed, between 1988 and 1996, there was an average of more than one murder a day in D.C. Most of the victims were young African-American men; most of the violence associated, as it was in many cities but especially on the East Coast, with the mid-1980s introduction of crack cocaine. "The murder capital of the United States." "Dodge City." These were the nicknames D.C. was stuck with.
The raging "Repeater," one of Fugazi's signature songs, is about that situation, about the hideous drug war—both the carnage within and the portrayal of it in the media. Ian corroborates that "Instrument," another of the band's signature songs, is essentially part two of the same story from a slightly different perspective.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but "Instrument" is, essentially, about what happens when middle-class kids, probably white, get shot at.
We need an instrument / To take a measurement / To find out if loss could weigh."
As MacKaye was fond of saying years later when introducing "Cashout," a song about the explosive pricing out of the lower class and middle class in America's cities, "punks and artists are the shock troops of gentrification." This would often get boos but it's not like he's wrong.
This was also true in the D.C. scene. There were punk houses in Shaw and Mt. Pleasant, two neighborhoods in Northwest Washington. Shaw, a historically Black neighborhood in D.C., was ravaged by the 1968 riots. Neither areas seemed like, by middle-class suburban standards, the safest places to live. They probably weren't the safest places to live by lower-middle-class urban standards either, and yet people had to do it every day.
One night, MacKaye, who then was still living at Dischord House in Arlingston, Virginia, was having dinner with some friends in D.C.'s Chinatown when the talk turned to violence in the neighborhoods.
Ian MacKaye: "They would say things like 'Aw, man, last night someone was popping off out in the stret and it definitely sounded like a .44, not a .45.' Now, it's quite typical for young people to celebrate living in sketchy neighborhoods as if it gave them some kind of bona fides. But I just started thinking about the mixture of fear and delight in their voices."
"We need to know value / We need to place value / In case it all comes true / Could it be loss could weigh?"
Jem Cohen: "It's a heavy thing, that 'what loss could weigh' line. And the older you get, that line becomes infinitely richer as that weigh accrues over time."
Around the same time, a group of MacKaye's friends were driving on Interstate 66, the highway that goes west out of D.C. into Northern Virginia. Out of nowhere, another car pulled up beside them, sprayed them with machine gun fire, and sped off.
Miraculously, no one was hurt. The perpetrators were never caught.
Ian MacKaye: "The people in the car were rightfully traumatized. There were bullet holes in theseats. they were just driving. They didn't know who it was."
But the juxtaposition between the braggadocio of white twentysomething punks living in largely African-American lower- and lower-middle-class D.C. and the panic of those same sorts of people getting shot at got MacKaye thinking about the people who were contending with this kind of violence day to day, and the kind of people who delight in living near it.
It got him thinking about the way violence is perpetuated not just by the people who participate in it directly, but the ways in which society builds itself around such violence—about the permission that's given to violence by the people who think they are just bystanders.
It's always they that's dying / But now it's we that's dying / So sooner comes the trying / To understand that loss could weigh."
Ian MacKaye: "I've always bristled at those sort of weirdly entitled, imperious comments, talking about that sort of thing like it's some movie and not 'This is horrible and it's unacceptable.'"
Bristled is certainly one word for it. "Instrument" is a swirling explosion—dude is clearly really pissed and he wasn't above introducing the song with "chickens coming home to roost," as he did at St. Stephens in D.C. March 6, 1992.
Ian MacKaye:"How do you measure loss? The loss of other people's lives is tiny, loss of one's own life is exaggerated."
We've been dragged through the fire / We bragged about that fire / But suddenly we're tired."
Ian MacKaye: "Instrument" was pretty much done (as in written by MacKaye). I brought the music as a bass riff and we started building guitar layers but that is the last song I can remember that I really came in like, 'Here's a song. Here's a track.'"
The Inner Ear demo of "Instrument" is as strong a record as its sister demo that session, "Rend It," complete with the outro chorus sung as a round, a second vocal line from MacKaye, and the "what loss could weigh" line countered with "we need an instrument." Even MacKaye isn't completely sure why that element was dropped and it's a shame that it was. Not only would it have been an indication that the band was moving away from songs that had nothing but elements which could be reproduced live, but it would have provided a ready-made crowd sing-along, albeit one about the weight of death, a mourner's Kaddish for a city and the attitudes therein.
3:43
Could it be / That loss could weigh?"
Ian MacKaye: "There's a line from a Mississippi Fred McDowell album, "Some people don't ever feel nothing until they lose somebody in their family." "Instrument" is about trying to feel things before that happens."
"That one is predetermined / That one, it finds another / That one comes in one window / Sliding out the other side."
Ted Nicely: "Instrument is a tour de force. That thing is an Ian masterpiece in every way."
In 1990, the year Repeater and its title track appeared in stores, there were 472 murders in the District of Columbia. In 1992, the year Fugazi started to play "Instrument," which is essentially the sequel to "Repeater," there were 443. In 1993, there were 454.
Indeed, between 1988 and 1996, there was an average of more than one murder a day in D.C. Most of the victims were young African-American men; most of the violence associated, as it was in many cities but especially on the East Coast, with the mid-1980s introduction of crack cocaine. "The murder capital of the United States." "Dodge City." These were the nicknames D.C. was stuck with.
The raging "Repeater," one of Fugazi's signature songs, is about that situation, about the hideous drug war—both the carnage within and the portrayal of it in the media. Ian corroborates that "Instrument," another of the band's signature songs, is essentially part two of the same story from a slightly different perspective.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but "Instrument" is, essentially, about what happens when middle-class kids, probably white, get shot at.
We need an instrument / To take a measurement / To find out if loss could weigh."
As MacKaye was fond of saying years later when introducing "Cashout," a song about the explosive pricing out of the lower class and middle class in America's cities, "punks and artists are the shock troops of gentrification." This would often get boos but it's not like he's wrong.
This was also true in the D.C. scene. There were punk houses in Shaw and Mt. Pleasant, two neighborhoods in Northwest Washington. Shaw, a historically Black neighborhood in D.C., was ravaged by the 1968 riots. Neither areas seemed like, by middle-class suburban standards, the safest places to live. They probably weren't the safest places to live by lower-middle-class urban standards either, and yet people had to do it every day.
One night, MacKaye, who then was still living at Dischord House in Arlingston, Virginia, was having dinner with some friends in D.C.'s Chinatown when the talk turned to violence in the neighborhoods.
Ian MacKaye: "They would say things like 'Aw, man, last night someone was popping off out in the stret and it definitely sounded like a .44, not a .45.' Now, it's quite typical for young people to celebrate living in sketchy neighborhoods as if it gave them some kind of bona fides. But I just started thinking about the mixture of fear and delight in their voices."
"We need to know value / We need to place value / In case it all comes true / Could it be loss could weigh?"
Jem Cohen: "It's a heavy thing, that 'what loss could weigh' line. And the older you get, that line becomes infinitely richer as that weigh accrues over time."
Around the same time, a group of MacKaye's friends were driving on Interstate 66, the highway that goes west out of D.C. into Northern Virginia. Out of nowhere, another car pulled up beside them, sprayed them with machine gun fire, and sped off.
Miraculously, no one was hurt. The perpetrators were never caught.
Ian MacKaye: "The people in the car were rightfully traumatized. There were bullet holes in theseats. they were just driving. They didn't know who it was."
But the juxtaposition between the braggadocio of white twentysomething punks living in largely African-American lower- and lower-middle-class D.C. and the panic of those same sorts of people getting shot at got MacKaye thinking about the people who were contending with this kind of violence day to day, and the kind of people who delight in living near it.
It got him thinking about the way violence is perpetuated not just by the people who participate in it directly, but the ways in which society builds itself around such violence—about the permission that's given to violence by the people who think they are just bystanders.
It's always they that's dying / But now it's we that's dying / So sooner comes the trying / To understand that loss could weigh."
Ian MacKaye: "I've always bristled at those sort of weirdly entitled, imperious comments, talking about that sort of thing like it's some movie and not 'This is horrible and it's unacceptable.'"
Bristled is certainly one word for it. "Instrument" is a swirling explosion—dude is clearly really pissed and he wasn't above introducing the song with "chickens coming home to roost," as he did at St. Stephens in D.C. March 6, 1992.
Ian MacKaye:"How do you measure loss? The loss of other people's lives is tiny, loss of one's own life is exaggerated."
We've been dragged through the fire / We bragged about that fire / But suddenly we're tired."
Ian MacKaye: "Instrument" was pretty much done (as in written by MacKaye). I brought the music as a bass riff and we started building guitar layers but that is the last song I can remember that I really came in like, 'Here's a song. Here's a track.'"
The Inner Ear demo of "Instrument" is as strong a record as its sister demo that session, "Rend It," complete with the outro chorus sung as a round, a second vocal line from MacKaye, and the "what loss could weigh" line countered with "we need an instrument." Even MacKaye isn't completely sure why that element was dropped and it's a shame that it was. Not only would it have been an indication that the band was moving away from songs that had nothing but elements which could be reproduced live, but it would have provided a ready-made crowd sing-along, albeit one about the weight of death, a mourner's Kaddish for a city and the attitudes therein.
November 5, 2018
Like other reviews I have seen, the content, tone, and enthusiasm for the subject matter are great. I did enjoy the anecdotes and the song-by-song breakdown. The complete lack of proofreading was very disappointing, however. A revised edition is highly recommended to take this book from a 2 star to a 4 star.
May 17, 2019
Lots of nice details, makes me want to take a deep dive into the record.
January 3, 2022
An interesting and enjoyable book about an important album by a great band. It features interviews with all four band members and other relevant people who worked with or knew the band. It is fun to read and includes links, citations, and a reference list at the end. While the book is focussed on In On the Killtaker, it also includes sections on what happened before and after that album, plus comments on key Fugazi concerts, related bands and albums. The author is knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the subject matter and it shows. I read the Kindle edition which unfortunately had many typos and errors, several on most pages. This detracted somewhat from what would otherwise have been a perfectly enjoyable experience. This book contains a lot of good material which deserves better proofreading and editing, which hopefully will be done for a future edition. It is still worth reading, especially if you are a fan of the band. The typos will be forgotten but some of the highlights of this book will be memorable. Recommended.
March 10, 2021
Možda i najbolja knjiga u 33 1/3 seriji koju sam do sad pročitao, unatoč dosta šlampavom pisanju. Da, skoro svaka stranica ima neki typo il recikliranu rečenicu, ali mislim da je to dosta zanemarivo zbog kvalitete sadržaja. Osim što je autor uspio sakupit članove benda za intervju kao i neke ljude usko povezane s bendom, on je i pregledao masivnu arhivu live nastupa Fugazija do te mjere da je očito da čovik voli bend više od svega. Ali ipak, pisanje je dosta objektivno i Gross jasno iznosi povijest benda do albuma, povijest pjesama i njihov utjecaj na kasniji stadij benda i njihovih nastupa. Fora je što je cili dio knjige koji se bavi točno albumom podijeljen po pjesmama, pogotovo jer se uz komentare članova Fugazija može doć do nekih novih saznanja i više cijenit album ko takav. A to je ono što sam najviše izvukao iz čitanja, puno više cijenim album nakon dubljeg uvida u priču oko njega.
4.5 -5/5
4.5 -5/5
March 2, 2026
As a new year's resolution I decided to listen to all 209 albums that have a US 33 1/3 book written about them this year. Soon after I talked my ride or die Larry to do it with me. It has been a rewarding project so far but I hadn't read any of the corresponding books since I started listening to these albums. I was having a rough day at work so decided to listen to an album, maybe the album, I had been saving. Fugazi, and especially Ian MacKaye, have influenced me in dozens of ways before and after In on the Kill Taker was released in 1993 and the album has become part of my DNA in the years since its release. Joe Gross loves the band and album as much as I do and it is a delight to follow him through the band's history, the album's problematic production, and finally song by song through the tracks. Gross strikes the right balance of journalist, fan and musical pathologist. This book was exactly what I wanted it to be but still managed to inform and surprise me along the way.
May 20, 2018
Fugazi's third album, In on the Kill Taker is a great great album! Here Fugazi managed to replicate their raw punk sound AND experiment with different genres, thus escaping the emo tag they are known for, still saying that the political edge that comes attached to the band is still there and in full force. ..Kill Taker also has a bit of a back story as it was originally recorded by Steve Albini but both band and producer didn't like the end result.
Joe Gross take on this album is more or less the traditional 33 1/3 treatment. He gives some backstory of the band including the founding of Dischord records, the actual genesis of the album and then a track by track analysis and then what the band members are doing now (as of 2018 Fugazi have entered their 15th year of being in a hiatus)
A good, solid read that will please the long time Fugazi fans and attract some new ones.
June 9, 2024
After Steve Albini's death, my close friend who was the bassist in my highschool punk band texted me a youtube link for the Albini mix of In on the Kill Taker. Music mattered to us a lot in the 90s and the aughts and few if any bands mattered more than Fugazi. I needed to know why they scrapped those recordings so I walked over to the library and picked up this little gem.
I got a whole chapter on the Albini demo. A lot of people seem to complain about some spelling and grammatical errors that slipped by editing, but I wasn't bothered. It's a fun and interesting read. Gross lets the band tell most of the story which is really special because they're principled and thoughtful and funny! The book is a blessed excuse to listen to this album deeply for a few days, which is one of the coolest things about the 33 1/3 series.
I got a whole chapter on the Albini demo. A lot of people seem to complain about some spelling and grammatical errors that slipped by editing, but I wasn't bothered. It's a fun and interesting read. Gross lets the band tell most of the story which is really special because they're principled and thoughtful and funny! The book is a blessed excuse to listen to this album deeply for a few days, which is one of the coolest things about the 33 1/3 series.
January 14, 2025
Great interviews and interesting historical context on an important band that hasn’t been written about enough, but just at a personal level I didn’t vibe with it much. 2 stars maybe a bit harsh but 3 would be too generous.
The author keeps putting in his view of which songs are good or bad - don’t care, especially about the critical stuff (which I largely disagreed with). Song by song breakdowns - generally good on the lyrics which I have always found obscure, but middling on the music. Sometimes good but the description of chord changes etc I could have done without. And as everyone else has noted, the copy editing is atrocious, probably the worst I’ve ever seen. Typos, and even more annoyingly quite a few confusing sentences.
Worth reading if you are a fan of the band as there’s lots of interesting stuff, but it may annoy you.
The author keeps putting in his view of which songs are good or bad - don’t care, especially about the critical stuff (which I largely disagreed with). Song by song breakdowns - generally good on the lyrics which I have always found obscure, but middling on the music. Sometimes good but the description of chord changes etc I could have done without. And as everyone else has noted, the copy editing is atrocious, probably the worst I’ve ever seen. Typos, and even more annoyingly quite a few confusing sentences.
Worth reading if you are a fan of the band as there’s lots of interesting stuff, but it may annoy you.
October 9, 2018
I can’t give anything Fugazi related less than 4 stars. This is maybe 3.5. Some great info collected and a lot of work done by someone who is obviously a fan but mostly the bands own words. Maybe a little more synthesis could have been cool, i dunno. My main problem with the book is that it is REALLY Badly edited including repeated sentences and ideas (not in a good way) that I thought MIGHT have been intentional but I think were not (and made the one chapter of numbered paragraphs seem not intentional when it was....) AND some major typos including misspellings of like band members’ names.
OTHERWISE a great, fun book. A song by song breakdown which is nerdy and cute. I kept listening to the songs while reading their respective chapters. Recommended yeah
OTHERWISE a great, fun book. A song by song breakdown which is nerdy and cute. I kept listening to the songs while reading their respective chapters. Recommended yeah
December 14, 2020
From the Drive-By Truckers to... Fugazi? Yeah, that's how my music collection works too. Anyway, this might be among my favorites of this entire series, mostly because Gross does a fantastic job writing about a very difficult to write about album from a very difficult to write about band. Fugazi exists almost as more anecdote and legend than mere band at this point, but Gross does a good job of placing them into context and framing this particular record. A lot of writers could have just rested on having the interview with all the members and those in their circle, but Gross puts in a lot of hard work outside of that. Highly recommended as a great example of why this series is so fantastic.
July 18, 2018
Fun to read, and definitely worthwhile if you're already a Fugazi fan, which is where I'm coming from. At its best, this book reads like a convivial conversation, with insightful interviews of band members, producers, and others; at its worst (perhaps fittingly), it's like reading a poorly-crafted zine, with numerous typos, and lots of painfully lame prose. Whereas the best entries in the 33 1/3 series are exciting portals of discovery for those not yet familiar with an album, I would really only recommend Gross' "In on the Kill Taker" for established Fugazi fans.
August 19, 2024
The premise is to contextualize and situate this album in its context of the post-grunge revolution and how it made Fugazi suddendly popular (not mainstream, but close). The format is mainly a very long interview with the band, contemporary reviews and articles, and a little of what went before and what came after in their career.
I came here for the story of the failed Albini collaboration and it seems what happened is that the guys just had too much fun together (because they were not the piss-and-vinegar curmudgeons they are usually made out to be) and that conspired against good work.
I came here for the story of the failed Albini collaboration and it seems what happened is that the guys just had too much fun together (because they were not the piss-and-vinegar curmudgeons they are usually made out to be) and that conspired against good work.
February 5, 2025
I love Fugazi, I love the 33 1/3 books, and I love this one most of all. I’ve always thought The Argument is their best album, partly because it’s the only one I properly experienced contemporaneously, but mostly because, well, listen to it. But I must’ve spun Kill Taker 10 or 12 times while reading this book, which is a delight - man, does Joe Gross dig Fugazi - and I have definitely under-appreciated it. What a record. What a book.
(It could definitely have done with a proofreader though. Referring to Ian’s band with his wife, The Evans, made me laugh out loud.)
(It could definitely have done with a proofreader though. Referring to Ian’s band with his wife, The Evans, made me laugh out loud.)
September 1, 2019
"Cuando mi antigua banda llegó a su fin perdí los papeles y me encontré en un callejón sin salida. Esos tipos me ofrecieron un espacio en la banda. La idea era que yo anduviera a mi aire, en plan rol Flavor Flav, poniendo coros y jodiendo sobre el escenario. Fugazi comenzó como un concepto muy abierto, todo tipo de gente podía salir a escena con ellos a tocar la trompeta, a bailar o tocar la batería"
Guy Picciotto
Guy Picciotto
December 9, 2020
This is one of the better books of the series, assuredly. It's part a revisiting of the era, but also part Please Kill Me, splicing interview segments from the band members into the telling and detailing of the album. To me, this is what the series should be about...I don't need tangents, I want to skinny on the record...but hey, that's just my two cents. This one is on point from start to finish, thus, I give it a 5!
August 29, 2023
I have now read about 10 of these 33 1/3 books including Meat Is Murder (the worst of the books I have read), the ones for DJ Shadow, The Replacements' Let It Be, Aphex Twins, etc. This is one of my favorites. I love a book with a good track-by-track analysis and this one gets bonus points because not only did the author interview the band but she got them to talk about each individual song.
This is an excellent work.
This is an excellent work.
June 6, 2018
A meticulously researched and lovingly written portrait of a band, an album and an entire music scene- all in less than 200 pages.
I knew nothing but the bare bones about Fugazi, and this is a good book for fans of the band and neophytes alike.
I learned a lot and it was clearly fun for Joe to write.
A few typos here and there, but that adds to the publishing, IMO.
I knew nothing but the bare bones about Fugazi, and this is a good book for fans of the band and neophytes alike.
I learned a lot and it was clearly fun for Joe to write.
A few typos here and there, but that adds to the publishing, IMO.
October 30, 2022
This is a great book about the history of one of the better albums from my favorite band ever. All the members of the band participated and it gave me a newfound love for an album that I already loved a lot. Now if only someone would write a 33 1/3 book about every single Fugazi album I could die happy.
December 24, 2022
I recently came into possession of about a dozen books from this series. As many people have noted, there are an astonishing number of typos and a few minor factual errors - possibly averaging one per page.
Still, a decent insight into the creation of a classic album
I'm looking forward to reading more of these, assuming the others have been proofread prior to publication.
Still, a decent insight into the creation of a classic album
I'm looking forward to reading more of these, assuming the others have been proofread prior to publication.
May 4, 2026
My poor husband already puts up with unsolicited breakfast time speeches about how much I love Fugazi, and it's about to get a whole lot worse...
Overall, a very enjoyable read. I quite liked the piecemeal approach to storytelling, but it did lead to some repetition... A tighter edit (and yes, catching all those typos) would have elevated it. But I'm excited to dive into more 33 1/3 reads
Overall, a very enjoyable read. I quite liked the piecemeal approach to storytelling, but it did lead to some repetition... A tighter edit (and yes, catching all those typos) would have elevated it. But I'm excited to dive into more 33 1/3 reads
Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews