In Listen to This, I mention a few live performances that in one way or another had an overpowering effect on me: Robert Shaw conducting the Mahler Eighth at Carnegie Hall, Gidon Kremer leading an eerie chamber arrangement of Shostakovich's Fifteenth Symphony at midnight in Lockenhaus, and a 1991 church-basement rock show featuring the bands Fugazi, The Ex, and Nomeansno. Many other events might have come to mind, not least Bernstein's Mahler Second at National Cathedral and any number of performances by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, but those were the three that occurred to me as I was writing. As Ben Sisario notes in today's New York Times, Fugazi, successor to the iconic hardcore band Minor Threat, have begun putting out a huge trove of live recordings, and that show with The Ex, at Sacred Heart Church in Washington DC, is slated for future release. It was maybe the most intense rock show I ever saw — a sensual riot of disciplined ferocity on the part of musicians and audience alike. The room was swelteringly hot, and at one point I retreated to the depopulated backstage area for a spell of relief. I found myself looking out from behind Fugazi as they played, a writhing mass of flesh in front of them, pandemonium pending. I don't know whether The Ex will be included on the release — for me, they were the killer element — but it will be fun to hear the tape all the same. Or will it? In an age where almost nothing escapes recording, is it better to let the electronic evidence fall away and rely upon our imperfect, impassioned memories?
