150 Word Review: 'Instrument' (1999)
Patient boys
There is nothing wrong with today’s kids that exposure to '90s hardcore indie band Fugazi wouldn't fix (this is my opinion, and I'm sticking to it).
Directed by indie documentarian Jem Cohen, Instrument was shot from 1987 to 1997 and captures ten years of this influential, deeply political post-punk band. The foursome openly despised MTV, yet managed to reach a young audience with their anti-establishment songs and famously affordable tickets. Fugazi was fiercely anti-homophobic, anti-misogynist, and anti-racist decades before the rest of the music industry woke up.
Cohen chronicles the frenetic energy of their shows through dozens of home videos and various interviews with band members, including vocalists and guitarists Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto. Fugazi was the kind of music made for angsty adolescents with big hearts, moshing in basements. This doc is a tidal wave of noise, hormones, and idealism from the last decade of the 20th Century.