POP MUSIC REVIEW : Politically Correct, Politely Punk

Integrity may be the most discussed of rock ‘n’ roll virtues, and may be also the hardest to find. To Bruce Springsteen, integrity may mean the fortitude to play four-hour shows; to Metallica, uncompromising music. To Public Enemy it may mean freedom of speech. All these artists, though, work within the established system, plying their art for massive multinational corporations whose goals are almost certainly not their own. On the profit-loss sheet, integrity is just another public relations expense.

But at the Country Club on Wednesday, a rock ‘n’ roll Diogenes could have found an honest band.

Fugazi, a Washington post-punk band made up from the shards of the legendary hard-core band Minor Threat, is politically correct to an excruciating degree. They run their own record company; they refuse to play a show or sell an album that costs more than $6 (the Country Club charged less than half its usual admission); they don’t eat meat, drink nor take drugs, sing sexist or racist lyrics, nor perform at clubs that exclude minors.

When the fire marshals showed up Wednesday, Fugazi encouraged the mostly punk audience to find seats--and the audience did. When they felt the show was over, they stopped playing, and the audience understood that the institution of encores was probably politically incorrect too. Punk rage, we’re used to; punk politeness is something new.

All this integrity would go to waste if Fugazi didn’t rock, but they did, in a way similar to the first wave of British post-punk groups--PiL, Gang of Four, Magazine--without being at all derivative, as if they’d found the funk, dub and Beefheart influences all on their own. They seem very real.

Ex-Minor Threat singer Ian McKaye, who with the possible exception of Henry Rollins is the best frontman in American punk, coiled ferally on stage, his voice escaping him as if only with great effort. The sound was full and clean, scrubbed-up, drony funk with hooks. The greatest-band-in-the-world of the week.