"Merchandise"

Fugazi
(Columbia, 1990)

Back before Guy Picciotto declared that he hated the sound of guitars, Fugazi were damn near the only guitar band that mattered, making Marxism you could dance to years before Rage Within the Machine. A two-minute-and-55-second manifesto that explains why those "This Is Not a Fugazi T-Shirt" T-shirts were so funny, "Merchandise" finds MacKaye packing several forests' worth of Chomsky into inordinately catchy shout-along slogans -- "When we have nothing left to give/There will be no reason for us to live"; "Merchandise keeps us in line/Common sense says it's by design" -- and the closing, raucous, transcendent cry that launched a thousand all-ages consumer critiques: "You are not what you own!" Still available for less than $10, postpaid.

-- Carly Carioli