“Ice Cream eating motherf*cker”: Fugazi, ice cream and a brilliantly surreal dressing down of skinheads
DC punk legend Ian MacKaye’s unwavering straight-edge, independent ethos still stands unrivalled. Eschewing any press coverage from publications that advertise alcohol or cigarettes, pulling all the stops to keep tickets for his shows as low as possible, and always advertising in underground publications, the post-hardcore Fugazi frontman remains fiercely committed to averting any scintilla of commercialism.
Ensuring that any gig he plays is accessible and welcoming to all, MacKaye imposes a strict ‘no moshing’ rule, eliminating any chance that a Fugazi set is hijacked by aggressive types looking for an excuse to throw their weight around and actively hurt others. This practice had become a staple to their sets and well-understood by anyone who had followed the band since their inception in 1986, but with the Billboard breakthrough of ’93’s In on the Kill Taker, a new influx of ‘fans’ who hadn’t got the memo thought “punk means moshing, right?” Wrong.
In true MacKaye fashion, Fugazi rejected lucrative record deals and top-billing at the biggest festivals of the day offered after In on the Kill Taker‘s success and opted to play a free show at their DC hometown’s Fort Reno Park. MacKaye spoke to the uninitiated: “Have a nice time… and tell all the fellas in the front who might get into some crazy violent thing–don’t, OK? Alright? This is not Lollapalooza.”
Despite the gig going well and the crowd losing it in the best possible way, two skinheads who were dead set on causing trouble and stitches started souring the mood, picked up immediately by MacKaye who calls them out mid-song: “Hey, don’t fucking kick people and don’t punch people. I’m talking to you right there, all right? I’m talking to you and you. You want do that fucking shit, get the fuck up on the football field, all right? I’m talking to you…It sucks to have to tell people to behave themselves, but there are other people here, too, all right? So try to be a little more kind.”
There’s always one twat at an open-air gig that size, and you better hope it’s not you. The two skinheads’ reactions can’t be verified, but we can surmise their boneheads flushing beetroot pink in acute embarrassment and looking for a hole to be swallowed in if they had any self-awareness. To further their humiliation, drummer Guy Picciotto rises from his stool and shoots MacKaye a question. “Bald guys?”
The “bald guys” had been spotted by Picciotto earlier, hanging out at the park’s Good Humour van tucking into an ice cream each, evaporating whatever ‘tough guy’ impressions they had desperately projected with every lick. Once Picciotto knew the idiots starting the ruckus were the pair scoffing on ice creams, Picciotto let rip:
“You know, I saw you two guys earlier at the Good Humor truck, and you were eating your ice cream like little boys, and I thought: ‘Those guys aren’t so tough; they’re eating ice cream. What a bunch of swell guys!’ I saw you eating cream, pal. Oh don’t you deny it, you were eating an ice cream cone. You were eating an ice cream cone. Oh, you’re bad now, but you were eating an ice cream cone, and I saw you. That’s the shit you can’t hide, you know? You got your fucking shit but you eat ice cream. Everybody knows it, the whole fucking place knows it. Ice cream-eating motherfuckers; that’s what you are!”
“Ice cream-eating motherfuckers” is inspired, but “saw you eating cream, pal” clinches it for the best line in Picciotto’s Good Humour call-out. If the word had yet to reach Fugazi’s new audience on leaving their bullying aggression well away from their sets, the Fort Reno Park ice-cream incident made it super clear in an admirable yet hilarious way.
