Fiasco: The _Heeb_ Interview

A trio of barely 18-year-olds playing music that sounds like instrumental versions of Fugazi at warp speed, Fiasco has become a fixture at some of the best shows in the same Brooklyn underground scene that helped spawn bands like TV on the Radio and Yeasayer. Not bad, considering the members of the band are still in high school. I spoke to guitarist Lucian Buscemi (middle) just as their second record, Native Canadians, was released by Impose Records, this week.

Why did you name the album Native Canadians?

We were all hanging out one day and we came to the topic of eskimos. Then I corrected myself and said, oh wait they’re actually Inuit, but then Julian said, ‘No! you can’t call them Inuit either now!’ Then I said, ‘Well what do you call the native people of Northern North America and Julian said, ‘I think by all their normal tribes names.’ Then I said, ‘Well that’s kind of inconvenient. Why can’t we just call them Native Canadians, just how we call the native people of America, Native Americans?’ We all thought it was funny, but it turns out that’s an actual term.

You guys are native Brooklynites, right?

I was born in Manhattan, but I have no memory of living there, so I’m basically a Brooklynite.

Do you find it hard being an underage band in a city like New York?

We didn’t really know where to play except for like three venues in Manhattan. At the time, it wasn’t necessarily hard to get a show. There’s actually a law (or something of the sort) that lets performers of any age play in a venue, but a) if the performers are underage a guardian has to be present and b) all their underage friends can’t see them. So whenever we happened to play a 21+ show, none of our friend’s showed up, so it just wasn’t that fun. But that’s in the past. Now we’ve tapped into a huge resource of all these amazing all ages DIY spaces. Since then we’ve made it a policy to only play all ages shows.

Have you guys been turned away from any shows because you were too young to go into the venue?

I have only once. My friends were playing at Southpaw which is normally 18+ and the people who organized the show just could not get the guards to let us in. It sucked so much because we didn’t come to sneak drinks, we came to enjoy our friend’s music.

Think you will try to make a career out of the band?

We sort of already are. I don’t know how successful it will be, which is why I’m going to college. If I can’t make a living of playing in a band, then I’ll have a college degree to fall back on.

Listen to "Steve Herman" off of Native Canadians.

What do you think?