By Duncan Scott Davidson

FUSE! SHOWS don't last long. Like the Germs 20-plus years before them, they've found themselves banned from most clubs. "It's not hard for us to get shows," drummer Luis, better known by his Fuse! army designation, F-1, said in a recent phone interview. "We're lucky that shows get offered to us a lot, but we have to deny 8 out of 10 shows, because they usually set them up in a place that we're not liked, by the management or the sound people."

The trio – Luis, 25; guitarist-lyricist Marcelino, or F-2, 27; and bassist Sergio, or F-3, also 27 – have been stirring up shit in greater Los Angeles County (Downey, Norwalk, and Buena Park) for some time now. Filmmaker Jensen Rufe made a documentary about them before their debut album, The Fisherman's Wife (In the Red), came out last month. The film, a 24-minute short titled simply The Fuse, spurred Film Threat reviewer Pete Vonder Haar to quip, "Faux indie rockers who get stupid drunk, slam around like drunken frat boys, and forget how to play their instruments are a dimebag a dozen."

The band members look at live performance as "a participatory sport, a full-contact action sport," Luis says, inadvertently reinforcing the frat boy image that turned off Vonder Haar. "If you're in the audience, and you're seeing a band that wows you, you should by all rights go up onstage and dance with them, and, like, do whatever you want. It's 30 minutes, or 20 minutes, or sometimes in our case, 15 minutes – like a 15-minute excuse to do whatever you want."

Now, I've got to admit that I've yet to see the Fuse! live. Nonetheless, their album has found its way into heavy rotation on my boom box: its 14 jagged, Danelectro-driven, jangle-punk tracks clock in at just under 33 minutes and are crammed full of danceable, treble-tainted hooks and F-2's terse, somewhat petulant howls about "the revolution" and kids who "don't mind dying." According to Luis, it takes them "forever" to write songs, because they "didn't want it to sound like every other band."

Fifteen minutes of fame

So what's the story behind playing 15-minute shows? Are audience members – the kids, the young revolutionaries in wait – better served for their six or seven bucks by 15 minutes of drunken antics or by, say, an entire hour (!) of actual rock, the type the Fuse! are at least capable of delivering in a studio setting?

The first time I heard the Germs was on my older sister's vinyl copy of the Decline of Western Civilization soundtrack. And while I loved every other track on that record, none of the Germs songs made it to the TDK audiotape I dubbed from it as a 12-year-old. I made it well into my early 20s thinking they were shitty, before I listened to (GI) (Slash/Warner Bros., 1979) and realized that not only were they a tight punk rock band, but also that Darby was a brilliant lyricist. There was something about too much heroin and whipped cream that blunted the music's live presentation, as opposed to kicking it up a notch, which is what live shows should do. Certainly the Bad Brains weren't banned in D.C. for putting on lame, half-assed shows.

Punk rock broke down the barriers between the audience and the band that rigidified during the stadium-rock years of the '70s. But, for me at least, punk did it with the idea that, hey, I can do that – I can play the riff to "Blitzkrieg Bop," as opposed to, I can jump onstage and sing the chorus next to Joey Ramone. Sure, there's the stage-diving thing, but the guys who need to prance around before they jump off have always stuck in my craw. The fact that the Fuse! prefer to play places with no stage so everyone can come up and get involved seems to be taking the "break down the wall" thing in a narrow, literal sense. Instead the idea should be that the music is wound so tight – it's so spot-on and has so much emotion behind it – that you, an audience member, are moved. You're taken to a different place. You become one with the frenzy.

Organ music

The best shows I've ever seen have been the Jesus Lizard, pre-Capitol. Their version of breaking down the barriers between the band and the audience involved vocalist David Yow being constantly in the audience, plus producing such a ferocious, lurching, tightly woven sonic assault that everyone in the building had to be involved on a visceral level – the rhythm section of Mac McNeilly and David Sims took control of your heart rate and internal organs. They put on a show, but their sound and stage presence forbade a "jump up and sing along" ethos.

I remember working the stage for a Jesus Lizard show at Slim's. I sat behind Sims's bass amp, and I didn't have to get up to throw anyone off the stage for the entire set. He controlled his space – if someone was in it for too long, he gave him or her a gentle but firm boot in the ass. He was a professional. He had a job to do: rock shit to the core, and this involved hitting the right notes, and with feeling.

But the crux of putting on a good show isn't always chops. Local favorites the Coachwhips are long on feeling but not exactly classically trained. They do, however, get the party rocking and might not be averse to a fan or two getting up onstage and doing the swim, but they play a whole set. So it's not all chops, and it's not all antics – it's both, and as in the truism about life, so much of it is in the showing up. Why is it not enough for the Fuse! to get up there and play their songs, songs they labored over to write and record, as tightly and with as much emotion as possible? Are they ducking the responsibility of putting on a show by relying too heavily on booze and "outrageous" behavior?

Am I a hater?

I'd say I'm not. When I interviewed Luis and Sergio on the phone, they seemed like really cool guys. Marcelino's clipped e-mail responses to my questions seemed somewhat snippy and petulant, however. When I asked him how much of the Fuse!'s revolution was about blowing shit up and how much was about looking sharp, he retorted, "You probably dress really bad, right? Don't be a hater."

Whatever. I've got a thick skin and can certainly use some fashion pointers. But I find myself looking forward to their shows at the Hemlock Tavern and Thee Parkside to see who'll get a guitar thrown at them (pick me! pick me!), not to hear how The Fisherman's Wife will sound live.

"We like to get even, so don't be stupid," Marcelino wrote ominously. Maybe I'll just drive the cab instead of checking out the shows. I might be a pussy, but how embarrassing would it be to get brained by a guy dressed like Paul McCartney, circa '66?