Through the telephone lines from his home base in Washington D.C., Picciotto says " we have never had any self conscious agenda besides making music."

This non-agenda has taken has taken Fugazi through one classification after another as being anti-corporate, post-punk, politically driven, art rockers, and even bipolar since their formation in 1987.

After 15 years and 15 albums, and now The Furniture EP and The Argument, one might wonder what keeps a band going.

"The fact that we are continuing to figure out new ways to work with each other is what keeps it from being a nostalgia mission," says Picciotto when referring to his cohort band members Ian MacKaye, Joe Lally, and Brendan Canty.

Fugazi may seem unpractical in the business world. They don't sell t-shirts or posters, they keep their ticket prices at $5 a pop, with low album prices, no merchandising, and encourage free bootlegging.

"The way we function business-wise and organizationally, there hasn't been any progression because we started out with a template of complete autonomy," says Picciotto.

Fugazi still believes that music is art and is encouraged by art.

"Probably the biggest influence for us has been other people and bands from here in DC," says Picciotto. "Specific songs have been influenced by specific things [such as] film director John Cassavetes inspiring the song Cassavetes," he adds. John Cassavetes wrote She's So Lovely, the movie starring Sean Penn, Robin Penn, and John Travolta.

Even though the band has played countless shows in "places as disparate as Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Providence, Rhode Island" says Picciotto, the people and bands that they work with on a day-to-day basis, keep their egos in check.

"Their example has been what made us want to play in the first place and keeps us committed to maintaining some kind of standard for ourselves," comments Picciotto.

Having such a wild, ever changing but forever original style, album after album, Fugazi keeps thrashing out the songs.

"Pretty much all of the music is written by all of us together at practice. Generally the way it works is that one of us will come in with some small piece of an idea, then we all start adding things to it," explains Picciotto, "forcing it to couple with other parts that we have laying around, shifting and arranging and working it to death 'till everyone is satisfied that it holds together."

On one of the new albums The Argument, song number four Epic Problem ironically was started at the end of the '80s. "Until a song gets lyrics or is designated an instrumental, then that song isn't really considered complete, so it will languish in the 'to be finished' pile," says Picciotto. "Some songs have sat around waiting to be finished for years. Epic Problem on our new album waited for a decade before Ian got together a vocal part for it."

But after all the tours and all the recording, in their spare time "Joe does some drawing and works with stucco and plaster" and "Ian takes the occasional killer photo," says Picciotto. But as for Guy, "I took a helicopter ride over the Badlands that was pretty insane. It was run by some surly ass pilot who took some pretty sick banking angles with the copter. It was like a weird dream interlude."