The most recent signing to the Matador Records label, Jay Reatard, reached a new level of notoriety in an overstuffed Silver Dollar Room last Thursday by throwing a punch at an overanxious fan — which ended the show after three songs and six minutes. Not to be outdone, even when they’re not trying, local punk outfit Fucked Up hit an outdoor stage last Saturday night at the State University of New York’s Purchase campus, and had their sound cut off on the third song.

But the show wasn’t quite as concise. “I’d say we were on for 12 minutes,” Fucked Up leader Damian Abraham tells Scrolling Eye. “We write longer songs.”

Matador general manager Patrick Amory drove up to SUNY Purchase, evidently to size up the band, and at least came home with a humdinger of a report for the record label’s Matablog. Amory described the university's Culture Shock event as having a “SUPER hippie jamband bummer vibe, frisbees, some SERIOUS hackysack, tons of vegan food.” The other acts ranged from Cassidy and Jadakiss to Deerhoof and Cursive — not a punk festival, which made it appealing, on paper.

“This sounded like the kind of school that was into different kinds of music, more than the usual college rock,” says Abraham. “It specializes in arts programs, so this was their equivalent of homecoming weekend, where they put on a carnival atmosphere. I even got to try my very first deep-fried Oreo cookie — it was great.”

Otherwise, the visitors from Toronto spent the afternoon killing time by their van, occasionally soaking up the spring thaw. “The crowd was a weird combination of hipsters and hippies,” says Abraham. “But I think it was a situation that if you knew anyone who went to the school then you could weasel your way in there.”

Sounds like it, because it’s hard to imagine said hippies and hipsters getting all raucous at the sight of Abraham’s shirtless girth stomping onstage on an April night. Then again, the truth might be stranger than any of Fucked Up’s fictions.

“They were using these wooden sawhorses instead of regular barricades,” says Abraham. “Since I figured they weren’t doing anything to keep me apart from the crowd, I just knocked them down. All of a sudden, more police than I’ve ever seen formed a human barricade instead — and that was the end of the show.”

While the plug was pulled — on the PA, followed by the rest of the power — things ended with a shrug and a smile, according to the Matablog. While Fucked Up were being scolded for what appeared to be an enticement to riot, Abraham tried to reason with a state trooper in his best Eddie Haskell voice. Weren’t the sawhorses there to protect performers from the audience, not the other way around? The cop’s response: “You could have squished some kids to death.”

Fucked Up quickly assessed this wasn’t worth deliberating. “We wanted to leave with our visas intact,” says Abraham. “And now we can live to fight another day.”

Last time we met Fucked Up, they were part of a class-action lawsuit against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Wenner Media for a dubiously contextualized cartoon map of the “Indie Rock Universe” — designed as a Rolling Stone fold-out backed with an advertisement for Camel cigarettes, who were boasting of their ongoing “commitment to supporting and promoting independent record labels.”

There have been no new developments in the still-proceeding case, reports Abraham. However, this week’s news that Rolling Stone is experiencing the biggest advertising slump this year among music magazines — down 33 per cent, partly due to the fact that R.J. Reynolds pulled all their print advertising after last fall’s debacle — suggests that their complaint had some ripple effect.

Fucked Up’s offense at having their band name attached to what looked like a Camel promotion was entirely sincere, even if the band’s Situationist-influenced antics have also generated a share of attention for being a bit disingenuous.

“Police watch riot at SXSW” read the NME.com headline last month, reporting that a 4am gig on the Lemar Pedestrian Bridge in Austin generated a mosh pit so intense that the bridge started to buckle — and fans were forced to jump into the river.

“No one jumped in the river,” concedes Abraham. “There were cops there but they didn’t come near us. We have a friend with a generator who makes it possible to play these shows, but this one was especially crowded — there was a rumour going around that the original lineup of Black Flag were going to reunite.”

Besides, when 1,000 kids show up in the middle of the night there’s got to be some kind of story to tell. And, when there isn’t, maybe you have to make it up?

That wasn’t the case at the next night’s SXSW show, however, where Abraham kicked off the band’s set at a Vice magazine party by smashing a fluorescent lightbulb against his head. Tossing the broken glass into the audience, a shard nicked guitarist Mike Haliechuk in the face, and that was the end of that show. (Might this have been some karmic payback for Haliechuk telling Stereogum about the trials and tribulations of having to work in a “lightbulb factory” to pay the bills?)

Some pranks come off better than others, though: a blog post on April 1 claiming they’d be changing the band name to F’ed Up “in order to reach more people with our message and spread the word” drew nasty reaction from punk purists.

Given how the local popular culture is currently being defined by Radiohead remix contest winners and Juno Award nominees Holy Fuck and the Bill C-10 tax credit withdrawal-inducing film Young People Fucking, it seems quite unlikely.

Abraham continues to be a favourite pundit-on-call for MTV Live — payment usually consists of a fruit and vegetable platter, although he got an actual cheque for appearing on their recent Gladiator Week competition. Fucked Up is also booked to play Wrongbar (1279 Queen W.) on May 13, on a bill headlined by British farcepunks Hard Skin, taking up an offer extended in an EYE WEEKLY piece on the Parkdale club’s aspiration to have an eccentric booking policy.

The band’s dance card this year also included a UK tour opening for Gallows, whose burgeoning popularity gave Abraham a greater taste of real rock stardom.

“It was weird at first having to adjust to the kids there,” he says. “I’d be up there smashing cans on my head and, in turn, they would get really aggressive. Punk rock grew out of alienation and boredom. They must still be alienated and bored.”

But they were enthusiastic to meet a gregarious performer like Abraham, especially those youngsters for whom this was the first concert they’d seen.

“And when some of them were taking pictures with me I was wondering if it would be their last,” he says. “Their parents would find them posing next to a guy with no shirt on, covered in blood, and they’d never let them out of the house again.”

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