Justice for Fred “FREAK” Smith.

The death of musician Fred “Freak” Smith, known for his contributions to hardcore punk and his ostentatious humor, remains unsolved. photo- Onam Emmet

I was blown away the first time I ever listened to him. Sometime in 1985, in Mrs. Johnson’s Algebra II class my friend Karl passed me a cassette containing a song called “Manic D.” by the Washington D.C. hardcore band, Beefeater. I was a heavy Hendrix fan, Karl knew it, and the cover by Beefeater piqued his interest in the original — so we swapped.

I got home, popped it into my Sony Walkman, donned my headphones and was skeptical. I was 15 and considered myself a purist about all things Jimi. Of course, the first thing I tuned into, looking for a reason to discount it, was the guitar player.

Any musician who understands song structure will tell you, that song is not an easy one to pull off. It’s got such a jagged and circular rhythm, lots of moving parts. And as I sat there listening, I fell in love with the guitar work of the legendary Fred FREAK Smith.

In a music genre and scene known for its eccentric personalities and raw, loud, and fast, emotive bands and personalities, FREAK made most of them seem like normal nine to five rat-racers.

“’Fred didn’t fit in the world,’ says Ian MacKaye, founder of Dischord Records, the label that released the music of Smith’s first and best-known band, Beefeater. ‘He lived the way he wanted to live.’

MacKaye’s earliest memories of Smith are of seeing…