kleph
01-04-2006, 11:15 AM
our band could be your life
real names be proof
me and mike watt
we played for years
punk rock changed our lives
we learned punk rock in hollywood
drove up from pedro
we were fucking corndawgs
we'd go drink and pogo
"mr narrator!"
this is bob dylan to me
my story could be his songs
i'm his soldier child
our band is scientist rock
but i was e bloom
then richard hell
joe strummer
and john doe
me and mike watt
playing guitar
- "History Lesson (Part II)," The Minutemen
San Pedro, California is just a half-hour drive north of Los Angeles on Interstate 110. It might as well be located in another galaxy. The flaccid idealism that props up the city of angels doesn’t carry one very far in working-class San Pedro. Folks who live here tend to be pragmatic and realists. That sensibility and gravity combined to create one of the greatest punk bands America ever produced.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/mmen83b_865176.jpgIt all started one day in the mid 1970s in San Pedro when a kid named Dennes Boon fell out of a tree onto another kid, Mike Watt. The two became fast friends, partially because of their shared love for music. They both took up instruments but knew early on they were not cut out to be rock stars. But they loved music so they kept playing. And then punk came and everything changed.
In the late 1970s, Los Angeles was a nexus of a thriving second wave punk scene fueled by such acts s the Germs and Black Flag. Sure, lots of folks joined in for the anarchy and the pretense of power screaming at the microphone projected. But Boon and Watt understood the real power of what they saw immediately –that you could do it yourself and that independence was a frontier of possibility rather than an excuse to be sloppy.
“The fancy musicianship of '70s arena rock bands went out the window,” Watt says “In those days, from listening to arena rock and records that were more conventional, we thought there were formulas you had to abide by. And the punk movement exploded all that for us.”
So as the 80s dawned, so did the Minutemen.
Driven by creative punk acts like Wire (whose seminal Pink Flag was a huge influence to their work) and more experimental 60s bands such as Captain Beefheart, the Minutemen took to punk more as a means to an end. Instead of trying to be like all the other bands pounding the circuit they decided to take a different tack: "we wanted to see what type of band The Minutemen were," said Watt.
They rejected the growing stridency of "hardcore punk" called their style "econo" and stuck to it faithfully. They were not interested in being louder, angrier and bigger than anyone else. They were interested in taking exactly what they on hand had an taking it as far as possible – a very San Pedro ideal. And they demonstrated exactly how fucking far that could be.
That meant taking the short song structure and tearing it apart. It meant experimenting with random sounds and irregular time structures. It meant treading unusual places for song subjects. It meant getting rid of guitar solos, choruses, and fade-outs. It meant looking to other musical genres such as jazz, R&B and soul for inspiration.
And always doing it in about a minute’s time. Writing such short songs allowed the band to accumulate an immense catalog of material which includes a breathtaking lack of filler.
They also had a sense of humor, a rare attribute among punksters of the era. Who else would write a song "The Roar of the Masses Could Be Farts"?
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/mmen84d.jpgAnd the Minutemen were one of the first American punk bands rejecting the ethos of immaturity bestowed on the music by the Sex Pistols. For the Minutemen, punk was a powerful creative obligation and it opened the doors for carrying that idea into your life as well. They were one of the first bands to urge audiences to register to vote.
They produced five albums and one definitive masterpiece until December 22, 1985 when D. Boon was killed in an auto accident outside of Tuscon, Arizona. Want to know how awesome the musical world almost was? At the time, the Minutemen were touring with the Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Saccharine Trust and SWA.
But while Boon’s death brought an end to the music itself, the true legacy of the band is their fearless attitude toward experimentation and the integrity of their individualism. Boon, Watt and Hurley proved it was important to keep thinking even if you are playing at 150 miles per hour and sweat is whipping off you onto the kids in the front row. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t but doing it is what mattered. And as soon as more people started doing it. well then we were gonna have a real musical revolution on our hands.
Minutemen links:
Mike Watt's homepage: http://www.hootpage.com/
Minutemen Trouser Press entry: http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=minutemen
Minutemen Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minutemen_(band)
FilmJournal Review of "We Jam Econo; The Story of the Minutmen": http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050040
real names be proof
me and mike watt
we played for years
punk rock changed our lives
we learned punk rock in hollywood
drove up from pedro
we were fucking corndawgs
we'd go drink and pogo
"mr narrator!"
this is bob dylan to me
my story could be his songs
i'm his soldier child
our band is scientist rock
but i was e bloom
then richard hell
joe strummer
and john doe
me and mike watt
playing guitar
- "History Lesson (Part II)," The Minutemen
San Pedro, California is just a half-hour drive north of Los Angeles on Interstate 110. It might as well be located in another galaxy. The flaccid idealism that props up the city of angels doesn’t carry one very far in working-class San Pedro. Folks who live here tend to be pragmatic and realists. That sensibility and gravity combined to create one of the greatest punk bands America ever produced.
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/mmen83b_865176.jpgIt all started one day in the mid 1970s in San Pedro when a kid named Dennes Boon fell out of a tree onto another kid, Mike Watt. The two became fast friends, partially because of their shared love for music. They both took up instruments but knew early on they were not cut out to be rock stars. But they loved music so they kept playing. And then punk came and everything changed.
In the late 1970s, Los Angeles was a nexus of a thriving second wave punk scene fueled by such acts s the Germs and Black Flag. Sure, lots of folks joined in for the anarchy and the pretense of power screaming at the microphone projected. But Boon and Watt understood the real power of what they saw immediately –that you could do it yourself and that independence was a frontier of possibility rather than an excuse to be sloppy.
“The fancy musicianship of '70s arena rock bands went out the window,” Watt says “In those days, from listening to arena rock and records that were more conventional, we thought there were formulas you had to abide by. And the punk movement exploded all that for us.”
So as the 80s dawned, so did the Minutemen.
Driven by creative punk acts like Wire (whose seminal Pink Flag was a huge influence to their work) and more experimental 60s bands such as Captain Beefheart, the Minutemen took to punk more as a means to an end. Instead of trying to be like all the other bands pounding the circuit they decided to take a different tack: "we wanted to see what type of band The Minutemen were," said Watt.
They rejected the growing stridency of "hardcore punk" called their style "econo" and stuck to it faithfully. They were not interested in being louder, angrier and bigger than anyone else. They were interested in taking exactly what they on hand had an taking it as far as possible – a very San Pedro ideal. And they demonstrated exactly how fucking far that could be.
That meant taking the short song structure and tearing it apart. It meant experimenting with random sounds and irregular time structures. It meant treading unusual places for song subjects. It meant getting rid of guitar solos, choruses, and fade-outs. It meant looking to other musical genres such as jazz, R&B and soul for inspiration.
And always doing it in about a minute’s time. Writing such short songs allowed the band to accumulate an immense catalog of material which includes a breathtaking lack of filler.
They also had a sense of humor, a rare attribute among punksters of the era. Who else would write a song "The Roar of the Masses Could Be Farts"?
http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/2/0/1/mmen84d.jpgAnd the Minutemen were one of the first American punk bands rejecting the ethos of immaturity bestowed on the music by the Sex Pistols. For the Minutemen, punk was a powerful creative obligation and it opened the doors for carrying that idea into your life as well. They were one of the first bands to urge audiences to register to vote.
They produced five albums and one definitive masterpiece until December 22, 1985 when D. Boon was killed in an auto accident outside of Tuscon, Arizona. Want to know how awesome the musical world almost was? At the time, the Minutemen were touring with the Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Saccharine Trust and SWA.
But while Boon’s death brought an end to the music itself, the true legacy of the band is their fearless attitude toward experimentation and the integrity of their individualism. Boon, Watt and Hurley proved it was important to keep thinking even if you are playing at 150 miles per hour and sweat is whipping off you onto the kids in the front row. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t but doing it is what mattered. And as soon as more people started doing it. well then we were gonna have a real musical revolution on our hands.
Minutemen links:
Mike Watt's homepage: http://www.hootpage.com/
Minutemen Trouser Press entry: http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=minutemen
Minutemen Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Minutemen_(band)
FilmJournal Review of "We Jam Econo; The Story of the Minutmen": http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001050040