la dimension de trastos: minutemen

Showing posts with label minutemen. Show all posts

Saturday, September 27, 2014

WATT'S HIS NAME

Oh no, I'm not stepping a foot towards this black hole. Too deep, not tonight. The black hole in question is Mike Watt, or rather his output over the years. There's just too much to do a comprehensive overview. I'm not a full on fiend of Watt, which isn't to say I don't dig his work. It's just that my high regard for him is tainted by a long list of non-musical reasons, all based on general impressions. First and foremost, he seems like a regular guy. If he didn't, the whole thing would go bust. He's also hardworking, always playing with this person or that, and, from what I've seen in interviews, he's a good conversationalist, coming off as genuine, humble, and excitable, the type of guy you could imagine having a beer with.

The thing I like most about Mike Watt is that you just know that, at every milestone in his post-Minuteman career, he's paused to think about the late D,Boon, his childhood friend and band mate in the Minutemen. At least that's the type of guy he seems to be. The two met as kids, they were thirteen, when D, Boon fell out of a tree, right when Watt happened to be walking by. I forget all the details, but that's how they met. They discovered punk rock together, started a band together, the Reactionaries, and then the Minutemen, Then, in 1985, Boon was killed in a traffic accident. These guys were tight, like brothers. It had to hurt. Yet, Watt continued, and still does, to grind away.

Watt started another band, firehouse, and after that did some solo stuff and a lot of collaborating (a big part of any black hole), There was the band with Thurston Moore and Ron Asheton, another with Nels Cline and two drummers. There was the Ball-Hog or Tugboat LP with one hell of a cast, members of Black Flag, the Germs, Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Parliament, the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., the Screamers, and that's only about half of them (check the entry at Wikipedia). The collaboration that got me thinking about Watt a couple of days ago was a TV appearance from the Jon Stewart show, in 1995. The song was "Big Train", written by Chip and Tony Kinman, two ex-Dils, Assembled to play the song, Eddie Vedder on rhythm guitar, ex-Germ Pat Smear on lead guitar (slide of all things), and ex-Nirvana Dave Grohl on drums, Of course all these guys were in other subsequent bands, I'm just mentioning the early ones for some historical context. I think the song is from the Kinman's Blackbird period, several years after the Dils. (Those Kinmans are another black hole.) I almost forgot to mention that Watt was a latter day member of the Stooges, and might still be off and on. I don't know, I don't keep track of these things.

Here's a mess of stuff, beginning with the Reactionaries, Watt and Boon's pre-Minutemen band. There's a few Minutemen cuts, and some solo stuff. The live cuts aren't the best quality, but included because of the telling choices in covers. If you want to know the story of the Minutemen, there's a link to the documentary We Jam Econo. There's another documentary about Watt, Eyegifts From Minnesota, And to get an idea of what winds his watch, and hear him shooting the shit with on air guests. check out his radio show.

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Minutemen - Fortunate Son mp3 at Corn Dogs Creedence cover

Minutemen - Corona mp3 at Internet Archive

Minutemen - Party With Me Punker mp3 at We Got Power

Mike Watt and the Pair of Pliers mp3 at Corn Dogs Blackbird cover
Mike Watt - Liars Beware (live) mp3 at Corn Dogs Richard Hell cover

Mike Watt - She Don't Know Why I'm Here (live) mp3 at Corn Dogs The Last cover

The Crew of the Flying Saucer - The Little Drummer Boys (streaming) at Groove Shark With Nels Cline and two drummers

Video:

We Jam Econo - Minutemen documentary at YouTube

Eyegifts From Minnesota - Mike Watt documentary at YouTube

Mike Watt - Big Train at YouTube From the Jon Stewart Show 1995, with Pat Smear, Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder

Visit:
CornDogs.org - Mike Watt fan site with tons of stuff
Mike Watt's Hoot Page
Mike Watts Tour Diary - From the 2011 Stooges European tour (with James Williamson)
The Watt from Pedro Show - Mike Watt's online radio show. A regular salad bowl.

The Watt from Pedro Show - Past shows

I Stand for Language, I Speak for Truth, I Shout for History at The Adios Lounge Excellent post about the Minutemen

Saturday, February 25, 2012

I FORGOT ALL ABOUT SKINNY TIES

These should send you Minutemen completists into a frenzy. Maybe not. They might be pretty common to Minutemen fiends, I've really got no idea. But I do know enough to post them just in case. What you've got here is the pre-Minutemen combo, the Reactionaries, back when they were a four piece (with singer Martin Tamburovich). If you're into the band, you'll notice a few similarities. They're more interesting to me as an anthropological artifact. The Minutemen section in my records consists of but one title (Double Nickles), so I'd be out rounding up their official releases if I needed more.

As long as I'm putting those up, I figured I might as well put up some other associated things. There's a link to the host of these songs, Corn Dogs, a pretty good fan site (live shows, obscure stuff and what not). Another cool read, if you've got a few days to read it, is Mike Watt's tour diary, from his tour with the Stooges. I just jumped around on that one (it's really long), and, believe me, there's plenty of things to keep you amused. There's also a link down there to Mike Watt's radio show, and one to the fine piece that the Adios Lounge wrote about the Minutemen a while back, with some Minutemen tunes and way more substantial info than you'll find around these parts.

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Listen:
The Reactionaries - Cheap False Teeth mp3 at Corn Dogs
The Reactionaries - Brigate Rose mp3 at Corn Dogs
The Reactionaries - Video Madonna mp3 at Corn Dogs
The Reactionaries - Innuendo mp3 at Corn Dogs
The Reactionaries - Getting Existential On the Beach mp3 at Corn Dogs
The Reactionaries - God and Country mp3 at Corn Dogs
The Reactionaries - 1979 mp3 at Corn Dogs
The Reactionaries - My Heroes mp3 at Corn Dogs
Visit:
CornDogs.org - Mike Watt fan site with tons of stuff
Mike Watt's Hoot Page
Mike Watts Tour Diary - From the 2011 Stooges European tour (with James Williamson)
The Watt from Pedro Show - Mike Watt's online radio show. Coltrane, the Germs, Boris and Savoy Brown...you get the idea: a regular salad bowl.
This Ain't No Picnic - Minutemen post at The Adios Lounge

Monday, February 7, 2011

PRIDE OF PEDRO

If you were buying records in the 80s, and still had one toe in punk rock, it's almost guaranteed that you had a copy of the Minutemen's "Double Nickles On The Dime." The 1984 double LP was stylistically all over the place, and hardly punk sounding, but that was part of why it is a landmark album; because "Double Nickles" was where American punk rock really became more than just music, clothes and flicking cigarette butts. Everything about it, and the Minutemen, was about doing whatever you wanted, however you wanted, without fanfare. They were everyman, they were punk rock, and they were grunge before it became a genre. They had day jobs and were proud of their San Pedro roots, and their lack of "cool" is precisely what was cool about them. The Minutemen liberated punk rockers, freeing them from the pigeonholes they themselves had dug. They were a great fucking band.

Trailer for We Jam Econo, the Minutemen documentary

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Music: