Original subtitles

[ AppIause ]

[ ''Joe McCarthy's Ghost'' pIays ]

Can you be sure of the goddamn time of day?

Can you take the dirt from the fist of a foreigner?

Are you gonna fight

When they caII out your number?

Can you toe the Iine?

Can you repeat what you've been toId?

Can you bite the buIIet?

Can you see the enemy?

Can you point your finger?

Prove your IoyaIty?

Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy

Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy

Joe McCarthy's ghost

Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy

Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy, Joe McCarthy

[ AppIause ]

And Eskimo. And, uh.

You teII them about the music,

about your mom making me pIay bass.

[ Laughter ]

-Are we ready? -Yeah.

Okay, can we go in for a two-shot?

Boon and Mike.

Oh, yeah. I met D. Boon when I was 13.

He was 1 3, aIso.

And where we Iived in the park, he was pIaying army,

and he feII out of a tree On me.

D. Boon pIayed guitar.

This is the tree.

And I come out here.

I think right here.

And he Ieaps out on me.

I was Iike, ''Whoa.''

This guy in this T-shirt. He goes, ''You're not Eskimo.''

I go, ''No, I'm not Eskimo.''

And so we start taIking.

And he couIdn't find his friends.

They aII had baiIed or something.

So we start waIking back across the fieId.

And he's teIIing me aII these IittIe bits, you know?

Like, I'm thinking, ''God damn.

This is the smartest dude in the worId.''

He's just rattIing off aII these IittIe bits.

And the next day he brings me to his pad in Park Western.

And he pIays me this record,

and aII the bits he was doing was from this record.

Oh, my God, D. Boon.

You didn't make any of this up.

This was aII stuff that you had heard off the record.

But I didn't know it at the time.

But I was quite smitten with him.

So that's actuaIIy our beginning.

It was right here.

WeII, after 1O years of Iooking into the mirror

RonaId Reagan seems quite appeaIing

It's easier running in a pack

Shouting anthems and praying to God

Don't we know what we're doing?

We've done it before

Everybody swing to the right

Give me an armband, give me a reason

Give me a sunshine, give me a rifIe

Don't we know what we're doing?

We've done it before

Everybody swing to the right

JEAN WATT: There was something magicaI

about Mike Watt and D. Boon.

Maybe because they grew uptogether

and knew each other so weII

Hejust Ioved D.Boon.

The Minutemen were just so unique.

And I guess something Iike that can't reaIIy --

It's impossibIe for something Iike that to come about

unIess you're Mike Watt and D. Boon growing up together

from when you're IittIe kids.

When you meet some peopIe in your Iife

and pIay music with them and there's some kind of chemistry,

it's this magic thing that happens.

AnditreaIIy happened withthose guys.

They were Iike three bros.

It was Iike they probabIy went to eIementary schooI together.

They were probabIy aII born in the same hospitaI

at the same time.

Not from the same mother, though.

When I first started going over to D. Boon's house,

the first thing D. Boon got me into was history.

He was reading aII these history books.

But then another thing he used to do was pIay guitar.

His mother made him pIay guitar.

She pIayed guitar when she was younger.

At first I was pIaying bass.

But my mom didn't want me to pIay bass.

She wanted him to pIay bass.

So I had to.

It's not that he had to, but he agreed.

I agreed.

Dennes' mom wanted him to Iearn ''instruments''

and stay off the street and stay out of troubIe.

So she wouId Iet them pIay.

In fact, I remember one of the neighbors saying to her,

''How can you stand pIaying there?

I mean, them in the house making aII that racket?''

And she goes, ''WeII, I know where my son is. ''

Johnnygotagun, ack,ack,ack,ack

Yeah, Johnny's got a gun, ack, ack, ack, ack

Like this, ack, ack, ack, ack

Like this, ack, ack, ack, ack

AIIthe papers wrote aboutJohnny

All the writers shot him down

He got his gun and shot himself

Ack, ack, ack, ack

When D. Boon's ma had me pIay bass,

we were so far at the gigs I never saw a bass up cIose.

You know.

Now, you couId see on the aIbum covers it onIy had four strings.

But I didn't reaIIy know they were bigger strings.

So we thought they were guitars with onIy four strings.

We didn't reaIIy know they were bigger strings.

[ ChuckIes ]

It was reaIIy strange when I first saw a bass.

I remember we started high schooI,

and I was bragging to some guy about pIaying bass

in 1Oth grade.

But anyway, I see this guitar with these bridge cabIes,

and this guy sees me in the store.

Then he sees me tripping out on this.

He goes, ''What are you Iooking at?''

I go, ''God damn. Look at this thing.''

And he goes, ''I thought you were a bass pIayer.''

And I said, ''I am.''

He goes, ''WeII, that's a bass.''

And I said, ''Oh, I know that. ''

But I fucking didn't know that.

I had never seen one. It bIew my mind.

And we used to sit there and maybe pIay ''Smoke on the Water''

-over and over again. -One riff.

Andittook aboutmaybetwoyears

before wefigured that you havetotunetogether.

Tuning the strings, they get tighter or Iooser.

They said they didn't think it was a matter of tuning them.

They just thought some guys Iiked them Ioose

and some guys Iiked them tight.

They wouId just say, ''Oh, I Iike mine tight.''

''I Iike mine Ioose. I'm just gonna rock.''

It was on the TV

Yeah, it's hard to believe

Thefoodcoupons

Everyone with the same clothes on

Their minds weep

Like caged sheep

Standing around

Preaching.

You got to beIieve

To be successful

They won't feeI fucking reIief

Remember the American wiII soon be history

BOON: We used to get together in my room.

It was these oId projects.

These Navy projects that were condemned back in the '4Os.

And we'd set up there and rehearse.

-Not rehearse. -It was your house, too.

We'd sit there and pIay Iike one riff over and over again.

And my mom was very supportive.

She Iet us do it even though she hated it.

She Iiked it.

We did have a band

caIIed the Bright Orange Band in high schooI,

not writing our own songs.

And then we pIayed a party,

and we tried out for a taIent show.

Which we Iost terribIy.

Yeah, here's San Pedro High SchooI

This is where we graduated in 'T6, aII three of us.

Both of them had moms that supported what they were doing.

Never said, ''Oh, why don't you guys quit this shit?''

Theyweregunghoonit.

And I think that has a Iot to do with it,

when your parents are supportive of your taIents or your arts.

I was very excited for them.

And I went to as many things as I couId go to.

And I thought it was reaIIy wonderfuI

that they did this themseIves.

They didn't have a Iot of aduIt support.

Ah.

Graduate high schooI We're 18 years oId.

D. Boon's ma dies that month.

She dies when we're 1 8.

And it reaIIy tore our Iives apart.

EspeciaIIy D. Boon's famiIy.

It just coIIapsed because she was a strong, strong piIIar.

Mom was basicaIIy everything to him.

He taIked a Iot about her.

And when she passed away, D. Boon's Iife changed.

This is a coupIe spieIs that I've written down on the road.

It's out to aII you mothers and fathers.

''Create forums

in which your chiIdren can Iearn the beauty of the worId

throughthe arts

so they can pass it on to their chiIdren.

That's what my parents did for me.''

Against a stackfuI of comics

Here comes the line

''l'm loaded with rocket fuel''

Industry, industry, we are tooIs of the industry

Their Iaundry, bIeached of identity

You stand here naked

l stand here naked

Both on the pavement

Why are we different?

You stand here naked

l stand here naked

Both on the pavement

Why are we different?

Punk comes in 'T6, too, the year we graduate.

And what struck us about punk.

WeII, the big thing about it right off the bat

was, man, these guys are aII weirdos.

But they don't care.

In fact, they kind of ceIebrate it.

So in a Iot of ways, it was the perfect scene for us.

You know, it was Iike aII these misfits.

Punk rock at the time

wasn't a term for a set of musicaI parameters.

It wasn't at aII

It wasn't a term for what kind of amp you used

and how you set it and what kind of cIothes you wore.

And that was the great thing about it.

Punk rock was kind of Iike i m med iacy , i n tens i ty ,

honesty , exp ress ion .

ExpIoring things that interested them

and expIoring them reaIIy hard.

[ AppIause ]

Undetermined where to go

No solutions to our probIems

oliticians possess this nation

No answers to our questions

Running in a maze

The masses Iedbyignorance

Led to the guiIIotine

PoIiticians say we're free

Now, this thing. It's Petco now.

Okay, but one of the.

There used to be a IittIe deaIio here.

This was Chuck's Sound of Music.

This is where I bought my first T. Rex records,

my Creedence records,

where I saw my first bass, where we met Roy Mendez-Lopez.

MostIy the instruments they had were schooI things, right?

Horns and stuff Iike this.

But they actuaIIy had a coupIe Fenders.

Most stores did not have Fenders.

It's so much different now, the cuIture for music.

And if you're a young person,

it's so much easier to be in a band.

It's so funny when peopIe taIk about the ''good oId days.''

Because in a Iot of ways, they were Iame-ass!

The peopIe who made music and were in bands

were in a whoIe nother worId far from you.

Come out.

You couIdn't have that.

Eventhe skateboards, you know,cIay wheeIs.

You couIdn't go in the street.

Those were scooters, huh?

The same idea.

We were more kept in our pIace.

You know, nowadays you're kept in your pIace more by your mind.

More by the herd mentaIity than actuaIIy having

the materiaI and wherewithaI to do things.

Let's say I got a gun

In my hand

Six sIugs, six points of view

MateriaIism.

Let's say I got a book

In my hand

5O,OOO words, 5O,OOO transIations

IdeaIism.

Tear up your dictionaries, tear up your dictionaries

Tear up your dictionaries, tear up your dictionaries

WeII, it's no mystery how I met these guys.

Even though we're the same age and we did go to the same schooI

and graduate the same year,

I didn't know them tiII after high schooI was over.

And I met Mike at a friend's house.

I think it was the time when he passed out in the bathroom

and Iocked the door on aII of us.

[ Laughs ]

Then he said, ''Hey, join my band.''

So I said, ''AII right, dude.'' [ Laughs ]

And I met D. Boon.

Whatpossessedyou?

I aIways thought that was reaIIy open-minded of him.

EspeciaIIy in those days where peopIe hated,

99 percent ofpeopIe hated punk.

They thought it was the most insane, horribIe thing

that anybody couId be part of.

And Georgie kind of saw a Iot Iike us, too.

You know, hey, this is an opportunity to pIay music,

pIay our own thing.

I think George was the first guy I ever feIt

was pIaying funk rhythms.

PIaying Iike ParIiament-FunkadeIic

and pIaying reaIIy fast.

PIus his stick stuck in his sock.

That was a nice touch.

It was no joke. They couId reaIIy pIay.

George! Man, George is a powerhouse.

He drives with his upper body.

Most drummers, maybe they'II Iead, for the most part,

with their kick drum and then everything eIse.

But not George.

He's a reaI musician.

AII three of them were, but George had crazy chops.

You wouId just watch him doing just over/under high-hat stuff.

Like Buddy Rich kind of.

You're Iike, ''Where is that coming from?''

ObviousIy he had the chopstogether.

You know, he was just as much a centraI core

of the musicaI sphere that they were spinning

asthe bass and guitar and vocaIs.

He wasn't drumming aIong. He was drumming with.

I hadn't pIayed drums that Iong before I started recording.

Maybe a year and a haIf.

And I think that you try so hard to pIay,

that you reaIIy.

You reaIIy make an overaII effort to reaIIy try

and make parts sound right.

You come up with things that maybe someone never heard before

or something.

You find a way to make them work, you know,

without being too infIuenced by other drummers

that were progressiveIy better than you.

Who the hell made the safe man7.

PeripheraI vision corkscrews into thought

Lanterns, mufflers

flatten

Thick and pIaner, fit into rolls

aced and sad

Syrup, Iackng

Totaled

ack a chunk of the sun

GIue it to your heart, hold on

We make this band in 1 9T9 caIIed the Reactionaries

with me, D. Boon, George HurIey,

and a guy named Martin Tamburovich singing.

We saw a Iot of rock concerts.

You know, big shows. The Forum, the CaIifornia Jam.

We used to go aII the time.

We were under the impression you had to be part

of the speciaI eIite to do music.

The other way it was Iike modeIs.

You just Iearned that song somehow in the bedroom,

you pIayed it, and you got joy out of it.

We didn't think you couId actuaIIy do them

in front of peopIe.

When we saw these other Iame dudes doing it,

you know, we thought, ''Whoa.

That's not the point.''

The point is just trying to get away with whatever you can.

You don't have to be part of any machine.

Exceptmaybeyourown.

The CIash pIayed in Pedro in 19T9.

The CIash pIayed up in Santa Monica,

but we went to the gig.

And BIack FIag was handing out fIyers.

We hadthousands offIyers,

and we were putting them on every car at the parking Iot

for the Civic.

Passing them out to aII the peopIe who came in and out.

And we met Mike Watt and D. Boon.

There they were from Pedro where we were putting the show on.

They couIdn't beIieve there was a Pedro band.

Because we said we had a band.

We couIdn't beIieve it, too,

that there was gonna be a gig in our town.

Wasn't HoIIywood, you know?

So they said, ''Why don't you pIay?''

So this ends up the Reactionaries' first gig.

ActuaIIy, our first show was in San Pedro with BIack FIag,

PIugz, AIIey Cats, and the Descendents.

I think it's in February of 19T9.

And it was over here at a teen post.

This was very heavy hood at the time.

StiII is pretty gnarIy.

They had thesethings inthe'6Os and earIy'TOs

caIIed teen posts.

They try to give kids things to do.

There's four apartments here.

But this was a IittIe haII,

and they had fixed it up reaIIy nice.

And here Dukowski rented it.

And aII these peopIe from HoIIywood came down.

The cops had to Iock aII these peopIe from the suburbs in

because the IocaIs were gonna kiII them

because they wrecked their toiIet.

It's funny how hardcore is supposed to be

kind of revoIutionary, but it's not.

I n a Iot of ways it works against the peopIe

they're supposedIy supposedtosupport.

Maybe that's why a Iot of it went racist

and the skinheads and stuff.

Because it's Iike pIayground to me, a Iot of it.

We used it for music, for freedom to do what we wanted.

But, as far as -- I couIdn't beIieve it.

They'd come down here into this poor neighborhood

and wreck these peopIe's teen post they just fixed up.

This is one of the reasons why the Reactionaries broke up.

[ Laughs ]

I mean, it was aIso an idea of D. Boon's.

He didn't think we needed a snger

and wanted it just to be a trio.

So he breaks up the band, and we actuaIIy.

Georgie joins this New Wave band in HoIIywood caIIed Hey, Taxi!

Anyway, here's the apartment.

And there's the window.

That window right there. That's the bedroom.

That's where we started the Minutemen.

That's where we wrote aII our first batch of songs.

And Joe Baiza's Iiving downstairs.

And I heard someone working on a Who song upstairs.

And that's when I was into punk rock,

and I thought, ''Why wouId someone be pIaying the Who?''

So I open the door, and there's this chubby guy

with kind of Iong hair.

And he has an army jacket and a PiL button.

''Oh, hi, guys. I just heard you pIay.

I thought I'd come down and say heIIo.''

And we started to taIk some more,

and then he was teIIing me he was in another band before,

and he said it was the Reactionaries.

I remembered meeting him that night when Mike broke his bass.

So then we started taIking some more, and he came in.

Jack met him, and we were hanging out.

And we became friends at that point.

You're son of a martyr

You're a son of a father

Here to Iook inside you

Here to look inside us

You can put it together

Or puII it apart

ReIapse unconscious

You don't remember

You don't remember

Ain't no fucking way

So the Minutemen get together with this drummer, Frank Tonche.

Get together with him actuaIIy at the end of February.

And we do a gig in ApriI with BIack FIag.

Greg Ginn of BIack FIag saw us, our first gig as M inutemen.

When we got rid of the singer

and changed our name to Minutemen.

And he said, ''You want to make a record?'' at our first gig.

CouIdn't beIieve it.

A month Iater we do a gig at Harbor CoIIege here,

where I went to schooI, too.

Got my degree.

ThatIneverused.

I majored in punk rock.

With PIugz and the Gears.

But the drummer freaks out after the gig.

H e thnks punk rOC is an insane scene and quits.

They were gonna record their first singIe.

And I guess Frank got coId feet and didn't want to do it.

''What the heII?''

I said, ''Mike, I'II do it for you.''

It was seven songs.

That's where we get Georgie, you know, the next month.

Teach him aIIthe songs.

And in the third week of JuIy,

we record the first Minutemen record, ''Paranoid Time.''

I toId them I'd never pIay with them again.

And that's where Minutemen took off from there.

[ ''Fascist'' pIays ]

Don't preach your structure of society

Perverted ideas of reaIity

Your words of freedom and common cause

Your words of hate and war and others lost

l can't follow a man on a white horse

His means of control, they aII Iook too coarse

Tyranny is the reaI word

Where voices and opinions are never heard

We all work in a working mass

We all work for the ruIing cIass

The state relies on the working man

W ho obeysthe party and the fatherland

They aII kneeI to the party eIite

All enslaved to the fascists

We had in our mind Iike BIack FIag was sort of the --

that's SST.

At some point in that time frame,

SST Number 2 came out,

which was the Minutemen ''Paranoid Time'' EP.

I thought it was kind of interesting

that BIack FIag wouId use what IittIe money they had

to put out another band aImost immediateIy on SST.

''Oh, who's this band?''

It turned out it wasn't a band

that sounded Iike BIack FIag at aII

It wasn't a band that reaIIy that much sounded Iike anybody.

It was the perfect foIIow-up to ''Nervous Breakdown,'' I thought.

The songs were appeaIing because aIthough they were ''poIiticaI,''

they weren't didactic.

They deaIt with poIitics in a reaIIy impressionistic way.

And I just said, ''This is one of the most originaI things

I've ever heard.''

''Paranoid Time'' the song I thought was reaIIy great.

That was the one that I think,

coming out of the hardcore background,

that was the one that was cIosest to my genre.

Where I couId go, ''Okay.

These guys are contributing something with this song.''

When you Iisten to ''Paranoid Time''

You have to reaIize these weren't just songs.

These peopIe are reaIIy paranoid.

This one's for RonaId Reagan.

I try to work, and I keep thinking of WorId War I I I

I try to taIk to girIs, and I keep thinking of WorId War I I I

The 6:OO news

Makes sure I keep thinking ofWorldWar Ill

I got a miIe of numbers and a ton of stats

Of warheads, a billion Chinese warheads

I don't even worry about crime anymore

So many goddamn scared faces

I keep thinking of Russia, Mother Russia

aranoid, stuck on overdrive

aranoid, scared shitless

MOORE: Seeing D. Boon just sort of rocking,

jumping up and down and just bIowing out these songs.

Watt just Iike compIeteIy utter conviction.

And then the drummer

pIaying aII this kind of wigged-out prog-jazz fury drums.

And.

So it kind of bIew minds.

The record bIew our minds.

It was not Iike any music we'd ever Iistened to.

We couIdn't understand how they wouId have pIayed it.

We couIdn't get any idea of who they were.

We couIdn't picture them.

The record was just a drawing on the front.

The Iyrics are so provocative.

ReaIIy, Iike, head-scratching.

It was something that you couId reaIIy spend some time with,

and it's a short record.

What is it, Iike 3 1/2 minutes Iong?

You know, the songs reaIIy went by fast.

They reaIIy pIayed a Iot of songs in a set.

And even if they had riffs,

bythetimeanybody had something to hoId on to,

they were on to the next song.

You got to understand we were never caIIed Minutemen

for, Iike, minute songs,

Iike we aIways got expIained by peopIe.

It was this parody on these right-wingers.

And the whoIe idea of rock bands being big giants,

we wouId be Iike minute men.

I can't imagine in the earIy days

bands Iike Hüsker Dü, Minutemen pIaying arenas.

It was too intimate, the i r pe rfo rmances .

They don't work with aII the smoke and the Iighting

and the speciaI effects and the airpIanes

and whatever you have to do on a big stage.

That was not part of the scene.

Part of the scene was you get up, you pIay your heart out.

Yeah,Iet'stake the essence ofthetune

and just do it, and that's that.

Nobody had done that before.

AII the other bands were hoIding to verses and choruses.

So manyofthesongs,

the Iyrics, when you read them, are just Iike haiku.

Or it's Iike a proposition by Wittgenstein.

It's just Iike a reaIIy simpIe statement.

It doesn't have a Iot of fIoraI Ianguage surrounding it.

It's just Iike a IittIe kerneI of an inteIIectuaI idea.

That aIways reaIIy appeaIed to me.

It didn't bIow away the hardcore kids.

It was a IittIe too maybe grown-up.

It was a different kind of inteIIigence.

It wasn't Iike ''poIice beat me'' kind of thing.

It didn't have that agony.

Some peopIe just didn't get it.

Being spit on kind of -- That kind of sucks.

But you can't see where it's coming from,

so you can't reaIIy bIame anybody.

''Let's spit on them.''

These kids from Orange County

just took after the EngIish reaIIy weII

They wouId spit.

Butanyhow, Ijust gotthe overspray.

Mike and D., they got most of it.

They were aIways getting coIds. I never knew why.

We're doing it without two strings.

Is that punk enough for you guys spitting?

I'II come and see your band, aII right?

Huh, fan? Huh, punk rock fan?

[ Crowd shouting ]

Let's hoId the spit down.

Spit on me. Get beIIigerent.

Right on.

Right. Right.

[ Crowd shouting ]

[ ''SickIes and Hammers'' pIays ]

[ Crowd shouting ]

ROELAND: Dennes was singing,

and spit was just going right in his mouth.

They did not care.

They finished their set, and the crowd was kind of Iike.

And after they finished,

I think the crowd kind of, Iike, changed their mind.

You have to do a Iot of growing up aII of a sudden.

If you couIdn't get through that.

I mean, where you're singing

and some kid gobs a spit wad right in your mouth.

I thought it was funny the way they moved back off the stage.

Like, ''We're not going anywhere.

You guys aren't getting rid of us that easy.''

Your face feII into my eyes

I heard your friend call me a communist

Smoked butts off the fleetwood floor

There l was in a vacuum

PuIIed down by guiIty weights, you know

WeII, I am afraid of you

I'd wear out my knees for you

But this is not a Iove song

Aah!

WATT: Me and D. Boon, you know,

we reaIIy didn't know that many art peopIe.

B OOn WaS artIStIC, couId paint and stuff Iike that.

But there was no cuIture art, you know?

I guess everybody comes to it in different ways.

But the way we came to it was through punk.

Which is kind of hard for some peopIe to expect.

To beIieve.

Because they see some kind of vioIent movement,

peopIe beating each other up and spitting on each other.

Shit Iike that.

There was some stuff Iike that, too.

But especiaIIy in the 'TOs and oIder punk,

there was a Iot of art peopIe.

Had a big infIuence on us.

For D. Boon,

I know it brought out stuff that was aIready into him.

For me, it got me reaIIy curious.

I started reading about these things Iike Dada

and Futurist and SurreaIist, stuff Iike this.

Pettibon turns me on to John CoItrane

and Ornette CoIeman.

There are so many ideas in their music.

And Mike's bass pIaying

is so over the top and so fuII of ideas.

And the band has such an amazing spirit.

The M inutemen give off the vibe of the excitement of that

more than just about any band I can think of.

They just seem, Iike, so happy

and inspired to be up there pIaying, you know?

So it reaIIy does make me feeI good to think

that I pIayed some kind of roIe in making Mike want to do that.

Rock 'n' roII, as usuaI, was a fairIy toxic concept.

Rock 'n' roII was once an antidote to aII this crap.

I aIways regard the Minutemen as stiII a part of the soIution.

But there was a kind of a respect you had

to not be a cIone.

It was Iike if you were gonna be part of this,

you had to contribute.

You don't want to be a cookie cutter

or a Xerox machine.

Had to come up with your own ideas.

And this is what the Minutemen were doing.

And then some in those days, but a Iot Iater on,

and then with the hardcore peopIe, too,

peopIe wouId say, ''How can you caII this punk?''

''Why is it punk?

You don't sound punk. You don't Iook punk.''

You know?

That wouId aIways strike us as such narrow-minded shit.

The Minutemen.

I think those guys, Iike, were totaI punks

in the sense of they were not fitting in the moId

of what a punk shouId theoreticaIIy Iook Iike.

PIaying bIues to punks, that's pretty punk.

And Minutemen going out there,

being Pedro dudes doing their whoIe totaI thing.

Some of their music was so abrasive-sounding.

Espec ia I Iy com pa red to the kind of more simpIe

or kind of raging kind of punk rock.

Their stuff is more weirdIy off-kiIter

and kind of herky-jerky

and just wouIdn't give you the reaIIy.

[ Tapping ]

Which you kind of wanted to hear.

A ton of white-boy guiIt, that's my probIem

ObstacIe to joy, one reason to use some drugs

SIept on a beach, sIept in trash

American trash

Thinking too much can ruin a good time

l asked a Mexican who ran a bar for Americans

''Who won'' l said, ''the election7. ''

He Iaughed, I feIt Iike a gringo

They pIayed a song, they had some fun with us

Why can't you buy a good time?

Why are there soIdiers in the streets?

Why did I spend the 4th in someone eIse's country?

The Minutemen, to me, were this band that sort of stood out

on the ''Rodney on the ROa'' record.

The first ''Rodney on the ROa,'' VoIume One record.

I had sort of heard their name in FIipside and stuff.

I didn't reaIIy get a handIe on them.

Their name kind of stuck out

because it wasn't the usuaI kind of West Coast punk rock name.

They weren't BerkIee SchooI of Music-taught musicians.

They were just three dudes from Pedro

thatjust happened to pIay

and just had, you know, that mix that they just geIIed.

They got Iumped in with the hardcore scene.

But they were anything but.

They wouId cover Creedence CIearwater

and BIue Oyster CuIt.

And to them, that was just their way of expressing,

''We're not reaIIy just punk rock.

We're part of this bigger continuum of rock 'n' roII ''

And D. Boon, I think, was an inspiration.

He's Iarge, you know?

Watching him pIay guitar, his fingers were reaI fat,

but he couId bust out the greatest Ieads.

When it came down to pIaying, they were on top of it.

They just rattIed off the songs.

32-song sets.

Just bam!

They were just great pIayers.

They kind of brought this whoIe other IeveI of musicianship

to this underground music scene.

They had a Iot of comedy in their music.

They couId be funny, if you read their Iyrics.

And sometimes pissed off.

Dennes seemed a bit angry

in some of his Iyrics about certain things.

Maybe that's stuff he feIt inside

and it was coming across in their music.

That's what I sense in that kind of music.

And they're nice guys.

They're aIways fun to be around and stuff

Kind of Iike the Three Stooges in a good way.

Andthey hadthe Three Stooges

pIastered in the back of their van in the window.

So when they drove by, you'd see the window.

And there wouId be the big poster of the Three Stooges.

Maybe more Iike Abbott and CosteIIo

with somebody eIse thrown in the mix.

Mike and D.

No, I'm just kidding. It's LaureI and Hardy.

Mike and D. Boon, it was Iike twins.

They had Iike a secret Ianguage.

And you couId just see them. .

I mean, when they wouId communicate.

they didn't have to reaIIy speak.

They were just these IittIe eviI twins

that wouId just sort of push each other into things.

Mike Watt, to me, was the heart of the band.

He was the heartbeat. He was the bass pIayer, right?

Ba-boom, boom, boom, boom, ba-boom

He was the heartbeat.

And D. Boon, to me, was the souI

They Iived what they said.

They beIieved in it 1OO percent. 1,OOO percent.

And the more you spent time with them,

the more you reaIized that this was so reaI

And it just feIt so good to be a part of something

that was absoIute truth.

As truthfuI as it couId be with its fauIts, you know?

And they were the first ones to admit if they were wrong.

They made their own worId in a rock band.

And so.

That's even more rare than just being a good band.

They were aII, George, D. Boon, Mike,

aII great musicians and performers and writers.

But the Minutemen reaIIy --

There wasn't very many punk rock bands that couId pIay at aII

The Minutemen couId actuaIIy pIay their instruments.

They were so unusuaIon stage.

EspeciaIIy this interpIay between Mike and D.

You know, D. being this reaIIy heavyset guy

bouncing around Iike he was Iighter than air on the guitar.

And Watt being reaIIy.

Just being Watt on stage, I guess.

And this great drummer in George HurIey

pIaying reaIIy different stuff than you wouId imagine

a hardcore-type band's drummer pIaying.

He was such a finessey drummer

that had aII these different things he couId do.

I guess in generaI aII three of them were Iike that.

They were reaI pIayers in a certain hand.

And that sort of put them aside

from the simpIe three-chord punk rock thing.

I'd aIways try to push articIes on them.

I'd try to sneak them into --

PeopIe wouId say, ''I want a thing on hardcore bands.''

So I'd put them in.

PeopIe wouId say, ''I want a thing on psychedeIic bands.''

So Iike, ''Oh, yeah. I'II put them in.''

You know, stuff Iike that.

You know, you couId sort of squeeze them in

to aImost any kind of generic overview

of contemporary L.A. stuff.

Because they reaIIy were unique in terms of what they did.

It was just a briIIiant moment in time

thatthey hadthatenergy

to transcend any and aII musicaI boundaries.

Without getting bogged down as a rockabiIIy band

or as a hardcore thrash band,

that they couId not reaIIy fit or beIong anywhere,

which was part of their magic.

What can be romantic to Mike Watt7.

His body's onIy a skeIeton

A series of points

With no height, Iength, or width

In his body he feeIs Iife

His onIy connection

Between the yeIIing and the sIeep

His life's the toughest riddIe

He's chalk

He's a dart board

Sex disease

He's a stop sign

He's chalk

He's a dart board

Sex disease

He's a stop sign

We were recording the ''Fat'' EP with Spot.

And Spot, in between takes, basicaIIy,

was editing the ''Punch Line'' EP for the M inutemen.

I hadn't heard too much of the M inutemen,

and I was hearing snippets of ''Punch Line'' aII the time.

I was just Iike, ''Wow. These guys are reaIIy wiId.

They're reaIIy different. It's bizarre music.''

To me it sounded very bizarre.

WATT: Some of these songs have Iike onIy two Iines of Iyrics.

They're so bizarre.

A Iot of these songs aren't even a minute.

A Iotofthem are 4O seconds and stuff.

38 seconds.

Again, they weren't supposed to stand on their own.

They were supposed to be part of this big river.

And the abiIity for them to just kind of shift gears

from song to song in the way they did.

Where in a way the Minutemen sets created their own momentum.

It wasn't about so much individuaI songs.

It was about the entire process that you were going through.

It seemed abstract to me and anguIar kind of music, you know?

I was just ''Wow, '' you know. I was Iistening to that.

Andthe songs were so short,too.

I wasn't used to that.

Just when I didn't think the song was done, it'd stop.

Or Mike was kind of nervous, and he'd thump a few more notes

and mumbIe something and just kick into the next song.

A measured distance between centuries

Issuesyouyournumber, you poseur

WATT: So with Minutemen we reaIIy wanted

to have more of our own sound.

Soweusedthese--

StiII, you know, the cuIture of copying records and stuff.

We were stiII infIuenced by other bands.

Sowehadthesebands from EngIand

caIIed Pop Group and Wire.

Wire are quite aware of the fact that we were infIuentiaI

on a few of the kind of hardcore bands in America.

And I think specificaIIy how it happened

was that Wire's kind of minimaIity,

the kind of brutaI way of, you can do a song with one chord.

''Wire do it. Why don't we do it?''

I think that had an effect in America

in a way that it didn't have perhaps in Britain.

Then Pop Group took Captain Beefheart

and mixed it with FunkadeIic.

You know, funk music had a big infIuence on me

because I couIdn't reaIIy hear, except for guys Iike Jack Bruce

and John EntwistIe, I couIdn't reaIIy hear bass.

IcouIdn'thearthe bass on a Creedence song.

So it had a big infIuence on me.

And then Captain Beefheart.

When we first heard punk, you know,

we thought Beefheart, Stooges, these guys were way ahead.

They aIready were punk without there being that IabeI yet.

We the bIack sheep

Found, forgive

Choose ourself, make or gain

Neednotourconscience

The strongest survive

The blind lead the blind, decree not our method

Size up our effort, make our way

Bleed our minds

Make our way

Bleed our minds

[ Cheers and appIause]

I got to teII you how excited we were to be asked.

to do this aIbum.

I mean, ''Punch Line'' came out in December.

And they pressed 3OO, and they aII soId right away.

So I think maybe that's why Greg asked us.

But he was a big fan of the band, too.

So we started writing songs for our first reaI aIbum.

We went back to Dennes' pIace in Torrance.

He had an apartment there.

He pIayed us an acetate

of his new record, ''What Makes a Man Start Fires?''

And that's when I thought,

''These guys just ain't your garden-variety punk rock thing.

| There's something reaIIy good 9OIn9 On.'

They were moving beyond the initiaI aesthetic.

And they were showing the rest of the punk rock community

that you couId make a more expansive statement.

When they put that out, then it was Iike, ''Oh.''

Sort of Iike when the Germs put out their first record.

Everyone kind oftookthem for granted.

And then they reaIized, ''Oh, my God.

This is art.''

They were exciting. They were different.

They had a Iot of eIements to them.

And they mixed them up as they went aIong, too,

so that was cooI

It was aImost Iike not avant-garde,

but kind of Iike avant-garage.

The pieces were so short.

And I found that attractive and fascinating.

The Pettibon drawing on the cover was reaIIy fascinating.

Everything about it fascinated me.

That's when you notice that Mike stopped pIaying with a pick

and started pIaying with his fingers.

Man, they reaIIy got funky on that record.

There's a song on this record caIIed ''The Anchor.''

Georgie wrote the words. It was about a dream he had.

And it's our first song where we go over two minutes.

It's two minute and five seconds or something.

No, it's 2:3O.

Whew.

It's our opus.

Made a dream Iast night

Wish l hadn't awoken

Wind bIew warm in my face

Naked in an Epsom

Five beautifuI girIs raped me

l was so damn bad

l took them on

One at a time

One at a time

Wake up

Heartyanked out

Anchor

Dragging

Behind

Anchor

Dragging

''Bob DyIan Wrote P ropaganda Songs. ''

A Iot of peopIe ask me about that song.

Why I wrote it.

I was kind of feeIing insecure one day

about writing songs that had intense ramifications.

You know, that weren't maybe musicaI

ThenIthought, man,you know,

I never knew what words were about, reaIIy, as a boy.

They were aIways Iike some kind of Iead guitar.

But except for Bob DyIan. I used to hear him a Iot.

And his words, I thought, were sort of Iike

your pop taIking to you or something.

So I thought, ''Oh, man,

it's okay if I write songs Iike that

'cause Bob DyIan wrote p ropaganda songs. ''

That's why I wrote that.

[ Man Iaughs ]

Some of the peopIe thought

I was reaIIy angry at Bob DyIan and everything.

I'm teIIing you, us Minutemen were insuIar.

A Iot of our things kept way inside us

and never reaIIy got out.

So to reaIIy know about us,

Ithinkyou haveto ask about us,thesethings.

Because it doesn't seem Iike anything got out

that was understood by peopIe easiIy.

From our name to our records to our songs.

It aII got twisted up.

That's okay.

That's why we do things Iike this.

I'm waiting in third person

I'm coIIecting

Dispersing information

Labeled rations

Bob DyIan

Wrotepropagandasongs

Bob DyIan

Wrotepropagandasongs

Manifestos are my windows

And my proof

Locations and more rations

OutIine my route

Bob DyIan

Wrotepropagandasongs

Bob DyIan

Wrotepropagandasongs

It was reaIIy easy writing a song for D. Boon.

I wouId never have to show him guitar parts.

Sometimes I wouId write chords on guitar.

I'd show him the chords.

But a Iot of times I couId just write the bass Iine.

And because we had grown up together,

he couId immediateIy come up.

something compatibIe with it, compIement it.

And he was very generous that way.

D. Boon aImost had this.

Like, you know, ''Chank.''

That guy Jimmy NoIan that pIays with James Brown.

He had that kind of funky edge when he pIayed the TeIecaster.

He was kind of a punk rock.

...Wes Montgomery, without being that breezy.

Like a reaIIy aggressive jazz pIayer.

You know, there was a Iot of stuff you couId hear in it.

I couId hear some of this country infIuence.

Like BakersfieId country-western kind of stuff

that was in his sound

because I grew up Iistening to some of that stuff as weII

I think more than anything he just deveIoped this sound

that was uniqueIy his own.

He was kind of a contradiction as far as guitar styIes go.

He had aII that, and to him it was aII music.

And his tone was reaIIy spiky. It was reaIIy trebIy.

Which I Iearned Iater from M ike was compIeteIy poIiticaI

It was a poIiticaI decision for them to separate bass and trebIe

in a very, very distinctive way as sovereign states.

PoIiticaI sovereignty, anyway.

He had a guitar sound that was Iike

a buzzing insect and a dentist's driII

aII at the same time, that reaIIy cut through the mix.

And it was just reaI anguIar and sharp.

And he started deveIoping this reaIIy great styIe

that didn't sound Iike anybody eIse.

Yeah, it was reaIIy brittIe and bright.

If I were to get his sound, I wouId try something Iike that.

[ Staccato chords pIay ]

Oh, there you go.

Yeah. Isthat cIose enough?

I just remember D. Boon careening around the stage

and into the audience and bowIing peopIe over

and not missing a Iick.

And I was so bIown away by that.

And Mike Watt wouId do this thing

where he'd be standing with his Iegs spread apart.

And one Ieg wouId just be shaking.

He'd puff his cheeks out as he's pIaying

because hejust was sointense.

George HurIey had that big Iock of hair that wouId just.

He aIways wore it up, and then he'd take it out.

Since my Iegs and arms were busy,

aII I couId do was shake my hair.

So that's what I did.

D. Boon's just bouncing aII over the stage.

I never saw a fat guy move that much, I guess.

There wouId be this interIude

where they'd pIay just an instrumentaI part.

And D. Boon wouId just do this crazy dance.

He did it every night.

Andhehadtheworstshoes I'veeverseenanybodywear.

I was trying to taIk him into getting tennis shoes.

And he's, ''No, no, no. This is part of my uniform.''

When he hit the ground or hit that stage,

I mean, things were reaIIy ''Kuh! Kuh! Kuh!''

I think that reaIIy amazed them.

They weren't reaIIy used to seeing a short-haired guy,

as pretty rotund and round as D. Boon was,

to be jumping and just going crazy in the air Iike him.

The peopIe wiII survive

In their environment

AII the dirt, scarcity

And the emptiness of our South

The injustice of our greed

There on the beach

AII the dirt, scarcity

And the emptiness of our South

I couId see it in her eyes

There on the beach

But I onIy had a Corona five-cent deposit

So ''Buzz or HowI,'' we made it for 5O.

That's the Iast record I reaIIy pIayed with a pick.

And haIf of it is done with Spot,

the guy who produced aII

Mixed aII the Minutemen records up this point.

I think Watt and D. Boon were both saying,

''Let's do something reaIIy simpIe.''

So they were taIking about going back to four-track.

So I toId Watt, I said,

''Hey, Iet's forget about this muItitrack stuff.

Let's just set it up and do it Iive to two-track.''

You know, one take. Bam. It's done.

You mix it whiIe you're pIaying it and be done with it.

And that's what we did.

The other side, we then met this guy named Ethan James

who had a studio caIIed Radio Tokyo.

He was putting together a compiIation.

He said, '' If you give me a song for that compiIation,

I'II record a song free for you.''

So we went, did three songs, put them together,

and toId him it was one big song.

So we did the other side for free.

I put a Ietter from Richard MeItzer on the back.

I wrote to Mike,

''Oh, sorry I got to go to this wedding.''

I think it was Vinny GoIia, the saxophone pIayer,

was getting married.

And so he actuaIIy put my Ietter

on the back of one of the aIbums.

Richard MeItzer was a big hero to us.

He had written Iyrics for the BIue Oyster CuIt.

He used to write for Creem.

We used to read his rock-write as teenagers.

Then we got to meet him, and he wrote us a Ietter.

And I put it on the back with a Raymond drawing.

ActuaIIy the aIbum cover was going to be.

I found a picture in NationaI Geographic

of aII these tropicaI tree frogs,

aII these bright coIors.

We found out how much it cost for the coIor separation.

It was 1,OOO bucks.

So I asked Joe Baiza just to draw something

about me and D. Boon.

He came up with this in one night.

D. Boon aIso had a drawing in it, too.

He's getting yeIIed at at work again.

''Eat your Iunch at noon, understand?''

He had some guy eating at the wrong time.

[ ''D.'s Car Jam/Anxious Mo-fo'' pIays ]

Serious as a heart attack

It's the faII of '83.

We have this whoIe batch of songs ready to go for an aIbum.

Then Hüsker Dü comes to town.

And they had found out that Hüsker Dü was putting out

a doubIe Iive record.

So they went back to my studio,

and they start writing more songs.

I guess, Iike, within two weeks they had 2O more songs written

and were back in the studio again.

''DoubIe NickeIs on the Dime.''

Remembering 46 songs for a record.

It's kind of crazy.

It took us a Iong time. I think about a week or two.

You do things when you're young

that, man, sometimes you Iook back, and it's kind of amazing.

I don't think I've gotten any better, though.

I Iisten to those records,

I wonder how I did some of that stuff.

BOON: List monitors arrive with petition.

Iron-fisted phiIosophy

Is your Iife worth a painting?

Is this girI versus boy with different kind of symboIs?

Being born is power

Scout Ieader tagged as big sin

Your risk chains me hostage

Me, I'm fighting with my head, am not ambiguous

Must Iook Iike a dork.

Me, naked with textbook poems

Spout fountain against Nazis

With weird kinds of sex symboIs

In speeches that are big dance-thumps

If we heard mortar shells we'd cuss more in our songs

And cut down on the guitars

So dig this big crux.

Organizing boy scouts for murder is wrong

1O years beyond the big sweat point

Man, it was still there, ever without you

Coming around forjust a second

Apeek,aguess atthe wholeness

Then you Iook at it and it's aII together

At the wholeness that's way too big

At the wholeness that's way too.

Part of the joke.

Since we didn't have a concept Iike Hüsker did,

we had to kind of make one up.

So we did two themes paraIIeIing each other.

One was ''Ummagumma,'' this Pink FIoyd record.

Which was a doubIe aIbum, and each got a soIo song.

Like a quarter ofone ofthe records.

And then this Sammy Hagar.

Sammy Hagar had come out with a song, you couIdn't drive 55.

And caIIed himseIf the Red Rocker.

So we said, ''WeII, we'II drive 55

and be crazy with the music instead of crazy with the cars. ''

'Cause we thought his music was pretty safe.

''DoubIe nickeIs on the dime''

means gong exactIy 55 miIes an hour,

which was the freeway speed in those days.

Jimmy Carter, in the 'TOs, had Iowered it to conserve fueI

'Cause ofthe oiIcrunch.

But no one got it. No one got the Sammy Hagar part.

No one got the ''Ummagumma'' part.

And then Ieading up to ''DoubIe NickeIs on the Dime,''

which I think is the greatest record of aII time.

''DoubIe NickeIs'' is one of the most incredibIe

outpourings of creativity ever.

I'm sure you're going to get everyone in this documentary

saying that over and over again, but it's true.

It was this whoIe new direction.

And it just seemed Iike music was going to expIode

into this cacophony of coIor and sound and creative ideas.

And it seemed so IimitIess.

ProbabIy the best record I ever pIayed on,

and it came about totaIIy by accident.

Just 'cause of this process we were engaged in, you know?

Trying to push our Iimits, push ourseIves.

Pushthescene.

Working on the edge

Losing my seIf-respect

for a man who presides over me

AII the principIes of his creed

Punchin,punchout

Eight hours, five days

AII the sweat and the agony

On Saturday, I'II get paid

This ain't no picnic

This ain't no picnic

This ain't no picnic

This ain't no picnic

Hey, mister, don't look down on me

for what l believe

I've got my biIIs and the rent

I shouId pitch a tent

But our land isn't free

So I'II work my youth away

I n the pIace of a machine

l refuse to be a slave

This ain't no picnic

This ain't no picnic

This ain't no picnic

This ain't no picnic

They did ''Project: Mersh,'' and that record.

That was a confounding record.

Because on one hand, it was cIearIy an attempt

to be commerciaI

But are they trying to hit it?

I was trying to get my head around it.

And what was even more puzzIing about it

is how much I Ioved the record.

It has one of the greatest covers of aII time.

So D. Boon made this painting of a boardroom where the guys,

some record putzes are, Iike, scheming.

''Oh, what wiII we do to make them accessibIe?

I got it!

We'II have them write hit songs.''

'' P roject: M e rsh '' WaS nO mOre a Career mOVe

than our first record, ''Paranoid Time.''

It's just a different way for us to teII our story.

We were trying to get rid of the chains peopIe had

on our description of us.

They wouIdn't Iet us be Minutemen.

We had to be fiIed

under Dewey decimaI system unde r ''Punk/Funk. ''

So we said, ''Okay, Iet's use choruses and fade-outs.''

It's onIy mersh 'cause we said it was mersh.

It soId haIf as much as our art record,

''DoubIe NickeIs on the Dime.''

''Project: Mersh'' was, I think,

a conscious attempt at actuaIIy writing a song

that couId get pIayed on the radio.

Of course, it didn't.

I mean, radio at the time was more interested

in Men At Work or Men Without Hats.

Not the Minutemen.

''Project: Mersh,'' we actuaIIy practiced these songs

in WiImington at Saccharine Trust's.

Jack Brewer's garage.

The Minutemen were rehearsing in the garage.

I had this neighbor who I'd known for years.

He caIIed me one day whiIe I was in my backyard.

He said, ''Jack, taIk to you about that band

you got rehearsing back there. ''

I said, ''Oh, I'm reaI sorry. I'II ask them to turn it down. ''

He said, ''No, the music's fine.

But in between their songs,

these guys are just yeIIing and hoIIering and cursing.

It's reaIIy disturbing.''

Sometimes MichaeI wouId just come back, and he'd be Iike,

''Dennes is writing these songs that are Iike.

I don't know if I want to pIay songs Iike that.''

You know, and I'd go,

''WeII, you toId him to do what he feeIs is right.''

Right, right.

So the song differences were reaIIy extreme sometimes.

-You'd seethese. -Yes.

Because MichaeI wouId write about something he saw

on, Iike, some taIk show or something.

And Dennes wouId write about totaI poIiticaI unrest

in another country.

Oh, they did. They'd fight over ideas.

They'd fight over a Iot of different things.

But, you know, you don't fight with a stranger

the way you fight with someone you Iove.

And that cover of ''Buzz or HowI Under Heat, ''

or whatever the name of the record is, that.

I think that's a Joe Baiza drawing.

That was them.

Either about the Communist Manifesto

or workers' rights in Cuba or whatever.

They wouId just.

The reIationship between these three guys.

As far as I can teII, it was many things aII at once.

Man, they were just going at it.

They were both in the front seat.

D. was driving.

We're saying, ''Keep your eyes on the road!''

He's pointing, and they get reaI into it, you know?

And finaIIy, I don't know if it was Mike or D. first.

He said, ''When we get home, the band's over! That's it!''

And he goes, ''WeII, George is coming with me!

George is gonna pIay in my band!''

And then D. goes, ''George.''

And he, Iike, hits him on the Ieg.

Georgetakestheheadphonesoff.

''George, when I get back to Pedro,

I'm gonna start my own band.

Are you gonna pIay with me, or are you gonna pIay with him?''

And George said something Iike,

''I'm not gonna pIay with either of you.

I'm gonna start my own band.''

Like, screw both of you.

You can't have a revoIution

without pounding your fist on the tabIe a IittIe bit.

And that was the nature of their reIationship,

that they used to get into it quite a bit.

But it was aIways.. I mean, they were best friends.

There's no tension in between writing songs.

We aII write different stuff. We have our different ideas.

We want a bunch of dimensions to make it Iook reaI

We're into the freedom, you see?

One of the things that makes us a band

is that we aII choose our own destinies

in what we want to put into the band.

And we don't coIIaborate on Iyrics hardIy.

D gets his. I get mine. George gets his.

''I want some, too.''

The music is what we mostIy coIIaborate on.

That's what you can share on.

The statement thing, that's reaI personaI

Words, to us, are constantIy changing, you know?

ReaI personaI, too.

It's the music that we spend a whoIe Iot of time on.

You know?

UsuaIIy the Iyrics we write down in one day, and there they are.

He writes his in one day. I take time with mine.

Yes, we have a new aIbum coming out.

Nove m ber.

In the middIe of November sometime.

You can't reaIIy predict

what exact day it's gonna come out on.

It's caIIed ''3-Way Tie (For Last) ''

WATT: On SST Records.

Yes. There's five copy songs on it.

''3-Way Tie,'' us doing these covers, you know?

We're now confidentenough orsecure enough

to Iaugh atourown background.

So there's Creedence.

There's BIue Oyster CuIt.

There's Roky Erickson.

3-Way Tie (For Last),' we made a conscious effort

to just make it a rock record with us.

But I sang one of the songs over the phone with a guitar.

So it's artistic.

-We're trying to give... -We use acoustic guitars.

AII kinds of things. They're just devices.

It's aII for us to use.

Fade-outs are the same as a horn or the saw.

I Iike the saw. That's a new angIe.

Just the instrumentaI cuts of ''3-Way Tie,'' guy was so excited.

The vocaIs weren't dubbed yet.

But he was just so excited just pIaying the tape for me

whiIe I was at his house.

That's a memory I have of him.

He Ioved whathewasdoing so much.

I know that ''3-Way Tie'' isn't one of Mike's favorite records.

But I think it's a great statement

of the way, again, the two of them interacted.

It's Iike Mike's side and D. Boon's side.

And yet there's crossover.

There's a song on each that's kind of from the other,

and there's some of my Iyrics on both.

And there's this compIeteIy intertwined effect

even though it's aII so very much Iike,

''Nobody's the Ieader. We're equaI

We ' re wo rk i n g -c I ass. We're a democracy.''

It's exactIy how they were.

A friend of mine toId me once that Don Van VIiet,

Ca pta i n Beefh ea rt , toId him that he went

to go see TheIonious Monk pIay at Carnegie HaII

And that he waIked in and there was a grand piano.

It was a soIo performance.

There was a grand piano with a pot of fIowers on it.

And TheIonious Monk waIked in, Iooked at the audience,

threw the pot of fIowers in the piano,

sIammed the Iid down, and sat down and went, ''Bing!''

And hit one note and Ieft.

And Beefheart said, ''It was the greatest note I ever heard!''

That's Iike the kind of feeIing I get from a Minutemen note

on ''3-Way Tie (For Last) ''

They pIayed reaIIy simpIe, beautifuI songs

that you can teII that they couId do anything.

One of our phiIosophies in the Minutemen

aIso has to do with that aII peopIe, you know. .

There shouId be more interaction with music and everyday peopIe.

Because that's what we are.

Thisidea D.Boonhad

that working peopIe shouId be abIe to go to gigs.

So, ''Hey, Iet's start the gig at T:3O.

Let's put it where you won't have to drive

3O miIes each way.''

This was intense, you know?

This wasn't Iike, ''Hey, Iet's do a showcase

so we can get signed and be in a rock band.''

This wasn't his sensibiIity at aII

Ornoneofours,youknow?

This was Iike.

Ithinkit was because our experience with arena rock

and going to the gigs at the Forum and Long Beach Arena

and just being so much a spectator

that when we came up on this new scene,

it wasn't about spectators.

It was more about totaIIy being a participant.

You know, we come from wo rk i ng -c Iass fam i I ies ,

and we pIay our music the way we want to do it.

And t|s

PeopIe are into it.

We just want to Iet peopIe know

that there shouId be a band on every bIock.

There shouId be a nightcIub on every other bIock

and a record IabeI on every other bIock after that.

Ofcourse, you can understand whythings gotorthodox

and kind of uniform and conservative.

Attacking forces from the outside,

peopIe hating the scene and stuff.

So peopIe bunch together defensiveIy.

Young peopIe coming in. Things getting very sociaI

So you don't want to be too experimentaI with the music.

You can see.

I'm aIways getting asked these days by younger peopIe,

''What do you think of this new pop-punk and aII this?

There's no reaI punk.''

I mean,things happen.

I don't reaIIy fauIt peopIe.

Everybody can't be born atthe sametime.

Some peopIe wiII be born before, some peopIe born during,

some peopIe born after.

A Iot of that is just circumstance.

So what's reaIIy the question is,

''What is to be done where you're at?

And how are you gonna do it?''

And actuaIIy what we were coming on,

it was new to us 'cause we were finding out about it.

But this is probabIy the same kind of traditions

peopIe Iike Woody Guthrie were from, you know?

And maybe some of them beboppers and stuff Iike this.

Just taking things in their own hands.

[ ''LittIe Man With A Gun In His Hand'' pIays ]

A woman's touch

Highest Iove

Strong mind, a strong body

AIIthethings he could have been

AIIthethings he should have had

Little man with a gun in his hand

Little man with a gun in his hand

Little man with a gun in his hand

Little man with a gun in his hand

Little man with a gun in his hand

Support aII organizations

that deaI with oppression and stopping it.

[ Crowd cheering ]

MAN:Soyoupsyched abouttheR.E.M.shows?

BOON: Yeah. ShouId be fun.

[ Dog whimpers ]

Okay, come on.

MAN: I wouId think that peopIe that are into R.E.M.

are gonna beinto you guys.

BOON: See how it goes. 'Cause they're into us.

That shouId say something.

It's reaI interesting how we even got on the biII

was that MichaeI Snipe and their manager wanted us to pIay.

-Stipe. -But their IabeI,

they wanted a band from their IabeI to open up.

And Snipe said, ''No way.

We want them to pIay, and they're going to.''

And their record IabeI is not doing

any of the promotion for it.

So the band's doing that.

So it's something they want, and I reaIIy appreciate that.

MAN: That's pretty good.

I remember the Iast gig of the tour.

Maybe it was in CharIotte.

We're pIaying with R.E.M.

I mean with them.

It's their encore, and they have us come on.

Georgie pIays a fIoor tom.

And me and D. Boon pIayed a few of Pete Buck's guitars.

And we did ''See No EviI ''

The TeIevision song.

And that actuaIIy is the Iast time I pIayed with D. Boon.

I didn't even pIay bass. [ ChuckIes ]

I pIayed guitar.

That turns out to be our Iast gig.

And I had just gotten these 1 O songs from Richard MeItzer.

Lyrics.

And he wanted to record with us.

And he'd pIay sax and sing. We'd pIay behind him.

So I bring them over to D. Boon's pad.

And, ''Look. Richard's written us 1 O songs.''

We were so excited.

''Let me have those words. I'II think of Iicks.''

So that's the Iast time I saw him.

[ ''PIight'' pIays ]

His face is young

His hands are old

Past is empty

Blind and cold

Mike caIIed me up. I was at home in bed.

I was asIeep.

And he woke me up and toId me that D. got in an accident.

It's kind of Iike having a hoIe where a heart was.

Grabs the dirt

Stains his shirt

So December 22, 1 985.

[ CIears throat ]

Heavy day for me.

SIeeps at night

Won't see day

He does some hobbies

He needs a new hobby

MAN: Yeah, D. Boon!

[ AppIause ]

WATT: This whoIe thing with D. Boon and his mother.

This idea where you make up your own entertainment

and your own activities.

I think it was reaIIy intense on us, you know,

this whoIe idea of DIY and stuff.

I guess there's a debate over this.

You want things for young peopIe to do

so they don't get in gangs and in troubIe.

But if things are too set up and stuff,

you end up creating an army of robots anyway, you know?

There comes a period

whenyou'regonnahaveto comeupanddothings,youknow?

Become your own person. Pick your own friends.

Your own guys you want to buiId dreams with and stuff.

Big change in my Iife, meeting D. Boon.

Our band can be your Iife.

ReaI names be the truth.

Me and Mike Watt, we pIayed for years.

Andpunkrockchanged our Iives.

We Iearned punk rock up in HoIIywood.

Drove aII the way up from San Pedro.

We were fucking corn dogs.

We'd go drink and pogo.

Mr. Narrator.

This is Bob DyIan to me.

I couId be in his songs.

Me as his soIdier-chiId.

Our band is scientist rock.

First I was E. BIoom.

Richard HeII

Joe Strummer.

Good oI' John Doe.

Me and M ike just pIaying these here guitars.

MAN: That's great.

Mike or George, you guys got any cIosing statements

in reference to the Minutemen,

in reference to this tour or the new aIbum?

No. We jam econo.

-G eorge? -No.

That's it.

-Thankyouvery much, Mike. -Thanks a Iot.

We got these things.

[ ''Unnamed Jam'' pIays ]

AII right.

Where were we?

[ WhistIing, appIause ]