Archive for August, 2005

Minutemen - Spin Radio Show LP (1985 Spin Radio)

Having seen that movie the other day, it inspired me to make the Minutemen a feature for one of these. It was something I was going to do anyway, but now it just got bumped to the front of the line while it was fresh on my mind.

One day in San Pedro, a 13 year old boy named Mike Watt was walking near some trees and out jumped a heavy set fellow right on top of him. This cherubic lad had mistaken Mike for a friend of his and quickly apologized. His name was Dennis Boon. This started a friendship that lasted for the rest of their lives until D. Boon’s untimely passing.

Boon’s mom encouraged him to play guitar because she figured it would keep him out of trouble. She also convinced Mike Watt that he should play bass and they should form a band, and that’s what they did. They graduated high school in 1976 and two years later they formed a band called The Reactionaries with George Hurley and Martin Tamburovich. They played their first show in San Pedro opening for Black Flag, who put on a show at a rented out youth center that ended up getting trashed.

In June of that year D. Boon decided they didn’t need a lead singer and wanted his band to be a trio and six months later (January 1980), the Minutemen were born. George had moved onto playing in some new wave band and they got a guy named Frank Tonche to pound the skins. They recorded a few songs on cassette which some 13 years later was released on the Georgeless 7″ by Forced Exposure. After playing only two shows with the band (one of them opening up for Black Flag), Frank became afraid of punk rock and didn’t want anything to do with it and quit the band. At the same time, Greg Ginn asked the band if they would like to record a 7″ for his new label, SST Records. The band agreed and talked George into coming back to play on the record. George didn’t really have the intention of playing with them beyond that recording session but destiny had other intentions for him and he became a permanent member and the “real” Minutemen was born.

Shortly after they released their first 7″ (and second release on the new SST label), Ginn asked them to do an album and that started their never-ending cycle of recording and touring. Contrary to popular opinion, the band did not get their name due to none of their songs at the time being over a minute long. It was a political themed name but no one seemed to get it.

Early on the band had a tough go of it when it came to playing shows. They often shared bills with bands like Black Flag and their crowds felt the Minutemen weren’t “hardcore enough” and would spit on them and even berate them, but often times by the end of their set, the band would win the crowd over. The band never let it stop them, they simply forged ahead playing their songs while often swallowing some dirty punks gobber while singing.

The band were very unique at the time. No one sounded like the Minutemen, from their angular, often difficult to listen to guitar sound, to their odd song structures and short length, they were really ahead of their time and broke a lot of “rules” that resulted in two generations of musicians that followed picking up the torch and thinking outside the box. As time wore on, they would eclipse the one minute mark, then the two, three, etc until at the end, they were writing “real” rock songs that were a few minutes long and even had choruses. They never had a set path on what they wanted to do, they just got together and played and the longer songs and change of sound was just a natural progression. While they didn’t really sound very “punk” at the end of their career, they never gave up their punk ideas and their strong DIY ethic. They never changed to please their audience or sell more records, they just did whatever they wanted and let the people who “got it” come to them.

The band were starting to garner a little bit of success and were getting some mainstream press, especially after being invited by R.E.M, who at the time were hugely successful, to play some shows with them. R.E.M.’s label were against it and insisted on having the band take another one of the label’s artists on tour with them instead and refused to provide tour support if they wouldn’t comply. To their credit, R.E.M. stuck to their guns and took our heroes from San Pedro on their tour and the crowds seemed to enjoy them. Had they been able to continue, it probably would have been inevitable that the band would have been accepted by the mainstream and probably would have enjoyed some success. Sadly it was not meant to be. On December 22, 1985 D. Boon was a passenger in a van that spun out of control and crashed. He died as a result and the world was robbed of and important musician and friend to many. I remember when it happened and being shocked and very saddened as the band were so huge to me back as a teenager in the 80s. It was easily one of the most tragic deaths in punk rock history.

In picking a record to feature it was a tough decision. Just about everything they ever released was on SST with a couple exceptions and it is all still in print at least on some really poorly mastered CDs. With the exception of some bootlegs, the only real Minutemen “rarity” is this LP, the Spin Radio show, which was only a promo sent out to select college radio stations. Six of the songs from this record were included on the Ballot Result double album, but the rest of it remains unavailable to this day. The year this came out, Spin Radio was putting out these promo records of underground bands such as Husker Du, Fear, Circle Jerks and the Minutemen. Sadly none of it has ever been reissued and will likely never be. Its a shame too because they were all very good and deserve to be heard by more than a handful of obsessive record collectors.

Listen to “Little Man with a Gun in His Hand” from the record.

Tonight I went to see the Minutemen documentary, We Jam Econo over at the Gene Siskel Film Center with the Demon (who graciously offered to drive). The place is in the heart of downtown, right near State/Lake streets. I had never been there before, and I’m not sure I had even heard of it until now. Its a small, clean, theatre with a couple small rooms that hold maybe a hundred people or so each. Its definitely made for art films and independent films, not for things like Star Wars.

Being a huge Minutemen fan ever since I first heard them while I was in high school (in the early/mid 1980s), I was really looking forward to seeing this when I found out about it. I thought I’d have to wait and hope for a DVD release but I lucked out and spent money that should have gone to eating, or paying a bill, to buy my ticket. I am happy to report that the choice was a wise one as it was money well spent.

The movie tells the story of the band from how D. Boon and Mike Watt met, though how they started playing music, how they met George Hurley, how the band came to be and the tragic end with D. Boons untimely passing. The film mixes modern day interviews with the surviving members (mostly Watt) as well as fans and their peers from other bands such as Greg Ginn (Black Flag/SST Records), Joe Baiza and Jack Brewer (Saccharine Trust), Flea (some over-rated band and one fine bass player in his own right), Byron Coley, Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth), Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins and lots more. They also interview friends and family. Mike Watt takes the viewers on a tour of San Pedro, showing the place he met D. Boon for the first time, where they practiced for the first time and where they played their first show when they were still known as The Reactionaries.

There is also plenty of cool (but somewhat raw) footage of the band playing at various clubs at different stages of their career including such now infamous places like the Starwood and Cathay De Grande. It was pretty cool to see such historic footage and I was especially glad because back when I was in high school, I once passed up going to see the Minutemen play once at the Metro thinking I’d just catch them when they came back and sadly that never happened because of the accident that robbed the world of the talented D. Boon.

You also got a glimpse into the brother-like relationship of Boon and Watt and how that resulted in their forming of one of the most unique (and influential) punk rock bands of all time. You can tell how much both surviving members loved their band-mate and friend and how much they still miss him. You also got to see and hear about the unique bond those three shared and how it produced such amazing results and what they put up with early on in their career just to play music (the band were often spit on by the crowds who didn’t think they were hardcore enough).

Visually the film looks homemade. The modern-day footage is grainy and often times over-exposed. I don’t know if this was due to a low budget, or an artistic decision. The look of the modern stuff and the way it was shot does help it fit almost seamlessly with the older footage shot on much more primitive equipment. I really enjoyed the way they told the story from beginning to end, and they covered almost every record the band released and talked about how it was made. Did you know that Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat cost them a mere $50 to make?! I sure didn’t.

90 minutes after sitting down, the film was over and I got up both happy that it was so well done and did justice to the legacy of the Minutemen as well as being very educational, but also a little sad because I recalled how depressed I was when I was a kid and heard about D. Boon dying in that car accident. They were such a huge band to me back then and I knew that the world of music has suffered a huge loss and as a fan I suffered a loss of one of my musical (and punk rock) heroes.

Hopefully this will come out on a DVD as it deserves to be seen by anyone who has not only called themselves a punk rock fan, but also a music fan in general. I know I’ll be the first in line to purchase it when that day arrives.

I tell you, the past couple weeks have been cursed with music-related deaths. I am sad to now report that Denis “Piggy” D’Amour from the great Canadian metal band, Voivod, has passed away. Here’s the story that was taken from blabbermouth.net.

VOIVOD Guitarist DENIS ‘PIGGY’ D’AMOUR Dead Of Colon Cancer - Aug. 27, 2005
VOIVOD guitarist Denis “Piggy” D’Amour passed away Friday night (August 26) at approximately 11:45 p.m. due to complications from advanced colon cancer — so advanced that the disease had spread to his liver. D’Amour slipped into a coma Thursday night and died less than 24 hours later in the palliative care unit of a Montreal hospital, surrounded by family and friends. He was 45 years old.

Quebec City newspaper Le Soleil reported yesterday that D’Amour — who was diagnosed with colon cancer earlier in the summer — first entered the hospital for a routine operation, but several complications led his doctors to suspect more problems. Then the grim verdict was revealed: the cancer, already too advanced, was inoperable.

Only two months ago, D’Amour was in the studio working on the 14th album from the Canadian thrash-metal pioneers VOIVOD. More than two dozen tracks are believed to have been demoed for the CD, for which the group recently inked a deal with The End Records. However, the band were forced to put studio work on hold while bassist Jason Newsted (ex-METALLICA) was treated for tendonitis.

In a recent interview with Billboard.com, Newsted spoke about the material slated to appear on the group’s next CD. “It’s the most complete demos I’ve ever been involved in,” he said. “[VOIVOD singer] Snake has already chosen his effects — exact timing of milliseconds for delay. We’ve had a long time to develop the demos, so there’s about 23 or 25 songs that are absolutely listenable right now.”

Newsted was a huge fan of VOIVOD before he was invited to join and he remains a great admirer to this day. “They created something a long, long time ago that may have been emulated many, many times since — but nobody can do it like the original,” he offered.

Prior to his hospitalization, D’Amour laid down guitar tracks for a reunion CD from the legendary AUT’CHOSE, a ’70s band from Montreal. That album is expected to surface next summer.

I updated the Spontaneous Combustion site yesterday with an interview with The Vibrators that was done by the lovely Jones Violet. You can check it out here. Many thanks to her for the contribution.

Devo - Live 1980 DVD
Music Video Distributors

Devo, while enjoying a bit of mainstream success thanks to MTV and their song “Whip It”, were somewhat of an anomaly in the world of punk/new wave. They were certainly unique and were in no way a mainstream type of act at that time, yet they seemed to cross over at one point thanks to that video getting heavy rotation on that then-new network (back at a time when they actually played videos).

On August 17, 1980, these mad scientists from Akron, OH arrived at the Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma, CA to put on a show to a packed house. At this time they were just starting to garner some success with the release of that aforementioned “Whip It” single and Target Video had the good sense to film the event. As far as target videos go, this easily has the best sound and video quality of anything from them I have seen before. It really is a top-notch presentation, especially by 1980 standards.

The DVD is 1 hour and 15 minutes long and features a ton of songs. All their “hits” they are well known for such as “Whip It”, “Satisfaction”, and my personal favorite, “Uncontrollable Urge” are played to perfection along with quite a bit of more obscure tracks that only a die-hard fan would be familiar with. At the start of each song, the title is printed at the bottom of the screen which is something I appreciated because sadly The Punk Vault is lacking in Devo Records.

Devo was a band I knew of, and I bought that “Whip It” 7″ back in 1980 when I was a little kid but as I got into more hardcore punk, I turned my back on such things because they didn’t fit in with the soundtrack of my young angry teen angst. As I got older I came to appreciate them more and what they contributed to the world of music. After watching this DVD, it really made me want to go back and pick up those records that I don’t currently own. This DVD, because of the wide variety of their material that is covered, would also be a good place for a beginner to start, not just for the visuals, but for the fact that if you flip the disc over, it is an audio CD of the performance, so you automatically now have a Devo album in your possession that contains “all the hits” and then some.

As I stated before the video is top-notch and is the best Target Video I’ve seen in terms of quality. There is two audio options; straight stereo, and 5.1 surround that does a great job of filing the room and really sounds good (and was the option I preferred after sampling them both). There is two packaging options as well, you can get either a jewel case packaged like a CD, or a Amary keepcase like a standard DVD. There was a bonus clip of Devo playing as Dove - The Band of Love from some show in 1980 and a trailer for another Devo DVD that was recorded recently overseas.

If you are a Devo fan, this would find itself a happy home in your collection and if you are curious about the band but didn’t know where to start, this is as good a place as any, especially for the very affordable price.

Related links:

Buy the DVD from Amazon

Music Video Distributors website

Devo official website

This record was featured in a recent “Selections from The Punk Vault” and it got me to thinking that there was a few different variations of it. I was missing one of them, which I have since acquired, thus giving me completion for this slab of wax. Yes, I can sleep just a tiny bit better now knowing that I completed something in life

The first pressing had blue letters on the cover and is perhaps the most common of them all.

The second pressing changed the cover (and inner sleeve) to having pink letters.

There was two UK pressings as well. Aside from the color differences, they added the UK address underneath the Touch and Go logo on the back cover.

The first UK pressing (at least I am pretty sure it is) had gold letters.

The second UK pressing (at least I am pretty sure it is) had green letters on the sleeve. I wasn’t even aware of its existence until reading Obik’s website dedicated to Big Black.

And last but not least, the test pressing looks like this…

So there you go, more variations of Gods Favorite Dog than you’d probably want to own yourself! Now if only Touch and Go would get to reissuing that on CD.