Episode 610 - Mike Watt
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksicles what the fuckadelics how are you how are you wtf is the name of the show i am mark maron the host of that show mike watt is on the show today
Marc:What a fucking freewheeling genius that dude is, man.
Marc:We got into some shit.
Marc:He's got an entire mythology and point of view that he works from.
Marc:Real American original, that guy, Mike Watt.
Marc:Solo work, his work with Firehose, and his seminal work with the Minutemen, one of the amazing punk bands.
Marc:Out of California.
Marc:Important, man.
Marc:And it's something I came to late, but God damn it.
Marc:I love talking to that guy.
Marc:As you know, I've added about, let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight dates.
Marc:to my tour.
Marc:June 25th, that's Thursday, I'll be at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York.
Marc:On Friday, June 26th, I will be at the BAM Howard Opera House in Brooklyn.
Marc:That show is kicking ass.
Marc:We're doing fine.
Marc:That place seats 2200.
Marc:And there's tickets left.
Marc:I'm just telling you, it's going well over there.
Marc:June 27th, Saturday, the Paramount Theater in Huntington, New York.
Marc:And Sunday, June 28th, the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey.
Marc:Now those shows, Red Bank, Huntington, Port Chester.
Marc:I think a lot of the people that are my fans are going to Brooklyn.
Marc:Those shows are selling okay, but if you live in those areas and you want to see me, grab some tickets.
Marc:All right?
Marc:So I know it's happening.
Marc:You dig?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Friday, July 10th, Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon.
Marc:That's going great.
Marc:Saturday, July 11th, Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Friday, July 24th in Boulder at the Boulder Theater in Colorado.
Marc:And Saturday, July 25th at the Paramount Theater in Denver, Colorado.
Marc:Those Colorado dates are fine.
Marc:But if you're coming, get some tickets.
Marc:Portland's looking great.
Marc:Portland is looking awesome.
Marc:I did a show in Minneapolis.
Marc:I haven't talked to you since then.
Marc:Last Sunday.
Marc:And it was astounding.
Marc:You know, I did this special on Saturday in Chicago, which was great for a lot of different reasons.
Marc:And then I was just sort of like, you know, there was a crash after that.
Marc:It's like all this momentum builds up for weeks on end.
Marc:Then you do the thing.
Marc:So on Sunday in Minneapolis, I was loose and I was out of my mind.
Marc:And I was talking like I'd never talked before.
Marc:Not in a long time.
Marc:Not so plainly and honestly on a stand-up stage about things I used to talk about and why I don't talk about them anymore.
Marc:Specifically, things that may be condescending or self-righteous or strident.
Marc:How do you talk about politics?
Marc:How do you talk about religion, stuff like that, without being strident or aggressive or self-righteous?
Marc:I don't like those tones when they come out of me.
Marc:Get them out.
Marc:Change the tone.
Marc:Adjust the knob of self.
Marc:But for some reason, I was very lucid at that show, and it's just never going to happen again.
Marc:I know I mentioned this to you on Monday, but I was in a movie with Chris D'Elia and Eric Andre and a bunch of other funny people.
Marc:It's called Flock of Dudes, and it's premiering at the L.A.
Marc:Film Festival this Saturday, June 13th at 7.40 p.m.
Marc:So check it out if you want, if you want to see me or some other funny people in that movie, if you want to see them act.
Marc:And speaking of funny people, Amy Schumer, Judd Apatow, Dave Attell, Vanessa Bayer, Mike Birbiglia, and Colin Quinn are going on tour for charity.
Marc:They're doing the Trainwreck tour in seven cities.
Marc:They'll be in Boston and New York on June 14th and 15th.
Marc:Go to trainwreckmovie.com for tour dates and tickets.
Marc:All right, let's stop screwing around.
Marc:Who cares anymore about my dumb blues wicks?
Marc:Not me.
Marc:Not me.
Marc:Hey, look.
Marc:This is supposed to be happening at the end.
Marc:Let's talk to Mike Watt, a bass-playing genius right now.
Guest:Fucking sickness almost killed me.
Guest:What was that?
Guest:It was 15 years ago.
Guest:Actually, it's on leap day, so only every four years I got to go through the motherfucker.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was like 38 days of fever, man.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And this thing is growing inside me.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:Don't know.
Guest:So I go to the doctors.
Guest:You felt it, though?
Guest:Oh, fuck yeah.
Guest:It's like I'm pregnant.
Guest:Shit's growing inside me.
Marc:You feel it like in your guts?
Marc:It's called the taint.
Marc:Yeah, the taint, the perineum.
Marc:Perineum.
Marc:Perineum.
Guest:That's a doctor word.
Marc:Taint is like- Yeah, the taint.
Marc:So you got a lump in there.
Marc:Taint the asshole, taint the balls.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So you got a lump in there?
Guest:Well, I'm feeling.
Guest:I'm feeling there.
Guest:So I tell the doctors, ah, they start feeding me pills.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:This shit's growing and growing.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:You know, I'm following their orders.
Guest:The last round of pills is on the phone.
Guest:They don't even fucking see me.
Guest:I take their VD tests and shit.
Guest:The guy brings me into this room with a painting of a Mexican funeral.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's that about?
Guest:He said, don't look.
Guest:He said, now, look, you're negative on all these tests, you know?
Guest:And I said, that's good, right?
Guest:And he said, well, could be wrong.
Marc:Oh, great.
Guest:So I go back.
Marc:The last round of pills.
Marc:Uplifting.
Marc:It's on the phone.
Marc:They don't even see me.
Marc:So they just think it's going to be killed with antibiotics.
Marc:They don't know what the fuck it is.
Guest:Well, I found out later that last round, that kind of antibiotic is specific for like syphilis.
Guest:They think it's a VD, because I got these big village people look at that in those days.
Guest:He had the big mustache going.
Guest:This guy's not saying, he's got a new one.
Guest:Oh, and your work base, right?
Guest:So fucking this thing's growing in me.
Guest:The only way I could get relief, kind of, was get in the tub.
Guest:You know, taint fucking overhead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then hot water.
Marc:Right on it, right.
Guest:Just pounding on it.
Guest:And I guess that softened it up enough that this shit blew out.
Guest:Blew out?
Guest:After 38 days.
Guest:Blew out.
Guest:Blew a hole in me like a, you know, double odd fuck.
Guest:Like a giant zit?
Guest:No, like a hole.
Guest:Holy fuck.
Guest:Okay, right in the taint.
Guest:And about a gallon of, it looked like pea color.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, peas, lima beans.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:But it smelled like, whoa.
Guest:Oh, my fucking shit.
Guest:Gangrene.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was septic.
Guest:I was a fucking bug factory.
Guest:And so I stuffed a bunch of newspapers in there and put on my Levi, and I called my sister Melinda.
Guest:Melinda, we got to go.
Guest:Got me to the emergency room.
Guest:And I watched.
Guest:Now, this husband, Pedro.
Yeah.
Guest:I washed pots and pans there for five years, so I knew some of these old doctors when I was a teenager.
Guest:$1.20 an hour.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Anyway, I know Dr. Scheinberg or something like this.
Guest:They're still there.
Marc:They're still there these days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's a urologist.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I tell the emergency room doc's a young man.
Guest:I said...
Guest:You know, maybe he can help me.
Guest:And he goes, yeah, he's going to be here in the morning, Mr. Watt, but I don't know if you are, so we're going to put you in an ambulance and put you to county.
Guest:County?
Guest:Okay, so I take everything off, you know, give my sister everything.
Guest:Go up there nine hours, you know.
Guest:After the nine hours, I did get shown to a team of interns.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Actually, trauma is their business.
Guest:That was the perfect place to go.
Guest:They ain't going to just feed you fucking pills.
Guest:They're going to get to work.
Guest:And this guy, Doc Hopkins.
Guest:You know, I made an opera about this.
Guest:My second opera is all about this whole hell ride.
Guest:I paralleled Dante's Comedia.
Guest:Of course, she got one surgeon.
Marc:What's that opera called?
Guest:It's called The Second Man's Middle Stand.
Guest:I was only 42.
Guest:I had a lot of work to do, not time to die.
Guest:I got to tell you, when I was laying there with the fevers, there was no clunk.
Guest:It was just delirium, delirium, delirium.
Guest:I was like...
Guest:In those kind of situations, you got to really pull it together, I think, because it's like, why not end the hurt and let go?
Guest:But on the other hand, I had all these things.
Guest:See, that's the thing.
Guest:When a hurt, a sickness comes down on you, you think you got enough time, but it just makes you so weak.
Guest:You might not.
Guest:Yeah, you don't have time.
Guest:But I just said, fuck it.
Guest:I got a lot of work.
Guest:I can't go now.
Guest:And then also, the difference with this intern, Doc Hopkins.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I put him in the opera, in fact.
Guest:Because they all got their theories.
Guest:They got only one real doctor.
Guest:But you got a hole in your tank.
Guest:I know, but they got theories.
Guest:Some dudes think it's flesh-eating bacteria.
Guest:Some dudes think it's gangrene.
Guest:Doc Hopkins, he says, I think you got the mother of all abscesses.
Guest:I think this might have started from an ingrown fucking hair that should have been lanced.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Holy fuck.
Guest:And you know the way County was in those days, all these people, it's enough for the money, all these people from all the world come there to get experience.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you're there because they want to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They ain't punching a claw.
Guest:It's like in the music racket.
Guest:Some cats who win the lottery, the last thing they want to talk about is music.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Then there's, notice when cats are first into it, a big higher percentage if they really want to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:It's a human thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I ain't against doctors.
Guest:Like I said, this cat saved my life.
Guest:And when he went to work, he cut two more holes in me.
Guest:One in a ball sack and then one next to that other one.
Guest:Because he said it was almost like going in there with a wire brush.
Marc:Because it was all fucked up everywhere.
Guest:He said it ate around your colon like a horseshoe.
Guest:It was eroding into your...
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:What's that piss tube thing called?
Guest:Yeah, urethra.
Guest:Urethra.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They put a foley in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, man, it was easiest pisses I ever took in my life.
Guest:I just look at that sack fill up, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then when they put that, they didn't just put a foley in the urethra thing.
Guest:They also put it in the wall of my bladder.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because that's where it was really infected.
Guest:And, well, the tube out there, Mr. White, you can't do the base because it'll... Right.
Right.
Guest:there ain't no fitting.
Guest:There's a ball on the inside and there's a two, man, they got just a slit in you.
Marc:And so you couldn't lean a bass on that.
Marc:You could feel the pressure.
Marc:Couldn't play bass.
Marc:And you are the bass.
Guest:Yeah, but I hadn't stopped since.
Guest:I'd never stopped, never gone a day without playing.
Guest:And now for like five, six months, I can't play it.
Guest:So when I go back to it,
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:I'm all atrophied.
Guest:I got no rhythm.
Guest:I thought, this is like bike shit.
Guest:Well, you know, I went back to bike after 22 years.
Guest:That was lame, too.
Guest:It does come back, but you got to fucking work on it.
Guest:So I panicked, you know?
Guest:And I was like, how can I get it back?
Guest:What can I work on?
Guest:And I thought immediately, Dave Alexander's Stooges.
Guest:You know, for one thing, when we were more younger guys, that's one of the only U.S.
Guest:rock bands that could actually hear the bass.
Guest:And the lines were simple, not a lot of chord changes, but a lot of feel.
Guest:And I thought, well, if I just do Little Doll over and over and over.
Marc:So the idea was just so you could get back to playing bass.
Marc:Get on the horse.
Marc:You got to work it.
Marc:And it was Stooges.
Marc:That was your system.
Guest:I thought, let's just do Stooges songs.
Guest:You know, let's just do it because you know what?
Guest:They're songs, but it ain't Yes or Emerson, like I'm Bomber.
Guest:Or even some of your songs are a lot more complicated.
Guest:Mr. Beefheart influence or something.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's this real, what do you call it, fundamental.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And maybe I get to learn to do this again.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so we did these gigs.
Guest:Jay dug it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was just making a solo album called Jay Mascis and the Fog, where he played everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, I want to tour this, but I don't like singing every fucking night, every song.
Guest:So why don't you come play bass, and then we'll do some Stooges songs.
Guest:So we go on tour, and when we get to Ann Arbor, that's where Ronnie lives.
Guest:Still with his mom at that time.
Guest:Ashton, yeah.
Guest:Jay asked me when we play the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor, Jay Mascis and the Fog tour, why don't you call up Ronnie?
Guest:So I call him, hey, Ronnie, we're playing in your town.
Guest:Come on down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come down there.
Guest:Last part of the set.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We do like nine Stooges songs with Ronnie.
Guest:He comes up and plays the Stooges.
Guest:We got everything up.
Guest:One of the Stooges.
Guest:You know, Jay's got enough amps, believe me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he rigs some of them up for Ronnie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we're doing Stooges songs with one of the Stooges.
Guest:In fact, I remember what Jay said.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Jay's really a drummer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He learned guitar from Funhouse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He says, first you learn from the guy.
Guest:First you rip him off, then you play with the guy.
Guest:That's what he told me.
Guest:But Jason made a few words.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Believe me, I sat with him for an hour.
Guest:But the dude is smart, though.
Guest:Really smart.
Guest:Very sweet guy.
Guest:But not his verbal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's why people don't know this.
Guest:Because you don't go and buff the badge with it.
Guest:But anyway, he's...
Guest:He's digging on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he says, Ronnie, why don't you come on tour with us?
Guest:So the tour ends up being, you know, J. Baskins and Fog.
Guest:There were some dinosaur songs, too.
Guest:But the whole last third would be Ronnie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come out there, we do all that.
Guest:Then...
Guest:There was this festival called Tomorrow's Party, and Thirst is the curator.
Guest:Now, Scotty's living in his truck in Florida, in Sarasota.
Guest:Scott Ashton, rock action of the brother.
Guest:And Thirst says, look, let's random drum set, and you and Jay play with both Ashton brothers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So fly them over there.
Guest:We prax up the first two albums.
Guest:And we do this gig, me and Jay.
Guest:And then Jay, okay, let's do some gigs in Europe called Ashton, Ashton, Mascus, and Watt.
Guest:And that's where Ig heard about it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:Ig might have known from the first gig.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It took that long.
Guest:But then he's making an album called Skull Ring, right?
Guest:So he asked him, hey, guys, will you come on now?
Guest:Him and Ronnie ain't talked for 29 years.
Guest:Now, Scotty did try.
Guest:He told me he did go up to New York City when he was living there and asked him about a thing.
Marc:Down out of that city.
Marc:I remember when he lived in New York City.
Marc:They even did a jam.
Marc:Yeah, him and the drummer, Scott.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there was a huge Berlin Wall with Ronnie in him.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:But that all went away.
Guest:How quick?
Guest:Well, when he heard about me and Jay playing with it.
Guest:So they ask, and they do three or four songs.
Guest:Actually, they're demos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Scotty got all weirded out about that because they end up being on the album.
Guest:He said, man, I didn't know that was the real dealio.
Guest:But Ig likes the feel, and I understand why.
Guest:So that was the beginning of the Stooges get together.
Guest:This month,
Guest:12 years ago.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Was Coachella.
Guest:That was the first one.
Marc:So that's how you became a member of the Stooges.
Guest:Well, it's an Iggy Pop album.
Guest:It's called Skull Ring.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I guess they get to talking.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they get an offer from the Coachella people.
Guest:Because I'm on tour with my second man doing that.
Marc:tour for that second opera.
Guest:Sickness.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because I listened to the first one.
Guest:I didn't get to that album.
Guest:The first one's about my pop.
Marc:That's a fucking masterpiece.
Guest:Well, I was trying to talk about the Minuteman and I used his life in the Navy.
Guest:I didn't know how to deal with losing D-Boom.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And sad ending.
Marc:Yeah, we can walk through that, man.
Guest:Man, the second opera, happy ending, but still fucking hell with all the nightmare.
Guest:Third opera, yeah, middle age.
Guest:That's a whole different deal.
Guest:Which one is that?
Guest:Is that done yet?
Guest:Yeah, hyphenated, man.
Marc:I'm just going to do a tour in two... I didn't know that in your mind that's an opera.
Guest:It's 30 parts.
Guest:It's one song.
Guest:I'll get to that later.
Guest:Okay, that's the last one.
Guest:I'm almost done with this.
Guest:So I'm on tour.
Guest:I'm in Tallahassee at the Cow House.
Guest:I think it's the second one.
Guest:And there's, hey, Watt, there's a call.
Guest:It's egg.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, Mike.
Guest:Ronnie says you're the man.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:He goes, will you do me a favor?
Guest:Would you wear a T-shirt instead of flannel?
I said, fuck yeah.
Guest:dress for Perry I mean it's fucking John Fogarty's idea anyway you know I said what about Levi and Converse he goes that's strong talking about him having nightmares about the drummer in lime green and the bass in orange and how it's gonna look and all this lights yeah you know I'm just holding the thing and I'm like fuck
Guest:And finally, we get to the music part at the end of the spiel.
Guest:OK, Mike, however we end the songs, that's how we end them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Well, you know, that's exactly what I thought, Mark.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I thought about it.
Guest:That first album, a lot of the tunes fade out because, you know, they wrote them right on the spot there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, a lot of those things didn't have ending, so they fade out.
Guest:So that's what I think it was meaning.
Guest:However we end them, that's how we end.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:OK.
Guest:So we had already worked that out with Jay, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:In fact, that's how Ronnie told me later the strong lobby was for me because of that work I did with him and Jay.
Guest:See what I mean?
Guest:Jay's the guy who's responsible.
Guest:I get all this credit, but it was really Jay.
Guest:And so, okay.
Guest:In Memphis, I leave my second man guys.
Guest:I said, oh, now you guys drive off to Raleigh.
Guest:I'll go do this gig.
Guest:I fly out.
Guest:I got sick on the fucking plane.
Guest:I didn't tell him.
Guest:It felt like a 20-foot... It was that crap coming back a little bit.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, shit, that must have been scary.
Guest:Yeah, the fevers came back up.
Guest:Right, girl, not again.
Guest:But I didn't tell him, and we do the prac.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then we do the gig.
Guest:In fact, right before the gig, man, Flea...
Guest:I'm shivering.
Guest:We're in the desert.
Guest:And the peppers are there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a whole bunch.
Guest:Ian McKay was there.
Guest:In fact, Flea and him are trying to hug the fever out of me.
Guest:Flea goes, wait a minute.
Guest:We got this nurse that puts vitamin E in us when this shit happens.
Guest:So it takes 20 minutes to get this shit in my ass.
Guest:And they put me in a golf cart.
Guest:And I go up there.
Guest:The wind blew over Ronnie's amps.
Guest:I remember Ig stopping dirt.
Guest:He stops a song.
Guest:He comes over to me.
Guest:Are we in the right key?
Guest:I said, yeah.
He said, play it again.
Guest:It was a mind-blowing, but it happened.
Guest:It fucking happened.
Guest:And then 125 months of gigs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you've got to understand me.
Guest:I'm finally the youngest dude in the band, and my ears are like elephant-sized sponges.
Guest:I'm just soaking up.
Guest:I'm 13 in 1970.
Guest:So I don't really know.
Guest:I'm a boy in the 60s, but I don't know clubs.
Guest:I don't know garage.
Guest:And there was a whole scene that we were learning with punk.
Guest:But the arena rock came and...
Guest:washed everything away.
Guest:I didn't have any of that experience.
Guest:It was all Nuremberg rallies.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then these guys, they were coming from a lot of common ground, but in other ways, completely different.
Guest:Well, that's interesting.
Guest:I know they invented, there would be no punk without them.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But in another way, they weren't us.
Marc:They were trying to do another thing.
Guest:Well, they were from another era.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Ronnie told me about smoking a pipe and wearing a corduroy coat at a folk concert.
Guest:Coffeehouse shit.
Guest:It doesn't exist.
Guest:No, it don't exist.
Guest:They're getting Beatle haircuts, and him and Dave Alexander flying over to England to try to find the Beatles or something.
Guest:He got a piece of Pete Townsend's guitar.
Guest:That was in a roof.
Guest:But they were from a different thing.
Guest:I remember Iggy telling me his first record was Johnny and the Hurricanes.
Guest:He was a drummer, right?
Guest:That's where he gets his name, because the band's called Iguanas.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And pop.
Guest:is some guy who, in a crazy, maybe Baracho or some shit, but he put, rammed his head in a bulkhead and all his eyebrows fell out.
Guest:So... And his name was like Joe Pop or something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Real name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Ig, one gig, I'm gonna shave off my eyebrows and put glitter on.
Guest:Well, you won't do that because it keeps the glitter...
Guest:from going into your eyes.
Guest:It's a nightmare.
Guest:But that's when Scotty started calling him Iggy Pop.
Guest:So I think Danny Fields calls him Iggy Stooge.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they told me about calling, actually, the three Stooges to get permission for the name.
Guest:Well, one of them used to go over and hang out with Larry.
Guest:Ronnie took care of Larry, bring him cigarettes and stuff like that.
Guest:I love that story.
Guest:That's the only time that Ronnie lived outside was in Hollywood those couple years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When they had the big record deal.
Guest:And they thought they were going to get it.
Guest:Actually, more than that.
Guest:Living in that house.
Guest:Actually, more than that, they had the management deal with the Bowie main man.
Guest:And they got him a house in the valve.
Guest:Scotty took me that pad.
Guest:You were up there?
Guest:He just showed it to me.
Guest:They were only in there a little bit.
Guest:They even took away the clothes.
Guest:Oh, they did?
Guest:You know, that James with the collar.
Guest:Everything.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:Back to Michigan, you fuckers.
Guest:Take the hell out of lover.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:He had to sell the drum set to get back home.
Marc:Ugh.
Marc:It was a nightmare.
Marc:So when you guys started with the Minutemen, where were you living?
Marc:You were here in Pedro?
Guest:I came here.
Guest:I'm from Virginia.
Guest:My pop's a sailor.
Guest:He's an interim guy.
Marc:Was he like a lifer in the Navy?
Marc:He did 20.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:So that's why you were in Virginia.
Guest:They told me never to join.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It's the biggest Navy base in the world.
Guest:But it ain't so close to Vietnam.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Pedro's closer because next to Pedro is Long Beach Naval Station, which is no more.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's all canned boats now from China and stuff, which is probably better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, the Army base, too, they closed down because you didn't need that assault treaty anymore.
Guest:So I've been in the officer's latrine for 26 years.
Guest:I tore all the shitters out, and I put a hatch.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:It's not like a practice pad, because me and Dee Boone, you know, never had a pad, so a drummer is hard to play with.
Guest:But you're playing for an old bass building?
Guest:Army bass, yeah.
Guest:It's the latrine for the officers.
Guest:And that's what you're practicing?
Guest:It's called Fort MacArthur.
Guest:That's the new practice pad?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the new practice pad.
Guest:Well, there's a shower part, a sink part, and I took the shitter part, and I pulled them all out.
Guest:I had to also put rug all over it because it's all made out of asbestos.
Guest:Yeah, get rid of that.
Guest:Or at least seal it.
Guest:So the military is kind of still in my life.
Guest:But anyway, you get these things called the orders.
Guest:In 30 days, you'll report.
Guest:So all of a sudden, we've got to move from Virginia to Pedro.
Marc:And you're how old?
Guest:At that time, nine.
Marc:And you got how many sisters?
Marc:Two.
Marc:And it's just the three.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, my ma, she's still around.
Guest:Cancer killed my pa.
Guest:Because he was injury room guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But nuke.
Guest:They had to train a nuclear navy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they had to bring chief.
Guest:Chief is like a sergeant.
Guest:That's high as you go as an enlisted man.
Guest:That's what he was.
Guest:Enlisted men are trippy.
Guest:They're usually running away from something.
Guest:The officer guys, I think, come from a culture.
Guest:Their daddies were...
Guest:Yeah, lifers.
Guest:It's different.
Guest:Bigger money.
Guest:Yeah, but there's enlisted men, lifers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like these chiefs, they'll plateau.
Guest:It'll take them 20 years to get there, and then they'll stay another 20 years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the pension's different, I guess.
Guest:The longer you're in, the more you get.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My pop made chief in seven years, because they had to happen to build a nuke Navy quick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you could imagine, too.
Guest:The Enterprise.
Guest:In fact, that's what happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He came out here to be on a boat called Long Beach.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we're going to make an aircraft carrier.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that's up in Alameda, so we got to move again.
Guest:And my ma said, fuck that shit.
Guest:Done.
Guest:We're staying in Pedro.
Guest:So I can't live in the Navy housing there anymore.
Guest:They just made a new proj next to the old proj, this biggest park we got in Pedro called Peck Park.
Guest:Well, me, DeBoom was living in that older proj.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That project was from Second World War housing.
Guest:It was supposed to be torn down, but- He come from a military family too?
Guest:His daddy, four years only.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like World War II days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My papa was only 19 when I was born, so he only knew Vietnam.
Guest:But he didn't go over there.
Guest:It's just Econo.
Guest:No, he's out before the 50s.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Econo.
Marc:It's just Econo.
Guest:He's Econo.
Guest:He's putting in radios at a Buick dealership.
Marc:What does econo mean for people who are just coming in contact?
Guest:Well, the fucking vans were called econo lines.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You drove up in one.
Guest:You still own one.
Guest:Yeah, I've owned four.
Guest:This is the fourth one.
Guest:Ten years.
Guest:But you're associated with that word.
Guest:Yeah, because, well, for one thing, we didn't grow up with a lot of money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So economic?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you still want to do it, but maybe you ain't got the fucking shrapnel, you know?
Guest:So you make a tent to hold a dream.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that's all econo means is bang for buck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It don't mean always, because you can be cheap ass on yourself and end up paying more down the road.
Guest:So econo is more of a long view.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's not just, you know what I mean?
Guest:You have to buy the mother, like my pop said, buy it right, buy it once.
Guest:You have to buy it two or three times.
Guest:It ain't fucking econo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's harder to find shit you can buy once now.
Guest:I know, I know, I know.
Guest:Because lots of strategies from the shepherds is not so econo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So we both share this big park, and I made him.
Guest:Well, I'm walking through the park first, second dad moved in.
Guest:He jumped out of a tree on me.
Marc:This is D. Boone.
Guest:Yeah, because he's playing with his buddies.
Guest:D. Boone had really bad eyes, big, thick glasses.
Guest:Pictures, you don't see it much because he's wearing contacts by that time.
Guest:But he jumped on me, and he thought I was a neighbor whose nickname was Eskimo.
Guest:He said, you're not Eskimo.
Guest:I said, no.
Guest:And his buddies all ran off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, the only rock band he knew was Creedence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a good rock band to know.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
Guest:But he knew about shit that I didn't know comedians.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know about comedians.
Guest:I knew about Cream, I knew about Who, T-Rex.
Guest:In fact, T-Rex is our first concert we go to.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, this is where... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was at Long Beach Auditorium.
Guest:They tore it down.
Guest:It's the opera house.
Guest:How many tours did they even do of the States?
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Only a couple.
Guest:They weren't that big here.
Guest:So he knew Credence, you knew T-Rex.
Guest:Yeah, but here's what happens.
Guest:When he jumps out of that tree, this is what really fucking got me smitten.
Guest:I said, I just moved here.
Guest:Let me show you where I live.
Guest:So we're walking back, walking from the tree.
Guest:The tree's gone now, but I know where it still was.
Guest:So we're walking to my pad across these baseball diamonds.
Guest:He starts rattling off these bits.
Guest:and uh i'm like fuck this is the smartest dude in the world you know now look we're 12 okay well kind of bits you mean comedy bits well i don't know i don't know i think this man is fucking genius just whooping him out you know bam bam bam bam i'm like fuck yeah you know and of course the next day he takes me to his pad yeah and he puts on this record
Guest:it's george carlin yeah and i hear all the fucking bits yeah he didn't make any of it up yeah but he you know what he had to memorize pretty good but it was like god damn d boone none of this is yours but it was too late because by that time and then that's when his ma came in and says now this is early 70s so there ain't a lot of guns but there's fighting and stuff after school so you're gonna have a band she wants us in the house and
Guest:After school.
Guest:And you're 13?
Guest:So we don't get in trouble.
Guest:Well, we're 12.
Guest:We're not even 13.
Guest:And you listen to George Carlin?
Guest:That's a mind-blower.
Guest:His half-brother, Jim, gave him the record.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He had older brothers.
Guest:See, I didn't.
Guest:Gotta have the older brothers.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:What do I do?
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:Even my sisters are young.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:Anyway, she played guitar as a girl, so Dibuna, obviously, was the guitar player.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he had a little brother's name.
Guest:His mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Ramblin' Rose was her big song, right?
Guest:Brother Wayne.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, of course, Dee Boone learned Ramblin' Rose.
Guest:And he had a little brother named Joe.
Guest:And he would do the drum, put a book on the snare drum, and then play the little TV holder for cymbal thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And every band's got a bass.
Guest:You know, we look on the back of the album cover.
Guest:You're going to be bass, Watt.
Guest:And I don't know what the fuck a bass is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then looking at the pictures, it looks like a guitar with only four.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I think, oh, man, this is just a guitar with four strings.
Guest:So that's what I played for the first couple years.
Guest:Now, the Creedence records, he's got all six of the first six ones.
Guest:But they ain't in the sleeve.
Guest:They're on the hardwood floor with the grape juice on it.
Guest:You got to put like, yeah, the record player is like, you know, the speakers on the wires hang out.
Guest:You got to put six quarters in there keeping from skipping.
Guest:So I can't fucking hear what the bass is playing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's like.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's where I get the idea about flannels.
Guest:See, I look at the singer's shirts and I go, man, if I wear flannels.
Guest:the singer says, maybe Dee Boone will still like me.
Guest:So that's why, because I'm from Navy High, and I don't know what a fucking lumberjack or farmers wear.
Guest:You thought you disappointed him because you couldn't... Yeah, I couldn't hear what the fuck this guy was playing.
Guest:But you thought maybe if you put the shirt on, he'll still like me.
Guest:And I finally got a bass around...
Guest:16.
Guest:So for those first couple years, I'm playing this guitar with Forrester.
Guest:Now, you're just jamming.
Guest:But not electric.
Guest:Is it electric?
Guest:It's a pawn shop.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Because Gibsons and Fenders, no way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Also, music was so different then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was like in record stores.
Guest:And also, most music stores are like for school band shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So like electric guitars and stuff, that was kind of in record stores, if you can believe.
Guest:And there was a place at Pedro called Chuck Sound of Music.
Guest:And a cat gave lessons out there.
Guest:this Roy Mendes Lopez he actually lived in his car he's a real hippie yeah not just a rubber stamp but this dude really you know he'd find clothes and use white shoe polish he got was into Hare Krishna yeah but he's really into fucking making his own guitars and mandolins and playing in his car he lived in the car he took the fucking seat out first a Volkswagen and then it was a Valiant where was he making those guitars
Guest:In the fucking trip.
Guest:They were built so thin and be so loud that they would implode from just being tuned up.
Guest:Yeah, this guy.
Guest:But his big thing was about practice, practice.
Guest:The culture was, though, no one wrote songs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So please teach us how to copy off records.
Marc:Right.
Guest:That's all we did.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That was really kind of bunk.
Marc:That's what you did at the beginning.
Guest:That's what 70s?
Guest:No one in our town wrote music.
Guest:It's all cover music.
Guest:Yeah, even though you're not even playing bars, you're just jamming in your thing.
Guest:No one thought of music as expression.
Guest:It's like building models.
Guest:It kind of looks like the best guy in town.
Guest:He's the guy who can play Black Dog the best.
Guest:It's the worst.
Guest:Nobody's using music to say something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No original artists there.
Guest:you know so you guys so at least but this is the way we hang out right you know this is our personal what songs were you learning at first a lot of blue oyster called a lot of credence of course you like boys we we saw them the most out of all the bands maybe three times yeah they'd come play socal i think they had a big popular thing here so they'd be here a lot and we saw them like 10 times it's weird because they're not really one of my bands yeah yeah i don't know why they had that there's mystery they had that uh symbol the theatrics
Guest:Yeah, but they had this upside-down question mark at Exclamation Park.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I spray-painted that on the back of a T-shirt.
Guest:I was the only dude at school.
Guest:You know, there wasn't merchandise in old gig days.
Guest:Gigs were all about promoting albums.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It hadn't become an industry.
Guest:So I could wear this and be like, I'm the only one who has it, unless maybe you read Richard Meltzer in Cream Magazine or Lester Bangs.
Guest:Colt wasn't that.
Guest:Meltzer used to wrote a couple songs for them, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bunch of lyrics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, Stairway the Stars, She's As Beautiful As A Foot.
Guest:Some even later ones, like I'm Burning For You.
Guest:Yeah, that was a big hit.
Guest:And he was a huge rock critic, Richard Meltzer.
Guest:He kind of invented rock right.
Guest:I got to make it out.
Guest:The Minutemen, we're going to collaborate with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was a hero to us, man.
Guest:He actually got us in Cream Magazine.
Guest:He sent me this card.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe it was an ace of spades or to a club.
Guest:I don't know what the fuck.
Guest:I can't remember now.
Guest:But he says, one day you want to play this card.
Guest:And so we came out with the Bean Spill EP, Minuteman.
Guest:And so I sent one of them with the card back.
Guest:I said, I'm playing the card.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he puts us in the fucking Cree magazine.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he says, they're scientists rock.
Guest:So I used that in history lesson.
Guest:Scientists rock.
Guest:Yeah, he called us that.
Guest:And for me and Dee Boone to get something like that from Richard, well, he wrote 10 poems.
Guest:He was going to play sax and sing with us.
Guest:And we were going to collaborate.
Guest:In fact, I gave Dee Boone those words in the last boat ride.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when he got killed in the wreck.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And later on, maybe four or five years ago, I got to make those songs with Richard, plus 43 others.
Guest:It was like 60, because there were some instrumentals, too.
Guest:So like 63-song album called Spielgusher.
Guest:He lives in Portland now.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So I finally got to collaborate with Richard.
Marc:Spielgusher is the Watt Melcher collaboration.
Guest:I should flow you one.
Guest:Yeah, I should flow you one because it's great.
Guest:It's got those 10 poems plus 40 something others he wrote.
Marc:Now, do you think, because when you was in the Minutemen and Firehose and all the stuff that you guys were doing, I mean, poetry, it seems like you were writing that way.
Guest:Yeah, we're part of a movement.
Guest:I try to understand where we come from.
Guest:We come from marina rock.
Guest:So the way I look at that is like a farmer using a lot of manure.
Guest:Yeah, marina rock.
Guest:That's the manure.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we grow out of this.
Guest:A lot of our punk is reactions against.
Guest:but also getting turned on to these people we've never met.
Marc:But when you listen, if I listen to the first couple of Minutemen records and then the big one, the sound, it's hard for me to identify it as punk rock.
Marc:If I listen to Double Nickels on the Dime, when I listen to that, it's maybe the punk rock.
Marc:Because you got a different understanding.
Guest:For us, punk was never a style of music.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because these people we met, the Hollywood scene, this was before hardcore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of these people were older.
Guest:They weren't really kids.
Guest:We were probably the youngest.
Guest:It was more glitter and glam people, artist people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:punk was like anything you could get you know bands like nervous gender yeah yeah yeah just anything get away with yeah i remember no mercy was just a drummer and a singer up in the city and uh the screamers the first band that could sell out the whiskey they didn't have a guitar yeah it was anything it was not it was a state of mind so they became a style later
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you got to understand the demographic.
Guest:It went to very young people in the suburbs.
Guest:Because no one sounds like you guys.
Guest:I mean, no one sounds like- We thought that was the point, though.
Guest:You're supposed to do shit like that.
Guest:That was part of the movement.
Guest:They said anarchy in these things.
Guest:It was the test that meant no coercion.
Guest:It didn't mean some kind of violence.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like you're supposed to- Push it.
Guest:Define yourself.
Guest:I was doing this gig and Joey-
Guest:He wasn't Ramones.
Guest:He had his own band.
Guest:And he was saying punk was like a hay wagon.
Guest:If you had something to bring, jump on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think for some people, it was never really a style.
Guest:The style belonged to the bands.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It wasn't supposed to be.
Guest:But, you know, marketing people and ladies and gentlemen.
Marc:When did you and Dee Boone really start to figure out that thing you guys do?
Marc:Because he's an amazing, he was an amazing guitar player.
Marc:And it wasn't really about chords.
Marc:He was very lyrical.
Guest:Actually, a lot of his playing with Minuteman,
Guest:is um political yeah the politics ain't words right so much i mean he he had some words that uh you know uh talk to power or something yeah but actually the power that's it yeah he wanted it in the band and the old days the hierarchy was the guitar man runs the show right he's got these big ass that's why i couldn't hear the bass on them grand funk records you know yeah yeah yeah uh
Guest:It was all mushy.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:Overseas, you could hear the bass.
Guest:It's all Mark Farner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, he was hilarious.
Guest:He'd have a guitar solo, harmonica solo, organ solo.
Guest:He'd have a tambourine solo.
Guest:And a shirt off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were so huge.
Guest:You saw them when you were a kid, too?
Guest:Yeah, with Jay Giles.
Marc:Jay Giles blew them away.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:My opinion.
Marc:But what about the T-Rex out of the shows?
Marc:Was that pretty mind-blowing?
Marc:Yeah, it was beautiful.
Marc:Yeah, because that's not arena rock.
Guest:But it was a lot different than the albums.
Guest:The albums are two, three-minute songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he'd start off with that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then get on his knees and do 10 minutes of Glee guitar solo.
Guest:I didn't expect that shit at all.
Guest:It was amazing, huh?
Guest:I was like, what's this about?
Guest:And he had a boa instead of flannel.
Guest:He had a boa.
Guest:So that's what I thought a flannel was.
Guest:It was like a boa.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So Debo wants politics.
Guest:In the band.
Guest:So he says, if we're going to be equal, I'm going to be like the guys in R&B.
Guest:That's why you can hear James Jameson.
Guest:That's why you hear Larry Graham.
Guest:Because the guitar guys are playing Trebley and putting space in between the parts.
Guest:So no power chords.
Guest:So that's what he brings up.
Guest:He says, I want the drums coming up.
Guest:I want a three-way conversation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're going to talk about equality in these other areas.
Guest:Let's get it going in the fucking band.
Guest:That was an idea.
Guest:That was a spoken idea.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He put out, and of course, I'm for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fuck, because I figured out a couple years before, hey, this is where you put the retarded friend.
Guest:It's right field in Little League where nobody fucking hits the ball.
Guest:You would meet dudes.
Guest:Either he was the stand-up player in the school band, or was a guitar player who couldn't get a gig because all the other dudes are doing it.
Guest:There was no pure bass dudes.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You know, except Jamerson and guys like that.
Marc:You know, I put some of your stuff on yesterday because I hadn't listened to it in a long time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then right away, the bass is like, boom.
Marc:And you're just driving that fuck.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the other thing is- For 20, what?
Marc:25 years now?
Marc:How long?
Marc:30 years?
Marc:More than that.
Marc:Been driving that bass like that?
Guest:We started the Minuteman 35 years ago, January.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you were how old?
Guest:22.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh i'm driving it but i learned with him so we don't have to teach each other right we had that advantage right you know we both learned yeah we didn't answer the ad the recycler right you know i did do that you did because i didn't finish the story about us coming out of copy right songs and we were copying tie your mother down and dust in the wind and some really and so we get all sweaty let's take a breather go outside
Guest:The drummer of the Weirdos, which was one of the first Hollywood punk bands, he's a Pedro dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Named Nicky Beat, Jeff Avicevich.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's wearing a Kotex around his neck.
Guest:He's got Vaseline in his hair.
Guest:He goes to us to show you how pathetic these days are.
Guest:We're just out of high school, right?
Guest:We graduate in 76.
Guest:It's the next summer, 77.
Guest:He goes, there's a scene up in Hollywood where people write their own songs.
Yeah.
Marc:That's all he said.
Guest:Yeah, because punk was only pictures.
Guest:No one knew what it sounded like.
Guest:Some pictures, and we go up and we see a band called The Bags.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the first thing I say to D. Boone is, we can do this.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:It just came out of my mouth.
Guest:I never went to Arena Rock, so hey, we're going to be playing here and some shit.
Guest:But this gig, it did.
Guest:But he didn't want to make a band.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because you got to understand, in those days, punk was so hated.
Marc:There was lines drawn.
Marc:There's the arena rock people, the rock people, and the punks were these weirdos.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, Square John people.
Guest:They were like, oh, yeah.
Guest:But it was the other rock and rollers that really hated it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it represents a lack of professionalism and messy.
Guest:Do you remember this thing about disco?
Guest:I think disco and punk were actually both the same kind of reactions to arena rock.
Guest:You know, we're tired of looking at the star.
Guest:Look at us, we're ugly.
Guest:Disco guys, look at us, we're pretty.
Guest:These motherfuckers are burning disco records on the baseball fields.
Guest:It was all this, because they own the whole show.
Marc:I remember when I was in high school,
Marc:I was in high school.
Marc:I graduated in 81, and I was in Albuquerque, so it took shit a little time to get there, but I remember when we actually got New Wave before we got punk at my high school, and that was like disco was being pushed out.
Marc:We'd had enough of that shit, but it was still around, and then everything changed in the late 70s.
Marc:But, you know, big FM radio, the big record, classic rock.
Guest:They were selling all the beads and sandals, man.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:Like Foreigner.
Guest:Our thing was such a minority, you know.
Guest:Punk got big in England quick.
Guest:But not over here, man.
Guest:It was tiny.
Guest:You had to be really into it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To do it, I don't know.
Guest:When I put a picture of Richard Hell on my bass, that was like a line in the sand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You had to hide all the punk stuff.
Guest:You know, at first we ripped up our clothes and wrote on them and all that.
Guest:But so much shit, we had to go back to high school clothes and we thought, just keep the punk up in the head.
Guest:There was such a negative reaction to the scene.
Guest:I can't believe how open-minded, especially with musicians these days, there's no problem.
Guest:In those days, it was a big fucking problem.
Guest:I can imagine in Berkey.
Guest:I remember, you know who I know from there?
Guest:Who?
Guest:Painter man, Robert Williams.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I just talked to him.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Guest:He told me that was a rough town in the 60s to grow up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:He said, when you bought the mota, that dude just didn't sell mota.
Guest:He also broke into people's pads.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said Berkey was heavy in those days.
Guest:It's pretty heavy still.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, like it's... They got a problem with the police shooting people.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit, yeah.
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:But I still play there every tour.
Guest:If you look at tour ride, now what I do is I do clockwise in the fall and I do counterclockwise in the spring.
Guest:In I-40, you know, that's all Route 66.
Marc:Yeah, it all goes down Route 66.
Marc:So it's amazing to me that you go ahead and just, at the beginning, you just thought you could just play.
Marc:Like the tuning, nothing.
Marc:But you still got on stage and did it, which is crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when did you guys, so you guys were like- Well, when the punk movement comes, I mean, that's just at high school, you know, and doing that one little thing.
Marc:Where'd you get the records though?
Marc:Because I talked to a lot of dudes at the beginning of punk.
Guest:The records was really important because those were the punk bands you couldn't see.
Guest:All we could see in Hollywood was the Hollywood punk bands.
Guest:There was some like Clash or Jam, but by the, you know, they had maybe the first album's good and then it's all just rock and roll and shit, Stranglers.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:The really weird records, there was a record store in Long Beach called Zed of London.
Guest:And it was this guy named Mike and his ma.
Guest:And I guess they imported hippie, spacey records like Tangerine Dream and shit.
Guest:So they had the connects with the independent labels over there.
Guest:So when punk came...
Guest:Now, nobody wrote about the pop group, Wire, all this shit.
Guest:We would just pick them out by the cover or the name of the band.
Guest:And they were only two bucks, you know, singles.
Guest:And wait until we had time off on weekend, eat L, and then listen to them.
Guest:And a lot of these bands, The Fall, you never heard it before, so it would just hit you.
Guest:Cabaret Voltaire, Red Crayola.
Guest:They were actually from Texas, but he ended up in England.
Guest:All these, we would never get to see these guys at a gig.
Guest:Right, sure, sure.
Guest:But the records were really important because it showed you.
Guest:Some skater made a sticker out of something D. Boom once said.
Guest:It says, punk was whatever we made it to be.
Guest:And these dudes were living proof.
Guest:It was like when you say that.
Guest:Pull it out of the air.
Guest:The problem was, I think, with understanding the Minuteman is because that culture we came out of 70s punk was...
Guest:Those people burned out pretty quick.
Guest:The only ones coming to the gigs were the younger guys from the suburbs in the early 80s.
Guest:And it's all fast music.
Guest:And they called this hardcore.
Guest:There was East Coast, too, like Ian and Discord and Stuff Up New York.
Guest:The Bad Brains, of course, and this really fast way of playing.
Guest:Actually, Dr. No, Gary, he told me they were a fusion band at first.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And then went over to that.
Guest:Yeah, because that's what it is.
Guest:See?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think in that way, it can't ever die.
Guest:If you talk about it as ethic more than a style, it makes more sense.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You can understand us hearing this word, punk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Pedro, punk is a dude who gets fucked in jail for cigarettes.
Guest:I mean, why would you call your music this?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But New Wave, I got a little suspicious.
Guest:And then later, they called it alternative.
Guest:It's sort of pop music.
Guest:That was cool.
Guest:yeah but it's from upstairs it ain't from people don't give a fuck and don't fit in so they make their own parallel universe that's what that's what you guys did well we we got involved with this movement that was doing it wasn't just us no i know i know but i i can't tell you what the minute man would sound like or there would be a minute man if there was no punk movement well you had incredible influence and that like the the crew at sst records and absolutely and all those cats
Marc:And look at that.
Guest:How'd that happen?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:The dude's fucking handing out flyers.
Guest:They're going to do one of their first gigs in Pedro.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're going to rent.
Guest:We had these things called Teen Centers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Teen Post.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They just fixed one up in the kind of hood part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Dukowski rents it out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The guy from SST.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was the bass man on Flag and Co... Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Greg was really SST.
Guest:It meant Solid State Transmitter.
Guest:He was into ham radio.
Guest:That's why he got into Torn, because he talked to dudes and others.
Guest:A lot of this shit makes sense if you chase the shit down.
Marc:Anyway, they're handing out- So you're saying, wait, the head of SST who was in Black Flag, right?
Marc:Greg did.
Marc:He was a ham radio aficionado.
Marc:So that was the way it communicated gigs initially.
Guest:Well, no, this is his idea about Torn.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think the only Hollywood band with a van was the Dills.
Guest:These guys didn't think about playing anywhere but Hollywood.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Greg's like, no, I've talked to people in other towns.
Guest:I know about the world.
Guest:We're going to tour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By that time, he's out of... Actually, when Black Flag was first starting, we still had the company because I soldered the intentitude.
Guest:I met these guys.
Guest:Now, for Hollywood people, anything south of Hollywood is the beach.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they think fucking Hermosa Beach is the same as Pedro.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We don't know these guys for fucking shit.
Guest:I mean, D. Boone's half-brother, Jim, used to take a hammer and his buddies would go down because they'd put up their surfboards.
Guest:This is in the 60s on the Strand, right?
Guest:And like fucking knock holes in the... They called them dappies.
Guest:There was like not a lot... Now, we weren't that bellidge on beach dudes, but we didn't really know them.
Guest:The harbor ain't the beach.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:But not for Hollywood.
Guest:You guys, you know, whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I guess we got thrown in, but what really was was...
Guest:this connection about pedro like they're gonna put on this gig yeah and we couldn't believe they were gonna try to do a punk gig in pedro and they said why that because we live in pedro so we're the only punk band pedro's got a punk band yeah it's us were you open i think it was like before charlie manson when dudes wore long hair yeah some dude had balls to do that you could trust him yeah i think it was like that too you could just trust somebody we didn't know these guys for shit yeah and they asked us to open up
Guest:And then Greg sees two of our gigs, you can be SST-002.
Guest:Minute Man Paranoid Time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was different in those days because of the scene being so small.
Guest:So they took to you and they said... And we took to them and you could talk to Darby.
Guest:Darby, they get done playing, you could talk to Darby.
Guest:The dude might be standing next to you, Pat or Dorna.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don.
Guest:Don's still around.
Guest:Actually, Don was from Arizona.
Guest:Don who?
Guest:Bowles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Germs drummer.
Guest:The punk thing was all about people.
Marc:And community.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that you guys became sort of like- But we didn't know these guys.
Guest:It was just because, oh, you're weird enough to be in this shit.
Guest:yeah okay yeah and that's how everyone got to know each other that's how it happened a bunch of fucking accidents people slamming in you know you fly over SoCal looks like one big thing but you know it's 150 times sure like this neighborhood here I've never been in there's so many yeah we're balkanized right right so all these dudes are coming from the valley inland empire south bay yeah whatever boo yeah Beverly Hills maybe I don't know the fuck OC yeah the one thing that glued us all together
Guest:Stooges.
Guest:See, that's why that is such a fucking mind blow that happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what happened was D. Boone would not make a band with me at first.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we had this thing called The Recycler.
Guest:In fact, it's still around.
Guest:Now they're for free.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:That's where I got all my cars, all my Fenders and Gibsons.
Guest:they also had ads for musicians sure you know and these dudes I had went out for a bass player was on Santa Monica Boulevard and this time be like hundreds of dudes hitchhiking I was still yeah seventies and I go in there I jammed this drummer man he is his pops electric shop and him and a guitar and a lady singer we did I want to be your dog for four and a half hours
Guest:I came back down to Pedro and told D. Boone, okay, I'll make a band with you.
Guest:And that's when we made this band.
Guest:Who was that band?
Guest:Did they end up being anybody?
Guest:Well, the drummer ended up in the F word, but I don't think they ever ended up being anything.
Guest:But they liked the way I played.
Guest:But when D. Boone said he wanted to make a band, I had to tell him, sorry, I'm going to do this.
Guest:But D. Boone didn't like this band really.
Guest:He didn't write one song.
Guest:D. Boone always had it in his mind the Minutemen was going to be the real band.
Guest:So after about a year and a half, two years of that band.
Guest:Which band?
Guest:It was called the Ractionaries.
Guest:It was you and D. Boone and who?
Guest:Martin Tamburvich and George Hurley.
Guest:Ended up being the drummer, but not at first.
Guest:We had a welder man.
Guest:And then he got two punk gigs.
Guest:He got scared.
Guest:He ran off, left his drum shit.
Guest:Which guy?
Guest:The welder man?
Guest:The welder man, Frank Tocci.
Guest:And I never saw him.
Guest:About nine years later, I saw him again in Peter.
Guest:He goes, you know, I shouldn't have quit.
Guest:But he's a good cat.
Guest:He got freaked out.
Guest:And Georgie, he had joined a new wave band called Hey Taxi, and he had just quit.
Guest:He learned all them songs in three weeks when we recorded One Night Paranoid Time.
Guest:That's how it happened.
Guest:But the way, I got to say, it was a lot about community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think things are always going to be about community.
Guest:It's always going to be about people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I don't think it's just one moment in time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, but it's interesting to me that so many of you guys, they're still friends.
Marc:See, that's the beautiful thing about that whole scene is that, you know, I had John Doe in here.
Marc:I had Kim Gordon in here.
Marc:I've had Giggy in here.
Marc:I had Jay in here.
Marc:I had Katsu, you know, they talking about like how they got the records, mail-in records, mail order, fans.
Marc:The mixtape.
Marc:When you made the cassette, this is what I like.
Marc:Yeah, this is what I like.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But so many of you guys still know each other.
Marc:You still play with each other.
Marc:You have this mutual respect.
Marc:You talk about Arena Rock and those guys that become almost immortalized or mythic.
Marc:Who the fuck, how are they going to have friends?
Marc:The thing is that you guys still have your feet on the ground.
Marc:And even when you're playing with Iggy and shit, you all seem to cross paths.
Marc:You and Ian, you guys know each other.
Marc:There's a brotherhood that continues to exist.
Marc:There's a humility to the whole thing.
Guest:I think it was the conditions too, man, because if you weren't into it, it wasn't going to happen, man.
Guest:Right.
Guest:People hated it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You had to be a pusher.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Shover.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So Paranoid Time was an EP.
Guest:You booked things through the phone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was Dukowski's phone book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He built that fucking circuit we're still touring on.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's incredible.
Marc:It was about people.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:Dukowski, he was the guy at SST?
Guest:He was both the bass player for Black Flag and co-owner with Greg Ginn.
Guest:And you're still working off his phone book.
Guest:In a way, well, it got to email and shit like that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's the one, you know, Flag actually built that fucking circuit.
Guest:People would play New York.
Guest:Actually, the city had a bigger scene than we did, SF.
Guest:They went through some cycles here, too, with the hard drugs and shit.
Guest:But this idea of torrent, that's Black Flag, where you play Shreveport, you play Boise.
Guest:And you guys did that.
Guest:Well, we were total students.
Guest:We didn't know about... Remember Younger reading, I don't know, Circus or some of them other show mags?
Guest:And all the tour stories were big, like, ah, this is terrible.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, horrible.
Guest:It's a nightmare.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, when we started doing this, it ain't nightmare.
Guest:This is a trip.
Guest:People pay money.
Guest:They call these vacations.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We got to see all this shit.
Guest:You know, we...
Guest:Didn't get to, you know, working dads and shit.
Guest:You can't go see these things without.
Guest:But this offered us an opportunity.
Guest:Of course, D. Boone had us go to every Civil War revolutionary battlefield we could.
Guest:And he was a real history buff.
Guest:He was way into history.
Guest:In fact, I had never.
Guest:The only nonfiction I read was this.
Guest:My mom got sold a world book.
Marc:Yeah, the encyclopedia.
Guest:So it started with A's.
Guest:That's the only nonfiction I ever read.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But he was into it, huh?
Guest:He was way into it.
Guest:He got me into it.
Guest:And so we would get into this.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Minuteman was notorious for fighting over things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, fistfights, too, and shit.
Guest:Get the pressure off.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:All three of you?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Georgie was a pretty smart dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Still is.
Guest:But other things like drive to the library.
Guest:We got to look this shit up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before Google, no iPhone.
Guest:Yeah, was it King Edward III or II that had to walk through the snow so he wouldn't be executing it?
Guest:You had to drive and stop on the road?
Guest:Yeah, it's insane.
Guest:You would stop at the public library?
Guest:Because I think all three of us were first born.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you don't always have to have an older brother.
Guest:You become the older brother, but with your other ones, there's a little bit of...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's put it this way.
Guest:There was no, like, head trips.
Guest:Nothing was stewing.
Guest:Nothing was served.
Guest:You just brought out.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll tell you about Ig, though.
Guest:Working with him, what I found common with D. Boone, same at work ethic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When Ig's going to do a show,
Guest:That's all that fucking matters.
Guest:This might be the last gig.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One time we played this fucking racetrack in England.
Guest:I think it was Donington or something, mid part.
Guest:And he goes, you know, Mike, we do these things.
Guest:I feel like short order cook.
Guest:Like I got to get everybody's order.
Guest:You know, there's 50,000 dudes.
Guest:I got to get everybody's order.
Guest:You want fries?
Guest:You want, what, strawberry?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:This is how he's doing a gig.
Guest:I think it's a whole, even though it's a big arena thing, look, I ended up playing some of these big, but his ethic is still the same.
Guest:Well, he's like wide open, dude.
Guest:That dude, like, you know, when you- But actually, it goes back to vaudeville maybe.
Guest:Maybe this shit is a long, long tradition.
Marc:Yeah, but when he performs, I can feel it because he's in a different time zone, man.
Marc:He's a song and dance man, but it's jarring and he's emotionally raw and you can feel that shit.
Marc:So he wants to make sure everybody's getting connected with that.
Guest:He's the bow of the boat.
Guest:And look at this too.
Guest:He's also operating a machine.
Guest:So in a way, he's a bridge for the people to us.
Guest:He's the big picture dude.
Guest:And it's important for him to work a gig.
Guest:He don't like...
Guest:What do you call it?
Guest:Paint by numbers?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Going through the motions.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sleepwalking.
Guest:He ain't into that shit.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It's like, let's work this far.
Guest:And that way, it's just like D. Boone.
Guest:He was like that, too.
Guest:I couldn't believe that.
Guest:Yeah, D. Boone was totally like, well, D. Boone, big bones, a little heavier, always getting picked on in school.
Guest:Now I'm going to... Yeah.
Guest:It's like I'm not better than you guys, but now it's time to play some guitar and sing for you.
Guest:He can fucking play guitar, dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was a trippy thing for me when playing in both situations.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And seeing that comment, even though they were from a different time zone.
Guest:And different time of your life.
Guest:And different time of my life.
Guest:These guys... This shows you the...
Guest:What can I say?
Guest:Arts, expression.
Guest:It's a fabric that connects us no matter where.
Guest:Somebody once told me it's not where you're from, it's where you're at and the fabric of expression.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Which like George Carlin or I found out later his thing was Lenny Bruce.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, Lenny.
Guest:And so I got into him and I got his records.
Marc:There's a groove, man.
Guest:Picnic on the graveyard thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but the dude was intense too.
Guest:Like, I'm going to work this show.
Guest:I'm going to talk about significant things.
Guest:We're going to have some fun with it.
Marc:But we're going to blow some minds.
Marc:We're going to deal with it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Prior, too.
Guest:I'm so lucky to be.
Guest:Prior, too.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But he's a little later, right?
Guest:This, I think, is in the 50s and the 60s.
Marc:Yeah, Lenny was the seed of what became later prior and later Carlin.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Like, Carlin and Pryor were both sort of mainstream, and then Lenny blew their minds, and then they had to figure out.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was another guy, too, Newhart.
Guest:Yeah, Newhart's great.
Guest:And Shelly.
Marc:Shelly Berman, yeah.
Guest:Because Lenny talks about this.
Guest:See, I started checking this out.
Marc:The story with Shelly Berman and the gangsters.
Marc:The Shelly Berman's, like, making fun of the gangsters in the office.
Marc:Yeah, Lenny tells that story.
Marc:Whoa, whoa.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there was another cat.
Guest:He was called...
Guest:lord buckley that's i was gonna say he would do the scat rap yeah you know what we found out punk that was just for you know somebody once said the only thing new is you finding out about it that's right because a lot of this stuff were part of these kind of traditions but it's interesting walt whitman right yeah sure 1855 diy he puts that out himself leaves the grass there you go boom
Guest:Woody Guthrie.
Guest:Raymond, you know, I meet Raymond Pettibone, right, in the scene.
Guest:These people I met in the scene.
Guest:You met him down here?
Guest:Yeah, they had fake names and they were insane, obviously.
Guest:But they were deep dudes.
Guest:They knew more about music.
Guest:They taught me and Dee Boone so much about art stuff.
Guest:I learned about Dada and Surreal.
Guest:From Pettibone?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Fucking, he's the first guy who plays Coltrane for me.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:We thought...
Guest:Oh, Navy House, I didn't know jazz.
Guest:Actually, we thought they were old dudes doing punk.
Guest:I didn't know he was dead.
Guest:You know, you listen to that stuff, it was like Ascension, you know, live in Seattle.
Marc:That is interesting.
Marc:It's like you guys are sort of closer to Coltrane than other punk bands, that's for sure.
Guest:We thought they were part of the movement.
Guest:Because we didn't know anything.
Guest:We didn't, all the rock, all we knew was arena rock, you know, and FM.
Marc:But you saw it as a movement early on.
Marc:I mean, you and Boone said this is our part of it.
Guest:You could tell that some of the shit was totally provocative.
Guest:Some of this shit was anti-rock and roll.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Now, the way we saw Rock and Roll Connection was Little Richard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jerry Lee Lewis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It wasn't so much Pete Frampton.
Guest:I mean, nowadays, anybody who plays music, I have respect for it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there was other ideas when I was at that age.
Marc:At that time, though.
Marc:It seemed like the technique was too much the issue.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But when you listen to those early minute men, because yesterday I listened to the entire Double Nickels on the Dime.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:I listen to the whole thing straight through.
Marc:And it was like, where did this come from?
Marc:I mean, you're telling me your influences or credence or whatever, but your bass playing and his guitar playing and then the drumming, it doesn't sound like anything else.
Marc:So what were you guys drawing from?
Marc:You just rolling with it?
Guest:Would you just jam it out?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, some of them records from overseas, there was a band Wire and an album called Pink Flag.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That was the little idea.
Guest:Okay.
Okay.
Guest:The idea put in parliament with Captain Beefheart, there was a band called Pop Group.
Guest:And they're the guys that said, why not?
Guest:Why not do anything you want to?
Guest:Just like Mule, right?
Guest:Sure, you're not going to get another generation, but you can get the donkey and horse fucking.
Guest:So that's what we thought.
Guest:We came up with that idea, and then the idea, there's only two categories, gigs and flyers.
Guest:And everything that ain't...
Guest:A gig is a flyer.
Guest:The idea of a club gig was so profound on us.
Guest:Nobody in the middle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe like when you're working a thing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Right?
Guest:There's just the gig goer and you.
Guest:Yeah, that's it.
Guest:And there's some guy at the door maybe, but he ain't in between you.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So we thought, you know, and after a whole teenage life of arena rock, we thought this was so profound.
Guest:So albums are trying to come up with your own sound.
Guest:These are flyers to get people to the gig.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we're trying to make the music interesting on purpose.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But not as works unto themselves.
Guest:And we didn't...
Guest:We were so much in the moment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then once you got into gigs.
Guest:I'm so glad.
Guest:In fact, the first idea of records, D-Boom wanted, there was these booths you could put 50 cents in it and made these wax records.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:D-Boom wanted to do that so they'd destroy them, you know, like Mission Impossible, the shit would destroy.
Guest:Yeah, just throw the shit.
Guest:Yeah, we thought the whole idea of things lasting was part of the problem.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you should be in this permanent reinventing yourself.
Marc:You know when you're a younger man.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And you just wanted to, so were the live shows that the Minutemen did all different?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There was parts in two where we had to improvise.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You built that in all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And that must have been good.
Guest:Also, it played it all like it's one song.
Marc:Right.
Guest:They weren't supposed to be little songs.
Guest:It was like one big river.
Guest:And you still think that way.
Guest:I mean, with these operas.
Guest:With operas, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I never thought I was going to get into that shit.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But when I finally dealt with D-Boone getting killed, I couldn't put it in one song.
Marc:What happened?
Guest:Um...
Marc:You guys had done like four records.
Guest:Our last tour was opening for this band.
Guest:Actually, we had to buy the album.
Guest:This band called R.E.M.
Guest:asked us to open up for them.
Guest:So we buy a record to see what they sounded like.
Guest:It had that ear on a wood block swinging.
Guest:And it was like, whoa, kind of folk with the driving drum under it.
Guest:Get to meet them.
Guest:And God, they knew about all the musics.
Guest:They're incredible guys.
Guest:Peter and Michael and Mike and...
Guest:Bill.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that ends up our last tour because D. Boone was in a van and was in a wreck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was killed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, the band was over.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had done more than four records.
Guest:You mean like albums?
Marc:Yeah, full albums.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, maybe four.
Marc:And we made a bunch of little... Yeah, the EP thing was huge, right?
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:Those are the flyers.
Yeah.
Guest:So are the albums.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Double Nickels on the Dime, you mentioned.
Guest:That was mixed in one night.
Guest:Ethan James did that.
Guest:I paid for that.
Guest:It was $1,100.
Guest:Actually, it was one album, and then the Huskers came to town and made a double album.
Guest:So we said, fuck, we should make one, too.
Guest:So we wrote up a bunch of songs, and that's how it came.
Marc:I talked to Bob Mould about SST.
Marc:Bob!
Marc:About sweeping over there.
Guest:Well, me and Dee Boone put out their first album.
Guest:It's called Lance P. Records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because we had a label called New Alliance.
Guest:Punk was about not just a band, but putting on shows and putting out records.
Guest:Dee Boone had a fanzine called The Prole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All kinds of shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it maybe didn't get as big as the idea of the Minutemen, but we tried all these little things and we put out the first Husker album.
Guest:Those guys, beautiful men.
Guest:And that's why when you open up the album, it says, take that Huskers, because we were inspired by them to do that.
Guest:But isn't there, there's a picture.
Guest:on that's a fire hose record well that's actually a picture of my wall yeah yeah but there's huskers on that so people said why'd you make a fucking husker album i said no that's my wall so all right so so it's bob dylan i took that if you don't know by now yeah yeah yeah that's for that's where everything comes from yeah if and yeah yeah he took these witty kind of things yeah yeah well the huskers are uh minneapolis yeah and that's where dylan's minnesota sure so it's all connected
Guest:But nobody got that.
Guest:D-Boone used to say to me, you know, your fucking lyrics are too spacey.
Guest:People don't know what you're... So on that record, I read a landlady note, you know, Kathy's ceiling that's leaking.
Guest:I said, is this real enough, D-Boone?
Guest:You know, don't use the shower.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But he had a knack.
Guest:yeah i i wasn't that good i still ain't that good with what what seems to me to be very uh clear and apparent like people don't know what the fuck i'm talking like the title it just meant going the speed limit which title double nickels people thought it had something to do about freeway numbers but you have a way you have a language i mean i don't know you and i just met you and and there it's understandable but it takes a second in the sense speak yeah is that was it is it pedro speak
Marc:Is that what you call it?
Guest:No, I don't call it, but I've had people say that because most people in Pedro don't talk.
Marc:But not only that, but you have a respect.
Marc:The way you talk is there's a familiarity with the mythology that is your life, that you reference people that you know personally by their first names or by nicknames, and you use the word welderman and this kind of stuff.
Marc:There's a poetic to it, and I think the poetic of it also is shown in your music.
Marc:There's a way of speaking that's uniquely yours, but I can understand it.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Well, look, we never knew what words were for in the songs.
Guest:We thought they were like lead guitars.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Dylan was like a guy who showed up at Weird Uncle at Thanksgiving and his muttering shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But all the rest... Yeah.
Guest:What is smoke on the water?
Guest:You know, the bong?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We didn't know what the fuck this shit was about.
Guest:But when we went and saw those punk gigs, it was like them dudes were trying to tell you something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's... Again, it's the influence of the movement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Even though...
Guest:Yeah, it's kind of weird and insane.
Guest:They are trying to get something across.
Guest:And we just didn't get that before.
Guest:So I think that's what we started putting into our spiel.
Guest:We want to make it personable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, life isn't that long.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You don't take things for granted.
Guest:You want to make things alive.
Guest:So why shouldn't Spiel be alive?
Guest:Why shouldn't any kind of expression, you know, the man who's going to repair this hammer, the man who built this hammer, all this kind of shit.
Guest:You've got to embolden some kind of life into it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's almost like taking power that's been took pride out of you.
Marc:Did you have these realizations?
Marc:I know we talked a little bit about dropping acid earlier.
Guest:I think Eaton L was good for that kind of stuff because you ask yourself a lot.
Guest:I mean, the last time I did was 83.
Guest:So what's that?
Marc:That's a long time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:93, 2003.
Guest:32 years.
Guest:I ate it all.
Guest:But there was a period where I ate it every weekend.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And like where the corner, see that corner?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is it poking in or is it poking out and I'm poking around it?
Guest:You know, that kind of shit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You got to start reevaluating all your assumptions.
Guest:Perception.
Guest:Perception.
Guest:Well, some, my pop would say, you assume you make an ass out of you and me.
Guest:So think about all, like what we did, Arena Rock, the punk movement, you know, gigs and flyers.
Guest:It's not like the old scheme.
Guest:So Elle helped clear the slate in a way, and we would call it loaves of wonder bread.
Guest:You just keep wondering and wondering and wondering.
Guest:I wouldn't make a whole lifestyle of that, but...
Guest:For that moment of my life, I think it was really important.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because there was so much pressure about what is right, what is talent, what is acceptable.
Guest:You know, high school peer thing.
Guest:Peer pressure.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Should I like it?
Guest:Because will they like me liking that?
Guest:It don't mean fuck all.
Guest:Actually, I come back to that with my third opera, because I think in middle age, you go over that again.
Guest:It's like, fuck it.
Guest:It's my life.
Guest:I'm going out anyway.
Guest:Hyphenated man.
Marc:And all the titles of the songs are something man.
Guest:Well, it's actually one song with little parts.
Guest:Oh, so that's how it's going.
Guest:It's one man split into 30 parts.
Marc:Got it.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit Pete Towns in there, right?
Guest:He's got all the little mirrors.
Guest:So it's a little part of that.
Guest:But I think a middle-aged man, you have to make compromises.
Guest:You have to reconcile.
Guest:You have to be different parts of things.
Marc:Well, yeah, all those things, because there's still, like I just read this thing by, I don't remember, who's...
Marc:One of the poets wrote to his kid that there's always a child inside you.
Marc:That child that you were is there and there.
Marc:So like all these different directions you may have pulled yourself, you still have to reckon with the fact that there's a child in you looking at all these different manifestations of how you survived as long as you have.
Guest:But what's not there of the child is the physical body.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Well, you have to reconcile things.
Guest:I know.
Guest:You don't have that to deal with.
Guest:You think Minuteman... See, this is the thing about the third opera.
Guest:I never thought I was going to write three.
Guest:I wrote a sad one for... The one about your dad's beautiful.
Guest:Yeah, well, it's actually about D. Boone.
Guest:But I lost my pop, too, around that period.
Guest:Why'd you use that?
Guest:It's about losing people.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But in your heart, the emotional driver of that was about D. Boone.
Guest:Well, yeah, because I could use that.
Guest:I didn't know how to talk about it.
Guest:I needed a parallel.
Guest:I needed a motif.
Marc:Why didn't you know how to talk about it?
Guest:I think if you're too literal, you'll lose some truth.
Marc:Yeah, because you have no distance.
Guest:Yeah, and language is about labels, and they're never going to really fit.
Guest:That's why you have to pretend and use symbols and metaphor and analogy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not totally, but there's no such thing as non-fiction.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Think about it.
Guest:Even those encyclopedias.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Second one, God, I lived.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I just wanted to celebrate not dying.
Guest:Third one, what happened was in 2005, you know, after D. Boone got killed, I couldn't listen to Minute Men.
Guest:It made me sad.
Marc:Did you think you were going to stop playing altogether?
Marc:No.
Guest:Oh, I did stop.
Guest:It was Thirst who got me back.
Guest:Thirsten Moore?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Who's the other Thirsten?
Guest:I know.
Guest:The one from Gillicott's Island.
Marc:Thirsten Howell III?
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Because I didn't think people wanted to hear me play without D. Boone, but he got me to do something called Chaconne Youth and play on Evil, an album called
Marc:Yeah, that Sonic Youth record.
Guest:Right, there's some poem that Lee reads.
Marc:Yeah, and you play on that.
Guest:Actually, I just jammed to Steve Shelley, and then they made a song out of it.
Guest:That's the way Sonics... Even when you do a cover, they play right to the record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You can hear the fucking record!
Guest:Anyway, they got me back into playing, and then Edward came out from Ohio, and that's the Firehose, and I owe Edward a lot because, again, got me back in the South.
Guest:I didn't know you had to pay money to have your number unlisted.
Marc:But you were heartbroken, I'd imagine, and just devastated.
Marc:Yeah, I'm in the house, drinking.
Marc:Drinking.
Guest:And I didn't know you had to pay me money to have your phone number not in the book.
Marc:Right, okay.
Guest:So Edward called me up.
Guest:He says, I'm coming over.
Marc:Who is this guy?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:He's into U2 and R.E.M.
Guest:He's got bleached hair.
Guest:He wasn't into Miniman?
Guest:I said, you're coming over.
Guest:No, he's from Ohio.
Guest:Well, he had a roommate.
Guest:I guess he just started college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's going to drive out.
Guest:And I thought, you're going to come out here?
Yeah.
Guest:So I thought if he had balls enough to do that shit, okay, make a band with him.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's how Firehose happened.
Marc:And did he play for you?
Marc:Seven and a half years?
Marc:No, but did he play when he drove out?
Marc:What did he show up?
Guest:I told you he had Bleach Tear and he's into U2 and shit.
Guest:It had nothing to do with it.
Guest:Well, R.E.M.
Guest:ended up being the last band we toured with, so I had that kind of common thing.
Guest:And plus, he's a sweet guy, man, and he wanted to play.
Guest:He'd never been in a band.
Guest:He never owned Amp.
Guest:I bought him his first day.
Guest:Did he know your style, though?
Guest:not really from another scene you know younger why'd he call you cuz he just wants to play okay and I guess this guy well what happened what's his way told me yeah here's him and his roommate went and saw camper van Beethoven sure sure and the bass player in that band told him that there's no more minute man
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Because what happened to Dee Boone?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I guess the guy, they were baracho or some shit.
Guest:Hey, why'd you call up Watt?
Guest:He's in the fucking book.
Guest:So he called me up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, come on.
Guest:But he showed up at the door.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's how Firehose... He's a good player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at that period, I was... And then Georgie's from Minutemen, so that's how Firehose got going.
Guest:It was hard.
Guest:Those were the hardest, hardest, hardest things for me.
Marc:Just to play it.
Guest:Yeah, I told you I got into music to be with my friends, so I'm not really a musician.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So he's gone.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What to do?
Guest:Well, I kept plowing on.
Guest:Now, what happened was 2005, these guys, Tim and Keith, want to make a documentary on the Minutemen.
Guest:Now, I've been asked by a lot of dudes, and I always said no.
Guest:But these dudes were actually too young to see us, so they don't know anything about the band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So all the story can be about you finding out about us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I got to listen to Minutemen again.
Guest:I got to know what I'm talking about.
Guest:They want me to go down.
Guest:It's called We Jam Economy, this documentary.
Guest:You can see it on YouTube.
Guest:So I'm listening to the music again, these little songs like what you just listened to.
Guest:Yeah, I was like, man, I want to do this again.
Guest:But I don't want to rip D. Boone and Georgie off.
Guest:So I'm thinking, how can I do this?
Guest:Without it being fucking, you know, Potsy and Fonzie and Happy Days and shit.
Guest:Me being just a rip-off sentimental nostalgia fraud.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same time, I'm with the Stooges in Madrid.
Guest:And it's the 400th birthday of Mr. Cervantes' Don Quixote.
Marc:Oh, Don Quixote, okay.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Okay, so we're doing some gig in La Mancha in celebration.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was in an alley.
Guest:It was the tripiest fucking gig.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Of course, it tore it up, man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Ronnie and Scotty.
Guest:Man, the Stooges playing in 2005, 2006 was like, whoo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the tell we stay in downtown Madrid, it's next to some museum called Prado.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they got eight, nine, Mr. Bosch's.
Guest:One guy I got, because of those- Hieronymus Bosch?
Guest:Yeah, because of those encyclopedias.
Guest:And the time I was a boy in Virginia, I really got into astronauts, dinosaurs, and these weird paintings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, they're there in real life.
Guest:It ain't out of a book.
Guest:First, I spent hours, I couldn't find them because they don't call them that.
Guest:You know what they call them?
Guest:El Bosco.
Guest:So you go there, look for El Bosco.
Guest:Well, I see them in real life.
Guest:And whoa.
Guest:I mean, dude, there's no glass.
Guest:They're painting on the wood, you know, in the Garden of Earthly Delights.
Guest:Hey Wayne and Adoration Magi.
Guest:Seven...
Guest:Deadly Sins, Stone Surgeon, and maybe this temptation of St.
Guest:Anthony that might be his.
Guest:But anyway, they're all in there.
Guest:And looking at these things, all these little things to make one big thing.
Guest:I thought this is like a Minutemen gig or a Minutemen album.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So this is when it starts getting on me.
Guest:I can do like an opera, a third opera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I can use the styli of the Minuteman short format.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the libretto, I won't be totally ripping off my old guys because I'll write about being middle-aged punk rocker because Minutemen would never write about that.
Guest:We weren't there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was the basis of it.
Guest:So it was all these things.
Guest:Then I brought in one third thing.
Guest:It was the Wizard of Oz movie.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because it seems a lot about middle-aged...
Guest:What makes a man?
Guest:I think you live that out as a younger man, but you start thinking about it as a male age guy because you're losing it.
Guest:If you look at Dorothy in that movie, man, if you notice in the book, because I went and read the book after, the farmhands are the fucking lion and the scarecrow and shit.
Guest:Yeah, and then there's the flying monkey man and there's the man behind the curtain man and the munchkin man and all.
Guest:And she's looking at all these kind of dudes.
Guest:It's kind of coming of age for her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm thinking she's only in love with the dog, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it ain't like that kind of coming age.
Guest:But she's seeing the game, you know, what men do.
Guest:Even when the man behind the curtain, man, you know where I come from.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're brave.
Guest:You get the medal.
Guest:You get the diploma.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, validation, right?
Guest:In middle age, you're like, you know, either you go postal or, you know, you just say, fuck it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's a lot of things that don't matter like they used to.
Guest:They don't at all.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, this is my life.
Guest:I've done everything you've asked of me.
Guest:And look, I'm still going to shrivel up.
Guest:So I'm going to make some decisions.
Guest:This is what middle age might not be a bad thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you got experiences.
Guest:Your body ain't as strong.
Guest:But, you know, of course, when you're younger, you know everything.
Guest:So you do have that disadvantage.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but the weird thing is, ultimately what you're talking about is really wrestling.
Marc:You lost a friend, so you wrestle with that.
Marc:But when you get to be middle-aged and you start to realize, oh shit, I'm running out of time, and some things aren't really that important that I thought used to be, and then all of a sudden you're thinking, well, I'm really running out of time.
Marc:I don't need to panic, but I better make sure my shit is in order.
That's right.
Marc:Make the, you know, almost econo, bang for buck, make it count.
Marc:Right, and also realize, like, you know, to really take in the idea of, like, you know, that you die, it's hard, man.
Guest:Fuck it is.
Guest:And your dude's alongside going down.
Marc:Yeah, you see it.
Marc:You see it.
Guest:Yeah, my ma just come out of cancer surgery.
Guest:And she's 80.
Guest:I know it's coming, but our minds, we try to keep everything out.
Guest:So what I tried to do was deal with some middle-aged with hyphenated man.
Guest:And you make a lot of compromises.
Guest:But there's still some stuff.
Guest:I can't reconcile.
Guest:And the big thing is how we treat each other on an inhumane level.
Guest:I don't think there's any way to justify that.
Guest:That might kind of be a cynical summation of the whole trip.
Guest:I just wrote that whole fucking thing freeform.
Guest:I used D. Boone's guitar.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I had to.
Guest:I was so scared to talk about some things.
Guest:I thought, man, just like maybe you'll still like me if I wear the flannels.
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:So I used this.
Guest:And I can't really play guitar.
Yeah.
Guest:He showed me some things, a lot of the four things and pull-offs.
Guest:But yeah, I just... I wanted to write the bass second.
Guest:I was doing all these kind of things not to make it too much Minutemen to have respect for them guys.
Guest:I thought, if you really don't want it to be too much Minutemen, get rid of the only Minutemen, which was the bass player.
Guest:So a year later, I went back to... I did it with Tony Mamone, bass hero for me from Peru.
Guest:He's got a studio in Brooklyn.
Guest:In those days, Dee Boone days, any music we put through our band.
Guest:But after Firehose, it was like, I'm going to make a band for each proj.
Guest:So I put together Missy Men explicitly to do the third opera.
Guest:Second Men was for the second opera.
Guest:Black Gang was for the first opera.
Marc:So this is fascinating.
Marc:So the way you transcended the fear of hacking yourself.
Marc:was to make a new band for each project, but then also to constantly have it in your head to respect the sacred nature of the Minutemen.
Marc:So then when you come around to do the final opera, the idea that you're going to not play bass because that's the one part of the Minutemen that still exists, but you're going to honor D-Boom by using his guitar, which you don't know how to play that well, then you would definitely get a new sound and you would have the heart of the loss
Marc:That is sort of what middle age is about by playing his guitar and also respect the situation.
Guest:You can talk about this, Watt.
Guest:Like in the middle of it, I give that poem, Loss and Liberation.
Guest:Who's going to have an instrumental?
Guest:I actually wrote that in St.
Guest:Petersburg.
Guest:I said, because at the end of the second opera, I turn into a pelican.
Guest:Pelican's got no songs.
Guest:Because I think some truths ain't about words.
Guest:But I said, you know what?
Guest:Us humans kind of talk to each other with these words, so I got to write some words for this.
Guest:So loss and liberation.
Guest:And I used him for confidence a little ways by using his guitar.
Guest:But I think by making my bands for specific projects, it's also respect to the dudes I'm playing with.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:Like, this is for you.
Guest:I picked you for this.
Marc:Yeah, so yeah, do it.
Guest:You know, I've never done an audition.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I've never said try out.
Marc:No, I just get a sense.
Marc:You know everybody.
Marc:Everybody knows you and everybody respects you and you know everybody.
Marc:You know the guy who knows the guy.
Guest:Okay, maybe that's it.
Guest:I just think if you practice enough at something, you can learn it.
Guest:Because the Minuteman, actually, historically, people know of us.
Guest:But in the day punk was so small, a lot of people didn't see us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By the time Firehose comes along, a lot more.
Guest:Punk went into college.
Guest:They're on college radio.
Guest:It wasn't that in the older days.
Marc:That's what happens, man.
Marc:It's like even now, a bunch of people are going to listen to this right now, and they're like, who's this guy?
Marc:And then they're going to go listen to the fucking Minutemen for the first time.
Marc:And then they're going to listen to Firehose for the first time.
Marc:Like right now, for me and you talking, you're going to blow people's minds.
Marc:Because they got this whole catalog of a life's work of Mike Watt that evolves.
Marc:I mean, hyphenated, man, I would bet some would argue is the best record you ever made.
Guest:Oh, the most kind of market.
Guest:People used to say the no one's in the doing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, you did it, buddy.
Marc:I just keep trying to.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Marc:It was an honor.
Guest:Much respect, Mark, for having me on board.
Marc:Love that guy.
Marc:A wizard.
Marc:One of the great wizards.
Marc:Mike Watt, folks.
Marc:One of the great wizards.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WPTFPod needs.
Marc:Yeah, do that.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:Go to the calendar section.
Marc:WTFPod slash calendar.
Guest:And, you know, see where I'm playing.
Guest:Oh, now there's no buzz.
Guest:Boomer lives!