![]() “He was a strange mix of John Fogerty and Buck Dharma. “John Fogerty was a huge influence on him.” Watt turned Boon on to Blue Öyster Cult and their guitarist, Buck Dharma, as well as the Who. “When I first met him, the only rock band he knew was Creedence,” Watt says. ![]() With 33 songs, the band’s two-LP classic Double Nickels on the Dime strove to recreate the variety of songs and rapid-fire urgency typical of the Minutemen’s concerts.īoon grew up listening to the music his father listened to: country star Buck Owens and Creedence Clearwater Revival. “I took the B and the E string off and now it was a bass. “I only had four strings on my guitar because that’s what I thought a bass was,” Watt says. Mine was a Teisco.” Boon played guitar and Watt played bass, not that they knew what that meant. ![]() “Our first guitars were pawnshop,” Watt says. She thought it was a way to keep them out of trouble. Mike Watt was Boon’s childhood friend and the pair became musicians at the insistence of Boon’s mother. Blue collar and middle class, San Pedro was the opposite of its northern neighbor. Boon was born on April 1, 1958, and raised in San Pedro, California, a neighborhood about 20 miles south of Hollywood. We reached out to Boon’s former bandmates, Watt and Hurley, as well as Spot (Glen Lockett), who was the house engineer and producer at SST Records and the engineer on many Minutemen sessions, in addition to his contemporaries Nels Cline (Wilco) and J Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.), to compile a musical snapshot of an idealistic, influential, and sorely missed talent. He became one anyway, albeit posthumously, although like everything associated with the Minutemen, it’s probably more accurate to call him something else-and to acknowledge that he did it, as the band would say, “econo.”īoon’s story has been told many times and in many forums, but, surprisingly, very little has been written about his playing, tone, gear, and experiences in the studio. He was an outlier, an individual, and not interested in becoming a rock star. Other guitarists often cite him as a primary influence. His playing, energy, outlook, and idealism have inspired a generation of musicians. His bandmates almost called it quits, but eventually regrouped and went on to much greater acceptance, and even a major label deal, as Firehose, among many other projects and collaborations.īut Boon had made his mark. It was a tragic and untimely end to a story that was just getting started. They were just beginning to get noticed, too-their final tour was opening for R.E.M.-when Boon was killed in an auto accident in late 1985. They were also prodigious in the studio and left behind a large catalog of albums, EPs, videos, and live footage. The Minutemen toured hard and their profitable low-budget road trips are legendary. He had the treble all the way up with bass rolled all the way down. “It was definitely the most ear-damaging show I ever went to. His tone was abrasive, his comping-a hyperactive synthesis of’ ’70s funk and British post-punk-was complex yet rhythmically tight, and his soloing, although influenced by his classic-rock heroes, veered far from the blues scale and often incorporated unusual note choices and dissonance. Boon almost never played power chords or used distortion. They knew how to play their instruments, too, and boasted formidable chops, impeccable time, and wide-open ears.Īlthough the Minutemen were very much a group effort, it was Boon’s guitar playing that stood out as the band’s most idiosyncratic element. They flirted with genres anathema to most punks, including classic rock, Motown, and post-bebop jazz. Bloom-Eric Bloom from Blue Öyster Cult), Mike Watt on bass, and George Hurley on drums-sounded nothing like their contemporaries. They were determined, idealistic, and a prime example of great music that the industry missed or ignored.īut the Minutemen-Dennes Dale Boon on guitar (known as D. If anything, they personified the movement in how they embodied its proletarian ethos and values. One of the earliest DIY punk bands, an influential trio that was do-it-yourself in every sense of the term, was the Minutemen from San Pedro, California. Their approach went on to develop into a massive movement and spawn multiple scenes-including the indie-, alternative-, and college-rock scenes-and its bands inspired everyone from the most intense thrash artists to sensitive singer-songwriters. ![]() That’s when punk bands who couldn’t land a record deal, get press, tour, book local gigs, or get on the radio pretty much wrote the DIY playbook. DIY may be commonplace for most bands today, but it was a downright revolutionary concept back in the late ’70s. ![]()
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