Minutemen - Hardcore in Miniature

In one of their "most famous" tracks, our band of popular militiamen of the American Civil War (this being the historical meaning of the word Minutemen) devote several passages of the lyrics to Ronald Reagan. A figure that the band (Dennes Boon on vocals and guitar, Mike Watt on vocals and bass, and George Hurley on drums) knew all too well during the years of his governorship of California, marked by harsh repression of social and civil rights. And above all by an iconoclastic fury directed at racial and gender differences. Years that, incidentally, are well depicted in Gus Van Sant's film "Milk". Back to the music: in "This Ain't No Picnic", the three from San Pedro (the port of Los Angeles, marked by a massive presence of workers of the most diverse origins; a subject always present in their most direct and politically outspoken songs) exemplify and crystallize their artistic trademarks. A goliardic, dadaistically pitched voice, backed by the "classic" Los Angeles/punk guitar: fast and snarling, grafted onto an urban-funk bass and an asynchronous drum pattern.

The album this track belongs to is the Bible of refinement by the standards of musical listenability, whose "Old Testament" is represented by Black Flag. Double Nickels On The Dime is truly a milestone.

Back to Los Angeles. A city-metropolis, cradle of punk. Of its roots, even before its forerunners and the kaleidoscopic developments that would follow. The Minutemen are certainly one of its finest fruits. First and foremost the proto-punk bands, because the defining trait of our band was to take and absorb from everything and everyone, and then remix it all. And among the most influential pre-punk acts are undoubtedly Zolar X and the Berlin Brats, from whose musical theatricality Dennes Boon would draw the peculiarities of his singing style.

1976 would see the explosion of Los Angeles punk insubordination. And the names... in no particular order, because alphabetical order wouldn't be fitting and wouldn't be enough to contain their flair: Germs, Fear, Alley Cats, X, Screamers, Dyls, Agent Orange, Bags, Plugz, Zeroes, 45Grave, Black Flag...

The Reactionaries were born within this context of breaking the mold. From their evolution, the Minutemen were later born. Starting with the name, taken from a phrase by Mao Tse-Tung: "Reactionaries are all paper tigers". During their two years of existence, they produced a single demo titled "Tony Gets Wasted In Pedro". Their musical style is an abrasive punk rock with traces of kinetic pub-rock, scattered here and there with a Captain Beefheart rawer than ever. Greg Ginn, the mastermind of Black Flag, "one fine day" produced their first seven-inch, Paranoid Time, in 1980 for the independent label Sst (founded in 1978 in Long Beach, which over time launched, besides Black Flag, the Descendents, Husker Du, Leaving Trains, Meat Puppets, Saccharine Trust, Sonic Youth, Subhumans). A detonation. An epic EP. "Paranoid Chant" is a limping, syncopated revisiting of old-school rockabilly: Eddie Cochran above all. The lyrics are hyper-politicized, a real "punch in the face", just like the musical accompaniment described above. "Fascist" is a statement of intent against the rampant US wars in Central America, Nicaragua chief among them. "McCarty's Ghost" takes up the cause of freedom of the press and expression, harking back to the dark years of Senator McCarthy and his witch hunt. It's screamed punk rock. Angry and bitter. With the guitar hissing like bursts from an AK-47. And then the cover... Ronald Reagan on the set of a western film, shot by a crew of technicians wearing hats typical of the Red Guards of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. And so from the vinyl (yes, the Minutemen "must" be listened to on vinyl) comes "Maze", a dazzling, crooked, irreverent piece of Archie Shepp-style jazz. Then the instrumental "Sickes And Hammers": 45 seconds of bass, guitar and drums chasing each other, overlapping one another, frantically and without pause.

In 1981, Punch Line (Sst Records) came to fruition. James Brown and Screamin' Jay Hawkins "spiritually guide" D-Boon's voice: hoarse, slurred, oddball and grotesque. Mike Watt's bass is in the throes of a frenzy on every track, with a guttural, deep sound. The guitar is screeching (D-Boon) and the drums are those of a war dance: martial.

The songs average a minute and a half, in keeping with the conventions of California hardcore-punk. All within a musical melting-pot resembling an anthill churning together funk, jazz, punk and futuristic vocalizing.

"Punch Line" is a hillbilly record jolted by an electric current, as if Tav Falco and the Panther Burns had crossed paths with the Buzzcocks. A tight rhythm that derails at alternating, unpredictable moments. It's this that gives the whole record its sense and pace. Never measured, never calculated in its tempos or its modes of expression. "Search" is pure tribal funk, straight off the Gold Coast of the colonial slave trade of the 17th century, with D-Boon's voice taking on the character and delivery of a Griot (African storyteller), set against a limping, off-time rhythm.

"No Parade" anticipates Butthole Surfers, Steel Pool Bath Tube and Jesus Lizard by a decade. Slam rhythms interrupted by shrieked vocals. Sardonic lyrics. Dada theatrics. All set in San Pedro, a working-class town. The bass, blazing away, mocks - in tandem with the lyrics - the exploitation of immigrant dockworkers. And then you can hear the Germs meeting the San Francisco art-punk of Saccharine Trust on "Games". Echoes of the Stooges, but more direct, more linear, more disjointed in their sonic impact.

"Monument" is a jazzed-up funk-punk number of the kind only Jaco Pastorius knew how to pull off - even danceable, with the bass floundering under the drum hits, and a guitar that seems to go its own way, its intros and outtros feeding off themselves in splendid isolation. "Boiling" takes a leap backward, as if Big Bill Broonzy and his post-war blues-folk saga had crossed paths with the most distorted Cramps, specifically blues a billy. The lyrics, meanwhile, are worthy of Norman Mailer at his most scathing toward the Wasp bourgeoisie. "Static" is a model beach-punk song, the kind only the Adolescents (masters of the genre) knew how to write. Fast and melodic. Guitar, bass, drums, stop! Made for pogoing and dancing.

This, their debut, is truly the summation of the cultural-musical alternative scene as only San Francisco knew how to create it. The Dead Kennedy's are a constant and essential point of reference throughout, along with the full range of sounds from the Alternative Tentacles label.

But let's get back to that other label, Sst. Kira Roessler was among those who helped found it. The Black Flag bassist played with Mike Watt right after the Minutemen's story came to an end. Her musical path with her life partner was brief: Dos, a duo made up of two basses alone, lasted just long enough to ferry Mike toward his new band, Firehose. A group devoted to a blend of rock-punk and power-pop, tempered by a folk-rock not without interesting ideas - but decidedly nothing like the Minutemen. In 1982 the band gave life to What Makes A Man Start Fires. The cover art first of all: Winston Smith, the artist behind the Dead Kennedy's sleeves, on loan from the Bay Area to the City of Angels, is responsible for it, and it shows. A kid worthy of Franti sets fire to a bourgeois house with a terribly satisfied air. Is the house burning? A paraphrase of a linguistic archetype? Either way, the image lands. It's the perfect visual photocopy of the musical character running through the whole record: snarling, nervously melodic. Right from the opener, "What Makes A Man Start Fires", with its stinging guitar, icy bass, kinetic drums, and a voice delivered as a kind of demand - melodically defiant.

Urgency envelops every single track. Take the tribal/country "Polarity", worthy of the lyrical subversions of the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce's Gun Club. Then there's the uneven, "psychedelic" "One Charter In the Book", with a bass less funky than usual and closer to certain Paisley Underground sounds, with a more skeletally punk edge, naturally.

And then, in quick succession, the splendid folk-punk tracks "Dylan Wrote" and "Propaganda Songs", where you can hear the instruments' dissonant reverberations piling up on top of one another, followed by the epileptic "Colors", a piece of fabric that's "entirely" Fall and Sound, crossing over to Albion's shores. A nervous new wave, marked by a clear structure with nothing left to chance. And how could we not mention the cacophonous "Anchor", with echoes of No New York, of Arto Lindsay, Mars and Glenn Branca.

An album, in short, that marks a sudden turn from its predecessor, taking on its thorniest, "less black", more abrasive, "less dance" traits. An option that probably stemmed from the band's strong commitment to the cause of Nicaragua's Sandinistas, under siege from Mr. Ronald Reagan's government, which drove them to close ranks against "the winking side" of their music, producing an instinctive, combative reaction with no room for compromise in their musical expression, resulting in a pure, hard-hitting hardcore-punk.

The two following albums, Buzz Or Howl from 1983 and the subsequent double album Double Nickels On The Dime from 1984 (again for Sst), share common traits.

First, the return - the return of "melody" as the central feature of these thorny, braying funk/punk tracks. This funk goes back to being the black funk that counts Fela Kuty and James Brown among its great mentors. And then there's the maintained line of attack against the imperialist policies (as they used to call them) of Ronald Reagan's government, with its unbridled anti-communism, brutally enforced throughout Central America.

Starting with the opening of "Buzz Or Howl", with the "black" "Little Man With A Gun", as if the stinging rock'n'roll of Cbgb's from 1975-'76 had met the spoken-word pieces of the early-'70s Last Poets in Harlem. And then the character of the following tracks, "Dream Told By Moto" and "I Feel Like A Gringo", is undoubtedly the "subversive dance" of ESG and Liquid Liquid from Soho, New York, mixed with the psychedelic funk/soul of Sly and the Family Stone. All of it driven by a saxophone in the vein of John Zorn, grafted onto its post-punk deviations. At least a decade ahead of everyone else, these Minutemen.

The following double album from 1984, Double Nickels On The Dime, is lysergic. With a track like "Corona" that sounds like a Hank Williams song aboard a train hurtling toward derailment: fuzz guitars and a bass straight out of Pop Group. And then. "Vietnam", a stinging song, like the napalm the "air cavalry" dropped on peasant villages, with an uncontrolled guitar and D-Boon's voice "screamed and nothing else". And more still. The punk-blues of "Mr Robot's Holy Orders", almost a duet between Taj Mahal and Ian Dury. And there's more: Screamin' J. Hawkins "guests" on "Big Foist", for a long, slurred, nerve-wracking blues number. And what to say of "Two Beads At The End", a blazing Hawkwind-style space-punk? To close things out, of course there had to be "Cisco Houston" and "Woody Guthrie". "This Ain't No Picnic" and "Untitled Song For Latin America". Genre? Punk. Inflections? Funk. Lyrics? Committed.

1985 ends with D-Boon's death - tragic and desperate - but not before leaving us two more masterpieces of eclecticism: Project Mersh and 3-Way Tie. They were meant to be a single double album, and you can feel it in the twin songs that appear across the two records: in the roots-rock of "Take Our Test" and "What is It"; in the pair of psychedelic-blues numbers "More Spiel" and "Big Stick"; in the cacophonous din that marks "Cheerleaders" and "No One", a shrieking hardcore-funk. And running through every groove, a nerve-wracking new wave that anticipates the post-rock of later years. What else is there to say?

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google