Line #20 Music/Minutemen


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Minutemen_poster.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Coming Soon! Or not.]]
3
4	->''"Our band could be your life!"''
5	-->--'''The Minutemen''', "''History Lesson, Pt. II''"
6
7	Minutemen were a punk rock band from [[UsefulNotes/LosAngeles San Pedro]], California.
8
9	One of the well known bands from the US underground rock scene of the [[TheEighties 1980s]]. A RockTrio consisting of guitarist D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley, they started out creating very short, simple punk songs, usually with a political theme. Unusually they incorporated jazz influences as well various other styles that reflected their DIY ethic.
10
11	They were active from 1980 to 1985, when their frontman D. Boon died in a van crash in UsefulNotes/{{Arizona}}. In 1986, Watt and Hurley formed a new band, fIREHOSE, with new lead singer and guitarist Ed Crawford. That band played together until 1994, after which Watt embarked on a solo career.
12
13	!!Studio releases
14	* ''Paranoid Time'' EP (1980)
15	* ''Joy'' EP (1981)
16	* ''The Punch Line'' (1981)
17	* ''Bean Spill'' EP (1982)
18	* ''What Makes a Man Start Fires?'' (1983)
19	* ''Buzz or Howl Under Influence of Heat'' EP (1983)
20	* ''Double Nickels on the Dime'' (1984)
21	* ''Tour-Spiel'' EP (1984)
22	* ''Project: Mersh'' EP (1984)
23	* ''3-Way Tie for Last'' (1985)
24	* ''Minuteflag'' EP (1986, with Music/BlackFlag)
25
26	----
27	!'''''Double Tropes on the Dime''''':
28	* {{Acrofatic}}: D. Boon was known for constantly jumping around and energetically dancing onstage, despite his weight.
29	* TheBandMinusTheFace: Watt and Hurley occasionally perform Minutemen songs together in duo concerts. The two have refused to replace D. Boon with another guitarist for these performances, and instead have rearranged the songs for bass and drums only.
30	* BeigeProse: "Take 5, D", due to its lyrics being taken verbatim from a brief note a friend received from his landlady about a leaky shower. This was Mike Watt's playful response to D. Boon complaining that the original lyrics were "too spacey".
31	* BigFun: D. Boon
32	* BreathlessNonSequitur: According to Mike Watt, most of his lyrics were like this due to his obliviousness about the nature of most song lyrics, hence moments like the "Big fucking shit" in "It's Expected I'm Gone".
33	* ClusterFBomb: Being a punk band, they naturally break this out in their more political-driven songs. {{Lampshade\|Hanging}}d in "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing" with the line "If we heard mortar shells, we'd cuss more in our songs."
34	** The version of "Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love" featured on the compilation ''The Blasting Concept Volume II'' changes the lyric "I got no time to mess around" to "I got no time to fuck around - FUCK YOU!".
35	* ComicallyMissingThePoint: When Boon and Watt were first learning their instruments, they didn't really understand the concept of "tuning up", considering it a matter of personal taste ('Yeah, I like my strings loose, man') and figured that as long as they sounded okay playing together, then it was fine. On the other hand, this probably helped them develop their ears to a greater degree than bands that relied on electronic tuners.
36	* CoverVersion: "[[Music/CreedenceClearwaterRevival Don't Look Now]]", "[[Music/BlueOysterCult The Red and the Black]]", "[[Music/VanHalen Ain't Talkin' 'bout Love]]", "[[Music/CreedenceClearwaterRevival Have You Ever Seen the Rain?]]", "[[Music/The13thFloorElevators Going to Bermuda]]", and "[[Music/SteelyDan Dr. Wu]]".
37	* EpicInstrumentalOpener: Of a sort. For instance, "Dream Told by Moto" doesn't have its vocals enter until almost a minute in. That doesn't sound too extreme, but the song isn't even two minutes long. (The vocals only last for about twenty seconds, beyond that.)
38	* EpicRocking: They had a few songs that exceeded six minutes, such as the ''Ballot Result'' versions of "No One (remix)" (6:33), "Mr. Robot's Holy Orders" (7:47), and "Hell (second take)" (7:06). Overall, it was extremely rare for a song of theirs to exceed even the three-minute mark, though.
39	* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: Some of their songs were named this way, such as "Shit from an Old Notebook" and "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing."
40	** "Spoken Word Piece" is, well, a spoken word piece.
41	* FakeOutFadeOut: "Little Man with a Gun in His Hand" fades out completely before a bit of StudioChatter and then one final chord.
42	* GenreMashup: Their usual style was a mixture of punk rock, funk, and jazz, though they also venture into other genres.
43	* HardcorePunk: Albeit a somewhat unusual example.
44	* HeterosexualLifePartners: Watt and Boon. To the point where, as told in the band's career retrospective documentary ''We Jam Econo'', Watt eerily felt sick the exact minute that Boon was killed.
45	** According to Mike Watt's hootpage and a couple interviews, when people ask what kind of bassist he is, he still gives the answer, "I'm D. Boon's bass player."
46	* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Instead of having sides labeled A through D or 1 through 4, ''Double Nickels On The Dime'' has three sides named after the three members, and the last side called "Side Chaff" - the band members had picked songs for their sides in the manner of a sports team draft, and "Side Chaff" was made up of all the songs no one had picked.
47	* InNameOnly: "History Lesson - Part II" is musically and lyrically unrelated to "History Lesson."
48	* IntentionallyAwkwardTitle: A lot of their songs have titles like "The Roar of the Masses Could Be Farts", "Do You Want [[NewWaveMusic New Wave]] Or Do You Want the Truth?" and "Mr. Robot's Holy Orders".
49	* InTheStyleOf: They did funk/punk covers of Music/VanHalen, Music/CreedenceClearwaterRevival, Music/SteelyDan, and several others.
50	* LeadBassist: While D. Boon receives a lot of acclaim as a [[LeadSingerPlaysLeadGuitar guitarist and was usually the lead singer]], Mike Watt tends to get at least as much praise for his distinctive bass lines. The fact that he wrote (or at least co-wrote) a majority of the band's music and had a bit of a BreakupBreakout certainly helps as well.
51	* LeadSingerPlaysLeadGuitar: Lead vocalist D. Boon is acclaimed for his lead guitar talents.
52	* LyricalDissonance: {{Protest song}}s set to funky, energetic backing music.
53	* MeaningfulName: Contrary to popular belief, The Minutemen were not named for the shortness of their songs. They were instead named after the 18th Century militia group. The name was also a reference to, and a lampooning of, the right-wing reactionary group of the same name that was founded in the 1960s.
54	* MinisculeRocking: Their signature style. "Tension", the longest song on ''The Punch Line'', is 1 minute and 18 seconds long. The shortest song on the album is an instrumental called "Song for El Salvador", which is 31 seconds long. As originally released, ''Double Nickels on the Dime'' had ''45'' songs on it.
55	* NewSoundAlbum: Each of their studio albums to a certain degree, although ''3-Way Tie (For Last)'' is the most markedly different, featuring more effects on D. Boon's guitar, more songs with acoustic guitars, longer songs, a more rock-oriented sound with only a couple punk songs, etc.
56	* NonAppearingTitle: It would probably be easier to list their songs whose titles ''do'' appear in the lyrics than those that don't.
57	* PostHardcore: One of the [[TropeMaker first]] examples. While hardcore punk was the primary component of their sound, they weren't afraid to dabble in elements from other music genres.
58	* ProtestSong
59	* PunBasedTitle: "The Toe Jam".
60	* QuirkyCurls: George's hairstyle near the end [[ICallItVera which he called "The Unit"]].
61	* RecordProducer: All their material up until ''Double Nickels'' was recorded by SST Records' in-house producer, Glen "Spot" Lockett. Starting with ''Nickels'' they switched to former Music/BlueCheer keyboardist Ethan James.
62	* RockTrio
63	* {{Rockumentary}}: ''We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen''.
64	* RuleOfFunny: Mike Watt admits he only wrote the line "Big fucking shit" in "It's Expected I'm Gone" because he thought it'd be something funny to hear D. Boon say. Some of their other lyrics and song titles also appear to follow this rule.
65	* SelfBackingVocalist: Their cover of [[Music/SteelyDan "Dr. Wu"]] had Mike Watt do two tracks of vocals. In one, he sings the lines and in the other, he speaks the lyrics amelodically.
66	* SelfDeprecation: "One Reporter's Opinion" is a song whose lyrics make fun of bassist Mike Watt, who wrote the song.
67	* ShoutOut:
68	** The title of ''Double Nickels on the Dime'' alone has a few. ''Double Nickels'' is trucker slang for 55 miles per hour (if you look at the dashboard on the album art, you'll notice the speedometer reads 55). ''The Dime'' is a nickname for California Interstate 10.
69	** [[WordOfGod According to Mike Watt]], "on the dime" means "on the spot." They thought it would be funny to make the album's title a response to "I Can't Drive 55" by Sammy Hagar -- they thought that the song wasn't terribly rebellious, so they decided to mock it in the title of the album.
70	-->'''Watt''', about Hagar's song title: Okay, ''we'll'' drive 55, but we'll make crazy music!
71	** ''Double Nickels'' also had a solo song for every member ("Cohesion" was D. Boon's, "Take 5, D." was Mike Watt's, and "You Need the Glory" was George Hurley's), which was inspired by Music/PinkFloyd's ''Music/{{Ummagumma}}''.
72	** "History Lesson - Part II" lists several of the band's influences like [[Music/TheClash Joe Strummer]] and Richard Hell.
73	** D. Boon stylized his shtick of going by his first initial and last name after E. Bloom of Music/BlueOysterCult, a band they often covered and referenced in songs like "History Lesson - Part II" and "Tour Spiel".
74	** The title of "Spillage" is a shout out to Music/{{Descendents}}, a punk band fond of making their song titles end in "-age" ("Bikeage", "Myage" and "Marriage" for example).
75	* TheSomethingSong: "Song for El Salvador", "#1 Hit Song", "Political Song for Music/MichaelJackson to Sing", and "Untitled Song for Latin America".
76	* SpiritualSuccessor: fIREHOSE
77	** The Minutemen, themselves, were a spiritual successor to The Reactionaries, a shortlived band with Watt, Boon, and Hurley on their usual instruments, along with their friend Martin Tamburovich serving as their lead singer.
78	** While Mike Watt's solo album, ''Hyphenated-Man'' is lyrically different than what the Minutemen wrote songs about, the MinisculeRocking format of the album's music was inspired by Mike Watt listening to the Minutemen for the first time since D. Boon's death and returning to the straightforward style.
79	* StepUpToTheMicrophone: D. Boon did vocals on most songs, but Mike Watt did vocals every now and then. George Hurley also did vocals on two songs: the "speech" during "Ruins" and the scat singing in his solo song, "You Need the Glory".
80	* StudioChatter: At the beginning of "Joe [=McCarthy's=] Ghost," there's a brief conversation between Mike Watt and the rest of the band, in which he tells them to "just keep saying "Joe [=McCarthy=]" for the song's outro.
81	* TakeThat: Lyrically, "#1 Hit Song" is a parody of bland chart-topping love songs. "Music/BobDylan Wrote Propaganda Songs" is a weird case, because while it parodies Bob Dylan's early lyrical style, [[AffectionateParody it also pays tribute to him, especially since Dylan is one of Mike Watt's heroes.]]
82	** The liner notes of Double Nickels on the Dime reads, "Take that [[Music/HuskerDu Hüskers]]!" According to Mike Watt, he wrote that to give them credit for giving the Minutemen the idea to record a double album (Hüsker Dü's double album, ''Music/ZenArcade'' was in the same year as ''Double Nickels''), in a rare case where a TakeThat doubles as a friendly ShoutOut.
83	** The origin of the title, though, is less friendly. The band said it was a mockery of Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55", and their feeling that protesting the national speed limit wasn't a terribly rebellious thing to do.
84	** Also "Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing" and "This Ain't No Picnic", the latter targeted at a racist auto parts store owner who wouldn't let Boon play {{jazz}} on the radio.
85	* ThreeChordsAndTheTruth: ''The Punch Line'' is this turned up to eleven. The songs had a very stripped down style with no choruses or guitar solos, making the 18 songs on the album over in only 15 minutes.
86	* TitleOnlyChorus:
87	** "This Ain't No Picnic", "Nature Without Man", arguably "Little Man With a Gun in His Hand".
88	** "BOB! DYLAN! WROTE PROPAGANDA SONGS!"
89	* TropeMaker: Arguably one of these for PostHardcore, along with Music/BigBlack, Music/HuskerDu, Music/MeatPuppets and Naked Raygun.
90	* VitriolicBestBuds:
91	** In ''We Jam Econo'', it's revealed that neighbors didn't really complain about the band practicing too loudly; instead, they complained about Mike Watt and D. Boon cursing and yelling at each other.
92	** This trope is also referenced in "Tour-Spiel" with the line, "We'd fight at practice then jam econo." It was also the inspiration behind the [[http://www.musicfearsatan.com/DSK/minutemen_buzz_(big).jpg the cover art]] to the EP ''Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat''.

Context Music / Minutemen