We'll slip this in to start the weekend festivittles off on the correct leftover leg.
This crackling 41 minutes of Punk Jazz mayhem was delivered 38 years ago today and has lost fully none of its punch.
The leader of this group -- which likely would have broken through to greater success had he not died in 1985 in a car wreck -- passed away 35 years ago next month.
Their bass player picked up the pieces and went on to form a seminal band of his own, and thankfully he is still a force in music.
They are typically thought of as one of the screamingest Punk bands of the 1980s, but IMO they were too competent on their instruments and too stylistically diverse to just be mere punks for Punk's sake.
What's funny to me about them is how they bend time, managing to cram so much material into their barely-a-minute-long tunes.
It again goes back to their guitar player and leader, and his uncanny ability to sound like Wayne Kramer and James "Blood" Ulmer in the same song.
They also funked hard, and with intention.
Yes, these Minutemen marched into many's the battle, and came out victorious.
This set, taped at KPFK-FM's old midnight live concert series in the early Eighties, is as highly representative of their aesthetic ethos as any you're gonna come across. And the radio folk did a stellar job of capturing it on the fly as well.
Minutemen
Studio Z
KPFK-FM
Los Angeles, California USA
11.27.1982
01 opening jam
02 The Process
03 Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love
04 Sell Or Be Sold
05 Mutiny In Jonestown
06 Life As a Rehearsal
07 Beacon Sighted Through Fog
08 The Tin Roof
09 The Only Minority
10 Faith
11 Black Sheep
12 Cut
13 Joy
14 More Joy
15 Pure Joy
16 Joy Jam (with Spot)
17 Fake Contest
18 Sickles and Hammers
19 Polarity
20 Split Red
21 The Maze
22 Plight
23 One Chapter In the Book
24 encore applause
25 The Anchor
26 Paranoid Chant
27 KPFK-FM outro by DJ Andrea 'Enthal
Total time: 41:37
Dennes Dale "D." Boon - guitar & vocals
George Hurley - drums
Mike Watt - bass & vocals
Spot - clarinet
master cassette of the original KPFK-FM broadcast
286 MB FLAC/November 2020 archive link
I will return Sunday to finish this month off with something maybe a little bit more traditionally in line with this page. So look out for some vile Jazz snobbery, coming soon.
Don't sleep on this blistering show though.... it only takes a minute, y'all!--J.
4.1.1958 - 12.22.1985
thank u i once equated 3 records the minuteman's first album, the first solo album where evan parker did circular breathing and then i can't remember the third we are talking 1984 here.
ReplyDeletebut that was how i was instroduced. i already knew parker and it is a bizarre but apt comparison. my friend was talking about the brilliance and the impact not that it sounded similar.
roberth