Mr. Narrator, this is Bob Dylan to me - October 13th, 2005 [ « ] [ » ]

There’s a bit in Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard where the main character, a little known abstract expressionist, (or maybe it’s an anecdote he tells about Jackson Pollock or someone, i don’t remember) is challenged that his work is just a big mess, the classic modern art criticism that ‘anyone could do it’ is duely leveled. Our hero’s response it to sketch out a perfectly realistic representation of his attacker on the back of a canvas and say ‘until you can do this you can’t make a mess like I can’ or words to that effect, my recollection is a little hazy.

Anyway the point is, there’s a moment in The Minutemen documentary I saw last night: After about half an hour of rough punk gig footage, apparently shot by a small child, we see D.Boone and Mike Watt and George Hurley (really funny haircut) sat on the floor, acoustic guitars and bongos, giving a note perfect redition of I Felt Like A Gringo the song’s stripped down and on display, as taut and funky as anything James Brown ever did, as poetic and politically incisive as the best of Bob Dylan and with an economy of expression neither could match. It’s the same thing as that bit in Bluebeard, because they can do this perfect songwriting and techincally superb performance they’re aloud to do their more abstract ‘messy’ stuff, they’ve earned their right to experiment and be thought of as true artists though discipline and craftsmanship. The film ends with another performance from the same session, predictably but absolutely appropriately History Lesson (Part 2), and I remembered how sad I was when, after having discovered The Minutemen around 1999, I found out that D.Boone had died about 14 years earlier.

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our band could be your life
real names be proof
me and mike watt
we played for years
punk rock changed our lives
we learned punk rock in hollywood
drove up from pedro
we were fucking corndawgs
we’d go drink and pogo
“mr narrator!”
this is bob dylan to me
my story could be his songs
i’m his soldier child
our band is scientist rock
but i was e bloom
then richard hell
joe strummer
and john doe
me and mike watt
playing guitar