What we do is put three songs together, so we got three songs out of it. He says, “you give me your song, and I’ll let you record one song for free”. “This guy called James – who ended up recording Double Nickels – put out a compilation. How Minutemen accidentally wrote the Jackass theme tune.So I think we were gonna have a comeback, but we were definitely on a downhill thing when Georgie stopped writing words for us.”
Boon worked in a political thing where people would vote, put a ballot in, vote for your favourite song and we’ll play ‘em live for you. I think we were gonna come back – we had this plan for a triple record, where half of it was gonna be live, to fight the bootleggers – D. The last two records, Project Mersh and 3-Way Tie (For Last), are really, in my opinion, lamer records. That’s why the Minutemen, after Georgie stops writing songs, after Double Nickels On The Dime, the band changes. Boon were just too much in it, too subjective, to see the forest for the trees. Georgie could do that, he could put himself out, be kind of objective a little bit, where me and D. ‘ Serious as a heart attack!’ it’s like Georgie was commenting on our own band. Although I wrote the music, it’s Georgie’s words inspired me. “Georgie wrote the words to this one I ended up calling Anxious Mo-Fo. This is – Michael Jackson, will you sing this song? And I look back at young Mike Watt and it’s like, ‘Wow, you had a little nerve there!’” But that was like, balls out, I totally had a reason for this song – it’s not just for D. So I sent it to the management, and I never got a word back. I thought if he sang this song, everyone would know what the Minutemen was about. I actually wrote the song for Michael Jackson to sing. “I wrote a song, maybe the best one I wrote for Minutemen that I like – Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing. Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing Songs are about transmitting all kinds of information.” Because you can express yourself about different things – concrete things like D. And they’d be surreal, written in early morning too, where he’s half awake and on a lake, and with the lake and stuff, he writes a song about a dream. And he would write these at work, on the laze, so semi-conscious. I wrote the music to The Anchor, but Georgie – he never gave me a title, he always gave me words. “The third one is The Anchor – the first time we played over two minutes. And we’re like, ‘WHAT?! It’s not our turn?!’ So working, it’s this big influence that even pushed us into the punk movement.” There’s civil rights, there’s the war, young people are taking things into their hands and trying to change. And also, you’ve got to remember too, we were boys in the 60s. We even made a video, because MTV came on, and we made a decision – we thought, ‘Oh, the new telephone pole is MTV’, so we spent $400 to make this video, because we thought it would relate to other working people, because we were kids working, and there was something about that. But he writes a song, This Ain’t No Picnic, and it’s about work, but he actually never brings that subject up in the song. Boon couldn’t do anything – he’s the low man on the totem pole, so he has to turn it off.
There’s a guy there who has a… difference of opinion, ‘I don’t want to hear that… kind of music’, he uses that word. Boon was working at parts counter, and his daddy put in radios at the dealer shop, and he’s there at the counter, and he’s listening to soul music. “You don’t know it in the lyrics, but where this song came from – I know the story. That’s why I really like Corona – it’s a strange mixture of things, but to me it’s the nice things about the Minutemen.” Boon liked Corona beer! – no, she’s using that bottle to help. Boon’s thinking about what’s going on here: we’re having a party at the beach, and this lady, by using the empty Corona bottle – it’s not like D. There’s a little Mexico in there, it’s got a little ‘thinking out loud’ – what D. Boon, I remember him telling people, “Okay, whatever we play, it sounds like the Minutemen”. The movement was so inclusive, and it seemed that if you wanted in, you had to bring something original – it was kind of a toll. Music was personal with us, it’s how we were together, and then the movement let us do it in front of people. So when I hear him sing that song, when I hear that – he plays those motifs, that kind of mariachi – I mean, it’s just everything for me. His daddy had emphysema, and from the show, the monies went to his pop. People will come up to me and they call it ‘ The Jackass Song’ – but this was a way Boon could help his daddy after he got killed. That’s trippy about that, it’s surreal, the connection. I know it’s used as the theme song for Jackass, but it really don’t have things much to do with that. After all the drinking and the partying, the morning after, there’s a lady picking up bottles, to turn them in to get monies for her babies.
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