Legendary Minutemen guitar fiend D. Boon died in 1985 in a fatal car accident when he and his girfriend fell asleep at the wheel while driving home from a concert. This is a release of obscure low-fi recordings (ca. 194-85) mostly in-home and live jam sessions but also 7 live tracks (#26-32) from a Minutemen gig at UCLA. Besides being a daily obsession, D. Boon's trebly guitar (treble-10, midrange-0, bass-0) was a canvas for stylistic explorations including the colors of free jazz, funk, folk and blues. This CD offers a pretty good glimpse of D. Boon's genius. At a purely academic level, this will help you comprehend Minutemen's quantum leap from "The Punch Line" (their first punk release) to "Double Nickels on the Dime" (a critically acclaimed all-time classic, and Minutemen's response to Husker Du's "Zen Arcade"). And hence the evolution from punk power-chords to flamenco, polka and jazz is evident. Here D. Boon's guitar sound is as if the improvisational free-jazz experimentations of John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service; a 60s Frisco psych band) and Bryan Maclean (the Love) were fused to the proto-/post-punk guitar antics of Tom Verlain (Television). Add in the mix a little of Jimi Hendrix blues/funk fluidity, and there you have it. Genius work; fun to listen!
For nice tunes with beautiful vox, play: 32, 25, 18, 22, 23.
For menacing ambient noisy post-punk synth chunes: 33, 14 (11->12->13).
For darker Minutemen punk: 29
1. Funk grooves, free-jazz psych picking, post-punk angular noisy solos. Female voice arguing/fighting in the background.
2. Bluesy with synth keys.
3. Angular free-jazzy jam.
4. 30 sec - spacy
5. 75 sec - sparse, soft
7. Acoustic jam with spanish influences
8. Psychedelic;; sparse; free-jazzy
9. 20 s; Doesn't go anywhere
10. Live jam; heavy sound
11. 40 s; beautiful synth
12, 13: Spooky dissonant noisy sparse keys
14. See 12/13 but with psych vox; interupted by a phone call.
15. 1 min - jazzy
16. Neurotic and dissonant
17. Jimi Hendrix meets post-punk
18. Woody Guthrie's classic
19. Noisy and neurotic
20. Noisy synth
21. Nice bluesy strut with vox
22, 23: Nice catchy bouncy punk with nice vox
24. Folky; sentimental
25. Wow... impressive! Blue grass meets southern europe. Passionate. Think Will Oldham.
26. Noisy
27. Acidic funk/blues grooves.
28. Angular and jazzy
29. Good ole edgy punk - mid tempo
30. Another awesome punk number (FCC: 2X shit; you can probably get away with it).
31. Twangy guitar work; groovy
32. THIS IS AWESOME - GREAT POP CHUNE FOR D. BOON's EARLY PUNK DAYS. IT WILL MAKE YOU CRY!
33. Sparse menacing psych track. Great!