Spiels of Minuteman — Notes by Mike Watt on the early days of The Minutemen, lyrics, essays by Richard Meltzer (Blue Oyster Cult, rock critic), Joe Carducci (who ran SST from ’82 to ’86), Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth). Art by Raymond Pettibone. It’s hard to convey what Watt and the Minutemen mean to me. Some music from one’s formative years seems corny two decades later, other stuff just keeps sinking in deeper. Minutemen, and to a lesser extent, Firehose and other Watt side projects, are under my skin like benevolent chiggers.
fake contest
i'm making my case against a stack of comics
here comes the line...
"i'm loaded with rocket fuel!"
industry, industry we're tools for
the industry -- your clothes in
their laundry bleached of identity
you lie there naked
i lie here naked
both on the pavement why
are we different?
Also: Feeling rusty on philosophy roots from college, brought along Richard Osborne’s Philosophy for Beginners. Very succinct, palatable but dense rerun of any college history of philosophy class. Got through the Greeks and Romans, heading into the Arabs. Brother-in-law Steve pointed out that this book casts contributions of Christianity to philosophy in a fairly negative light. True, it’s fairly harsh on Christianity’s harsh history, but I’m not so sure it’s not just being accurate (Steve getting a PhD at the Talbot School of Theology).
Saturday Morning — the compilation of Saturday morning cartoon music covered by contemp. bands, e.g. Sublime’s cover of “Hong Kong Phooey” and Liz Phair’s version of the banana split’s Tra La La song — is a total disappointing bore and I’m sorry I bought it. Should have known better. Not a single track on the disc is as good as the original.