Minutemen

1971, San Pedro, California. The decor is planted. Two kids, D. Boon and Mike Watt, meet at age 13. It is the beginning of a long friendship that will last until the death of D. Boon in 1985. They discovered punk together, set up several bands until they met George Hurley in the late 1970s. Then they formed The Reactionaries and finally the Minutemen in January 1980. They meet Greg Ginn of Black Flag at a Clash concert, they will play with them a few days later. Greg Ginn has them recorded a 7, Paranoid Time, for the second release of his OSH label. And the Minutemen will remain faithful to him since all their records will be released on the same label. A year later a first album was released as The Punch Line. They are already totally apart, at a thousand leagues of hyper aggressive hardcore bands with linear rhythms of the time. But the revelation will come with What Makes to Man Start Fires in 1983, which reveals an almost funk side in addition to the spontaneity inherited from a Wire. In 1984, Double Nickels on the Dime was born. Still the same recipe in more than 40 tracks with boundless creativity, nothing seems to stop them. The following year they will make the first parts of R.E.M.'s tour that insisted on their record company to take them away. Shortly thereafter, on December 22, 1985, D. Boon died in a car accident. It's the end of Minutemen.