The Minutemen "History Lesson - Part 2"

Or, Our Band Could Be Your Life

"Punk rock changed our lives." D Boon and Mike Watt learned punk rock in Hollywood, driving up from San Pedro. They would pogo at X shows. Listen to the song - it tells you the whole story. All you need to know. D Boon and Mike Watt playing guitars.

In 1980, D Boon, Mike Watt formed The Minutemen. George Hurley was eventually added as their permanent drummer. They opened up for Black Flag on their first gig. Enough said.

Their magnum opus was, of course, 1984's double-album, Double Nickels on the Dime, released on the seminal LA punk label, SST records. It sprawls across 43 iconoclastic songs that cannot be labelled. There are many shining highlights. There also are as many songs that do not reflect light out at the listener, they remain hidden. The standout track, in my opinion, is History Lesson - Part 2.

The song is tender. It feels of a hug from a friend. A song of friendship. Upon first listen I declared it the greatest song I had ever heard! Possibly. Perhaps the least punk rock sounding song on the record, but the one that most embodied their punk rock ethos. "Our band could be your life."

This song immediately fit into my life, and still serves as an important jigsaw puzzle piece to my identity. In high school, my friend Mike and I dove head first into punk rock the best that we could. There was no driving up to Hollywood from suburban Temecula in 1995. Punk was already long gone, broke and dead. In order to become punks, we had to do research. Hours spent at Spin records listening to every Sex Pistols, Clash, Ramones and Buzzcocks album Spin had in stock. Combing through the library (or Barnes and Noble), searching for a copy of England's Dreaming. We adorned our thrift store clothing with safety pins and slogans of nihilism. "We were fucking corn dogs."

Of course, I can reminisce with a smile about these endeavors, now. The punk rock phase left a permanent mark into my being, just as every phase other phase did for me, as well. It is a piece of me that when I stretch out and ponder about, I have to picture myself and Mike singing Dead Kennedy lyrics around town. Together. Close friendship. And the gang of other deviants and characters that surrounded us. Punk rock can mean "friendship" when I think long enough about it.

That is what grabs at me every time I hear History Lesson - Part 2. It means friendship. D Boon and Mike Watt playing guitars.

In 1985, while touring, D Boon died when his van crashed. Mike Watt has dedicated every artistic thing he has done since then to his friend, D Boon.

"Video Games", Lana Del Rey

Or, heaven is a place on earth where you...

The clouds above the high desert will part when the harp is plucked. The string section is warm. The piano is a pillow. The sun pours down. It lights up the chrome trim of the old Chevy hood as it motors ahead. Los Angeles bound. A gang of psychedelic gangsters.

Lee Hazelwood drives with one hand on gripping the wheel, the other massaging his black mustache. Nancy Sinatra is in the passenger seat blowing kisses to herself in the rear view mirror. I'm in the back seat, reading Ginsberg.

Then her voice appears. A haunting beautiful monotone. The crooning of a girl dressed up to be a woman. An announcement that Los Angeles will soon appear, shining out on the horizon. It is mesmerizing.

Who is this singing, Lee? Nancy asks. She is still staring at herself in the rear view.

Lee stares towards Los Angeles.

It's Lana Del Rey, I answer, still reading Ginsberg.

Who is this, Lee? She sounds an awful lot like me? Nancy asks. 

Lee stares towards Los Angeles.

It's "Video Games" by Lana Del Rey, I answer, louder, and I close Howl for the time being.

The three psychedelic gangsters  are hypnotized through the chorus. Heaven is a place on earth where you, tell me all the things you want to do.

Then Nancy says, Phaedra is my name.

It is you, Lee answers.

Some velvet morning when I'm straight, I'm going to open up the door to your Studio City apartment, and sit down with a beer, and watch you stand with your back against the wall and mouth the words to this song. Playin' video games. You will pout and make your growing lips dance a tango above each other.

This is what Lee Hazelwood says to Lana Del Rey.

This is what I say about Video Games. The song is sensual. It is seductive. And the chorus will live inside your head for a few days. Lingering like a floral perfume hanging onto a pillow. Somewhere, before the final repeating of the chorus, the song gets a bit repetitive. I might want it to stop. I might want to listen to something else, or maybe nothing at all. However, some time during the day that will follow, I will find myself singing to myself

Heaven is a place on earth where you...

Las Vegas is a Garden of Desperation

Or, what I thought about while I sat in a swimming pool that was too warm to be refreshing, in a rented house in Las Vegas, wishing I was home.


Damn the gardener that bred Las Vegas out of the dust in the Mojave Desert. Vines that climb the scaffolding of the gaming casinos, blink like cheap rhinestones in the night sky. Straight desert trail paved with blacktop that runs as the boulevard between the monolithic towers. Each one faces the other, across the boulevard, in a posturing of gambling and excess. Within their walls, wander the vapid on vacation, admiring the faux architecture and fabricated restaurants, wander the desperate chasing one last deal, wander the weary, eye-worn zombies, sugar alcohol ice drink in one hand and a twenty dollar bill in the other, seeking the siren of the last table to lay it down upon.

Seeds poured from criminal fingers into the Old Spanish Trail. Hoover built a dam. The workers drank gasoline and breathed hopelessness. The showgirls danced through the night, captivating eyes that were not following the roulette wheel. Atomic cocktails were poured into labelled glasses, as the anguished watched the mushroom clouds gather across the horizon. Each wretched stare a mirror of the next, waiting for the fateful explosion to overtake this evil garden.

Vegas earned a new coat of paint and the agonized keep arriving in droves. The herd walks from the 110 degree habitat into the recycled air provided by Howard Hughes and the gangsters. Pit bosses stare out from behind the tables, waiting for one wrong move. Strippers stare out from around the poles, sizing up their prey.

Vegas is not even Vegas. Residing in Las Vegas are the outcast the casinos employ, spew out, only to be consumed over again. The casinos, magnets for the disheartened, sits in Paradise. Baptized by organized crime, unincorporated. To make sure that gambling towers do not have to contribute revenue to the actual city of Las Vegas. Paradise.

The real Las Vegas is no paradise. It is a desert purgatory, where the wasted wash across wide streets, empty save for liquor stores and gas stations. Liquor and gas. The two things the tormented need to escape the gravity of the strip.