The Best Punk Band You’ve Definitely Heard, But Probably Don’t Know

Welcome to the latest edition of All the Music of All the World, our weekly series where we aim to share music worth being passionate about. Consider us a guide who can help you get the most out of your Victrola by giving you new music to listen to, or new ways to think about music you already know.

Last weekend, the New York Times ran a beautiful, heart wrenching and heartwarming story about a legendary Los Angeles punk band. This band was part of the hardcore scene that sprung up around Black Flag and was signed to the legendary SST records. They were radical leftists concerned with making sure everyone in their community was taken care of regardless of any differences between them. They made punk music that somehow blended in funk, free jazz, Bakersfield country, spoken word, and classic rock riffage. Right when it felt like they were poised for a breakthrough, their mastermind lead singer died in a tragic van accident.

Odds are, you probably haven’t heard of this band: that lead singer died more than 40 years ago, and apart from a documentary early this century, they haven’t really been talked about in the same breath as Black Flag, or X, or Dead Kennedys. And that’s a shame.

But, I can say this with certainty: You have definitely heard this band’s music. To wit:

That’s “Corona” by Minutemen, the aforementioned punk band. You know this song from something other than the album it appears on, Double Nickels on the Dime. It’s the theme song to Jackass. 

“Corona” was, like most of Minutemen’s best songs, written in solidarity with an underclass: the people lead singer D. Boon met on a trip to Mexico in the early ‘80s. The lyrics to the song—which aren’t in the Jackass credits—are about people surviving despite the challenges put upon them by life, existence, and their country.

That serves as a good ethos for Minutemen themselves. Founded by childhood best friends bassist Mike Watt and guitarist D. Boon, and their jazz drummer buddy George Hurley, the group grew up in the hardscrabble Los Angeles enclave of San Pedro, where putting two pennies together was everyone’s main objective. The sons of working class folks, the band was formed in 1980, and was famous for the phrase “jam econo,” which meant that they did everything as cheap and spendthrift as possible. They recorded their early albums in the middle of the night at recording studios because it was cheaper, and they did short, quick tours because they allowed them to keep their day jobs. They slept on floors and in vans, and tried to live up to the ethos of their name; fighting for rights for everyone, like the soldiers in the revolutionary war they were named after. They sought liberation by making music and telling their stories, and the stories of people beaten down by the Reagan ‘80s.

The thing now, 40 years after Boon was killed in an accident when he was thrown from the back of a passenger/touring van he was sleeping in, that you can hear in Minutemen’s music is how radical they were, not just in lyrical content, but in the musical content too. Where bands like Black Flag adhered to aesthetic rigidity of black and white hardcore punk, Minutemen were willing to play whatever genre they wanted, arguably the most “punk” stance to take in the L.A. scene.

They could be downright funky, like on “Viet Nam.”

You can hear the echoes of horn-filled modern indie rock in songs like “King of the Hill.”

And they could channel punk fury with the best of them with “This Ain’t No Picnic.”

Minutemen seemed poised for a major breakthrough in 1985, before Boon passed. They had toured with R.E.M.—themselves just exploding into the bigger music scene from indie rock roots—and their masterpiece double album, Double Nickels on the Dime—a rejoinder to Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55”—had become part of the punk rock canon. Their four LPs and 8 EPs are as good as American punk got in the 1980s, just a peerless body of work that is worth reexamining this week, the week D. Boon would have turned 67. So, if you’re looking for something to listen to today, make it the 45 song Double Nickels on the Dime, and turn it up and jam econo.