I put the missingmen together in the summer of 2006 in order to bring forth my third punk rock opera "hyphenated-man" (the first two being 1997's "contemplating the engine room" and 2004's "the secondman's middle stand"). whereas "...engine room" dealt w/my pop's life in the navy as a metaphor for the story of the minutemen and "...middle stand" was a parallel to dante's "comedia" dealing w/an illness that almost killed me in 2000, this third opera will be quite different in that it has no standard narrative (libretto!) meaning no regular beginning-middle-end and will be as it were "simultaneous" in the way a mirror from just inside my head - right in this middle-age moment of mine - was then shattered into thirty pieces, each showing a piece of my state of mind (or out-of-mind) as of now. "thirty tunes?" yes, they're little ones. too heavy to really hear minutemen stuff for many years, I had to face myself and get the nerve up to hear it again when I agreed to let keith scheiron and tim irwin make the "we jam econo" documentary (many thanks to them and all who helped out on that). I even did a few gigs w/george hurley w/us as a duet doing the old tunes and it was trippy for me, like I was digging on how "econo" those tiny tunes were - no filler, right to point. a big influence was those little creatures in those old hieronymus bosch painting - I read a theory about them maybe being visualizations of proverbs or aphorisms and me, not knowing much about sixteenth century dutch/flemish culture, made up my own meanings!
for guitar, I asked tom watson - I've known him since the early 80s and have toured w/him before (he was w/both the pair of pliers and the jom & terry show trios of mine) and I thought he'd be great for the gig - he's my link w/the older days. to get the younger spirit going in the band, I got raul morales on drums - he's been part of the punk scene here in pedro for quite a while though he's twenty years younger than I am. he helped me out drumming for the secondmen when jerry trebotic couldn't tour any more. now this is not intended to be a reproduction of the minutemen, just a little similar in format which is what I think is needed for the piece.
the problem I had getting things rolling though was commitments w/the stooges, a band I love playing w/and learning from. flea asked me to open for a leg of their chili peppers tour in europe and I thought this would be a great chance to get tom and raul playing together but cuz of both stooges gigs and perparing for/recording their first album in thirtythree years, I didn't have time to develop the piece w/the missingmen and instead showed them tunes I've played w/in bands past in order to get a set together in short notice to play w/the peppers. the tour w/them went great and we also did some gigs on our own - there's a diary of it here. this year (2007) has me playing much w/the stooges cuz of the album being out in march so it looks like 2008 for me to get the missingmen in full gear and the "ten and twenty does not make fifty" opera in motion. what I wanna do is tour first before we record cuz that's something I've never really been able to do much - it's usually the other way around all these years. tom and raul play really well together and help me much make work the trio thing I love to do. they have much their own personas which is important to me - a big reason I dig my black gang trio and my secondmen one. this now makes a trio of trios I am so fortunate to have, cats playing their hearts out and putting much soul into making tunes come alive.
Thanks man, it's always good to hang with a Legend. Amazing BASS!!! We'll keep you guys posted on any good shows that we have coming up as well to see if you guys are down to play.
we saw you & yer guys @ the doug fir....outstanding as always...'preciate the jazz fusion punk....thanx for all the hard work!!!!!p.s. the minutemen medley was so killer!!!
