HARDLISTENING

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I was wondering why you didn't really sing until the latest album, Contemplating The Engine Room.

Mike：Well, Ball-hog was a weird record for me. I have no other record like this. That was a record where I wanted to play with 60 people. Cause I'd always been in the same band. I did some songs on Minutemen. Contemplating The Engine Room had to be all me, because it's a very personal story. It's the story of the Minutemen. It had to be me. Ball-hog was different guitars, different drums, different singers. It was just for ... in the United States we call goof. It's a goof. Something that you don't usually do. I wanted to test ... it was actually a test. Like, if the bass player knew the songs, anybody could play with him. It's what the title means. A Ball-hog is someone in basketball who never passes, who wants the all the glory himself. A tugboat is a little boat that helps the big boat in the harbor. So that's the question. This is the test for me. Is it the tugboat? Or is it the Ball-hog? Believe me, you're not the only ones--nobody in the United States knew what I was talking about, either. Sometimes my world is too internal (laughs). That's why I like punk rock. I have never mixed in well with masses. Ever. That's not foreign countries. Even in my own place. In my own town, I've always been a weirdo.

Can you tell us what Contemplating The Engine Room is about?

Mike：That's what I call my opera. Because it's all one song. It takes place over one day, 24 hours. It begins in the morning, ends at night. And it's a metaphor for the Minutemen. It can show you. There's a key in the artwork. Here's the key. This is where it starts, 6 in the morning. And it ends at 4:20. That's when D. Boon got killed, 4:20 in the morning. And see, each space of the day is a song. And each song is a period in our band's life. I used my father's story with the Navy, him joining the Navy, as a metaphor for our band. This machine is me. See the propeller. I know it's confusing. I didn't really tell people. It doesn't say that anywhere in this, because I wanted people to figure out for themselves. I got the idea from a book by James Joyce called 'Ulysses'. That's all on June 16. It's all in one day. That's where I got the idea. Because to me, the day is the real cycle. Week, month--well, month, kind of with the moon--but week is crazy. They are arbitrary. The day is the symbol for a life. Of a band, of a person. He was my best friend, D. Boon. And I've never been brave enough to talk about him after all these years, and this was the first time.

Is this your father on the front cover?

Mike：That's my pop. He's in the engine room in 1969 off Viet Nam. He was a young man. He died 10 years ago. Cancer, because he worked in radiation. Nuclear engine rooms. But, I have to tell you, he never understood my music. He had no music in his family. No music people, no art people. He didn't understand what I was doing. Even though all these years I was making a living at it. So I started sending him postcards from the towns from tour. And it hit on him that I was sort of like a sailor. Because I went to all the ports like he did. That's how he saw the world, was join the Navy. So that's where I got the idea. Ah, they are related, we weren't so much different, although his is military, mine's music. We still traveled around. The boat, is the van.

You don't come from a musical family?

Mike：No. I had a grandfather who did some vaudeville. My mother's dad. But, no.

How did you get into music?

Mike：I got into music because of D. Boon. I liked my friend a lot. And this was the way we could be together. I never imagined we could do this for a living.

Did you go to school together?

Mike：Yeah. I met him when I was 13. In fact, his mother made me play the bass. Because we lived in a poor neighborhood, it was a way to keep us off the streets after school. It was like a weird childcare or something.

His mother made you?

Mike：Yeah. I didn't know what a bass was.

Why did she think you should be the bass player?

Mike：Well, because he played guitar, and her other son played drums. She said 'Every band has a bass.' It was total coincidence, you know? It was something to be friends.

What were you listening to at that time?

Mike：Creedence. That's why I wear the shirts. And D. Boon hadn't heard any rock except Creedence. His dad was way into Buck Owens. So I turned him on to The Who, Cream, Alice Cooper, T Rex ... My first concert was T Rex in 1971. Then, we graduated high school in 1976. And punk rock comes. We were really lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I'd never been to a club. There was no club scene in Los Angeles. It was this punk thing, and it was total luck. We were not musicians. Just, the scene came right on us. And all of a sudden, they let anyone play. And we were just lucky. We only played in our room. We never played in front of people. Punk changed all that. And that's why I will always be indebted to the movement. That's hard to explain to people now, because you have kids now, they've grown up with punk all in their life. And it just seems like a haircut. But to be in those days, it was much more than a haircut. It opened everything. It wasn't even a style of music, really. It was a way to go crazy. Remember 'Rocky Horror Picture Show'? This movie? That's what it was. You go to the movie, and you knew all the words, and you threw toast and rice.

The punk clubs would be similiar to that?

Mike：Yeah. The same people were there. You understand, San Pedro's 30 miles from Hollywood. So none of my people were there. And I saw the same people at the first punk shows. Yeah, punk was only in Hollywood. You understand, Los Angeles is 140 towns. We're not really 1 town. We're all these towns. So, the weirdos from the little towns came to Hollywood and went off. Went crazy.

I think your style of playing bass is very distinctive.

Mike：Thank you.

I was wondering where this comes from.

Mike：I told you before, I come from Cream, and The Who, John Entwistle, Jack Bruce, Geezer Butler ... I couldn't hear bass. In the old days, like I said, I didn't know what a bass was. I couldn't really hear it on the records. So I just tried to play with my friend. D. Boon had a big influence on me. So when you hear me play, you hear lots of D. Boon. He didn't play bass, but ... I didn't know you were supposed to be simple and in the background. I thought you were supposed to be right out there. Also, the aggressiveness of punk, you know? That's my influences.

How about black music? Since you performed Maggot Brain, I suppose you were influenced by that type of music too.

Mike：Yeah, big part, because bass was very strong. Very strong. There's something else too, about the way they play together. They are not so separate. You know? When they are on stage performing together, they really listen to each other, and watch each other. Black music from my day. Nowadays, with hiphop, there's not much ... but they still seem to be talking with each other. To me, rap is a lot like punk, in a lot of ways. There's this other idea of being underdog. John Coltrane was a huge influence. I never heard jazz as a kid. As I became punk and and met guys like Raymond Pettibon, my best friend after D. Boon got killed, turned me on to jazz. Coltrane, Charles Mingus ... There's something about the way black people do music that really inspires me. I think it's anybody who plays has a debt to black people. United States, for one good thing, we do mix things together. Country and black music came together and made this weird kind of thing called rock and roll. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker. Big influences. And then later on, Sly Stone, Larry Graham, with the bass. First guy to play with his thumb. Not Flea. Though much respect to Flea, but it was Larry Graham. And he would tell you that too. So would Les Claypool. Not Geddy Lee.

I understand that SST and your label mates basically built the foundation for 90's alternative rock in America.

Mike：I would say so. Although the United States press is very bad with that. They try to say it all starts with Nirvana. And no one in Nirvana would say that. It's horrible.

We understand.

Mike：There's books coming out now though. I did some interviews with guys. They're trying to set the records straight. Yeah, but I was at SST for 11 years. Minutemen's record Paranoid Time was SST 002. From the beginning.

After that, alternative became mainstream, and mainstream is now taken over by, like what you said, sports-like jock rock, heavy rock.

Mike：Or pop. Like Offspring or Lit.

How do you see these changes?

Mike：I don't think it's new. Pat Boone sold more 'Tutti Frutti' than Little Richard did. It's an old old formula. That's what it is, it's formula. It's not spontaneous. It's boring.

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