»Our band could be your life

God bless YouTube. I found dozens of short pieces of Minutemen concert footage, including a seafaring concert, "Joy at Sea", in gorgeous sepia-toned grainy video; the video for "This Ain't No Picnic" (with the antagonist airplane pilot, Mr Ronald Reagan!); and some amped-up concert footage. The site has a slightly confusing but very pretty acoustic version of "Corona" -- confusing because of the Mike Watt spiel at the beginning and subtitles in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Plus seeing George Hurley sitting in front og a pair of bongo drums on the floor is kinda unsettling. (I first saw him play on my twenty-first birthday, at Lounge Ax; he was part of the Red Krayola touring ensemble. No stranger than Mike Watt picking up bass and hitting the road to Iceland with The Stooges.)

Joy at Sea was a concert-on-a-boat based from San Pedro (but of course!) on June 15th, 1984. Our Band Could Be Your Life is a book by Michael Azerrad about the American punk-rock scene, and takes its name from the Minutemen song "History Lesson Pt. II".
I made a small update to punkrock dot virji dot net (old page here) and will take advantage of the ample bandwidth that YouTube has.

Tomorrow is Mike Watt's forty-ninth birthday (Happy Birthday!). Rumour has him talking with Greg Ginn about a reissue of the original, forty-five track "Double Nickels on the Dime", including all three covers and all four "car jam" bits. Oh, and "Little Man With a Gun in His Hand." That would be all sorts of swell.