“History Lesson, Part 2” – Minutemen
(Words/music: Mike Watt, available on Double Nickels on the Dime, SST 1984)
My favorite line in “History Lesson, Part 2” – a short song with a disproportionate number of lyric gems – starts the third verse. “Mr. Narrator,” D. Boon says, “this is Bob Dylan to me.” This reference speaks louder than the list of Boon and Watt’s musical heroes that they used to emulate growing up. It reads as a plea for legitimacy for punk rock – an intergenerational attempt to explain how these songs mean just as much as Dylan’s songs meant to the previous generation. It’s a specific choice to compare it to Dylan and not the Beatles, Rolling Stones, or even Led Zeppelin because punk rock (or at least the kind of punk rock the Minutemen made and gravitated toward) shares a lot with Dylan. Both touch on political themes, both ruffled feathers of the previous generation, and both are (to some) an acquired taste. Boon delivers this line with the genuine tone of a teenager seeking validation, and it’s this sincere tone that makes “History Lesson, Part 2” (and most of Double Nickels on the Dime) so compelling. Sure, Boon and Watt deliver a compelling argument for punk’s place in history, but it works because it’s 100% honest.
It’s important that Boon follows this line with one containing the word “story” because I’ve always been enamored with punk rock’s storytelling capabilities. Two main themes run throughout punk rock – viewing the world as an outsider (or viewing yourself as outside of the mainstream at least), and punk rock as a participatory democracy. Some take this as a violent rejection of mainstream culture, but I prefer to see it as a way to tell your own story – one that may not fit in with what’s popular yet may overlap on some points. Some take punk rock to its nihilistic end and boil it down to finding something to rebel against, but that misses part of the picture. Take Boon and Watt – they include Blue Oyster Cult’s E. Bloom with their list of punk rock icons and cover Steely Dan and Van Halen on Double Nickels. Punk rock, to them, is the vehicle to tell their story. The opening line to the song – “our band could be your life” (the title of Michael Azerrad’s excellent book about the 1980s American underground) gets read as a sign of fandom – making the bands you love a critical part of your life. In the context of the song, it’s also meant the other way – we could be in Watt and Boon’s place, singing our own song about our own music. I’ve seen the Hold Steady play this song changing the references to Minneapolis’ punk icons (and the Minutemen as well), and my version would be yet another musical generation removed. In this case, the details of the story aren’t as important as the actual act of telling it.
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