https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/arts/music/minutemen-d-boon.html
A wonderful article (I read through a gift link, this is a New York Times so I'm not sure if the link will work) about D.Boon of the legendary Minuteman band from San Pedro California. "This band could be your life" indeed. I've seen George fireman Hurley and Mike Watts since, in the case of Mike Wadd, and it doesn't different collaborations over several decades and countries, but I never did get to see the three of them in full mode. I play double nickels on the dime on the regular 
Importantly when punk rock was turning into a dogmatic concept of haircuts, feuds, factions and "styles" these self-professed corn balls did exactly what they wanted blending jazz and fusion and classic rock and poetry and politics all into sharp spiels like a whole Swiss army knife
sadly dear Mr. Boon died at 27 in a car crash. I hate car crash crashes ... a van rolled over, he was thrown from the back sleeping, and I had a similar experience right around the same time, Christmas Eve 1987, a four-wheel-drive rolling over over and over and over again and me or the other occupants could've very easily met the same fade. I'm so gratefulbut it lives with me. I hate car crashes.
excerpts from Bob Mehr march 26 2026
D. Boon — the charismatic singer and guitarist for the influential punk band Minutemen — died on a dusty stretch of Interstate 10 east of Quartzsite, Ariz., 40 years ago. His body was buried at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., a headstone etched with musical notes marking his 27 years on Earth. But Boon’s immutable spirit was alive on a sunny Sunday afternoon earlier this month in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, his hometown, as the bassist Mike Watt and the drummer George Hurley summoned a familiar sound.
The surviving members of Minutemen had gathered at Casa Hanzo, a small residential recording studio, as they do every few weeks to write and record new songs.
“Hey Georgie,” Watt barked over the rumble of his bass, “this one’s got a seven-beat fill, so give me that thundering herd.” Hurley nodded and began pounding out a galloping pattern on his floor tom. “That’s it,” Watt exclaimed gleefully, “that’s it, Georgie!”
As they worked up their distinctive rhythm, you almost expected to hear the cutting treble of Boon’s Telecaster, the warm burr of his voice.
Four decades after Dennes Dale Boon’s death in a van accident just before Christmas 1985, the hurt still lingers in Watt’s voice. The memory of Boon is frozen in time — he’s forever a young man — while Watt and Hurley are nearing 70. The drummer, 67, with his silver pompadour and hawkish features, cut a steely, stoic figure, while Watt, 68, who wore baggy jeans and flip-flops, moved with the aid of a walking brace because of persistent knee problems.
Initially asked to reflect on Boon’s legacy for the anniversary of his death late last year, Watt demurred. “I hate that day,” he said. Instead, he proposed a visit closer to Boon’s April 1 birthday to “see the Minutemen ethic in person. Not just two Minutemen still making music together in the town they started in, but in a studio built by a longshoreman,” he added. “D. Boon would’ve dug that. I don’t say that much, trying to guess what he would or wouldn’t have liked. But I think he would’ve dug this.”
A black-and-white photo of a bassist, guitarist and drummer performing onstage, with the audience seen at left.
Minutemen onstage, from left: Mike Watt, D. Boon and George Hurley.Credit...Gary Leonard/Corbis via Getty Images
BOON AND WATT were the children of Navy veterans, raised in the military housing projects of San Pedro, a blue-collar port town. They met at 12, playing in the city’s Peck Park. Watt was immediately taken by Boon, who mesmerized him with intellectual raps and funny stories. “I thought he was the smartest guy I’d ever met,” said Watt, who later realized Boon had copped his bits from a George Carlin record. “But I didn’t care.”
Boon’s mother encouraged her son to play guitar and suggested Watt pick up bass so they could form a band to keep them off the streets. The pair were besotted by the classic rock of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blue Öyster Cult and played covers for years, then found inspiration in the punk scene in Hollywood and began writing their own songs. The classic Minutemen lineup coalesced in early 1980, when their old high school classmate Hurley joined, bringing an untrammeled power and shifty jazz sensibility to the combo.
Over the next five years they cut a singular path through the American underground, becoming the second band (after Black Flag) on the pioneering SoCal punk label SST, and establishing their own New Alliance imprint. With all three members writing songs, they turned out a dozen releases, including the sprawling 1984 masterpiece “Double Nickels on the Dime.” There was a keen intelligence and profound class consciousness at work in their short, sharp songs, satires of ’80s consumerism and critiques of Reagan-era politics.
“As a voice, D. Boon was really significant,” Thurston Moore said in an interview, “more than anyone in our generation, in terms of writing political content but doing it with a lot of wit and purpose.”
Minutemen also represented liberation in a punk and hardcore scene that had become tethered to a certain kind of self-serious orthodoxy. Onstage, the burly Boon would bounce around wildly in his shorts and bad shoes, with Watt grinning and grinding away on bass, as Hurley, with his protruding shock of hair nicknamed “The Unit,” kept time on a mismatched kit. Their music mixed jazz and funk rhythms, folk and Flamenco melodies, and fit no real box.
“The Minutemen were profound,” Jeff Tweedy of Wilco said in an interview. “They gave us permission to not be conformists. It’s hard to picture a world more adamant about conformity than punk rock at that time — the irony of which was astonishing.”
In December 1985, R.E.M. tapped the group to open a two-week tour of the Southeast. On the closing night in Charlotte, N.C., the trio encored with the headliners on a version of Television’s “See No Evil.” It would be their last time playing together.
D. BOON’S DEATH would become a foundational part of the burgeoning alt-rock mythos. The legend of Minutemen was later burnished in books like Michael Azerrad’s 2001 “Our Band Could Be Your Life,” and the 2005 documentary “We Jam Econo.” Those tellings ended with Boon’s death, but it was in the aftermath that Watt found himself at a critical crossroads. Without Boon, he knew Minutemen were over. Watt thought he might never play again. “That was the hardest time,” he recalled.
In the winter of 1986, a still-struggling Watt found himself on the East Coast and stopped in New York City to hang out with Moore and Kim Gordon. Their band Sonic Youth was in the middle of cutting its “Evol” album and Moore encouraged Watt to record on a pair of tracks, including “In the Kingdom #19” — ironically, a song about a car crash. It was the first time he had played since D. Boon died.
When Watt returned to San Pedro, he got a call that would provide an unlikely path forward from Ed Crawford, a 22-year-old Ohio State student and ardent Minutemen fan. “That Minutemen lyric, ‘Our band could be your life,’ I took that quite seriously,” Crawford said in an interview. He’d heard rumors that Watt and Hurley were auditioning guitarists.
Crawford cold-called Watt, who told him it wasn’t true, that Minutemen were done, but asked him for a tape. “I didn’t have one,” said Crawford, who had never actually played in a band before. “But I told him I was going to be visiting a friend in Los Angeles soon and I could meet up with him.” Crawford spent a week in L.A. calling Watt but failing to connect. On his final day in town, he rang one last time. Watt answered. They spent an afternoon hanging out and jamming. “At the end of it, Mike goes, ‘OK, kid, when can you move here?’” Crawford recalled. “I was like, ‘What?!’ I wasn’t expecting that.”
Crawford quit school, packed his things and moved into Watt’s tiny apartment, where he slept under his desk. “We started writing,” Crawford said, “and after a couple of weeks, he’s like, ‘All right, I’m calling Georgie.’”
Crawford knew that Firehose would have to contend with the heavy legacy of Minutemen and D. Boon. “There was no way I could fill D.’s shoes. No one could,” he said. “So I just listened and learned from two of the most unique musicians on the planet. Ultimately, I found the strength to show no fear. Maybe that’s how I helped Michael and Georgie.”
Firehose released its debut album, “Ragin’, Full-On,” a few months later, and continued for eight years, four more LPs and nearly a thousand shows. When the group finally broke up, amicably, in 1994, Hurley went on to drum with the veteran experimental band Red Krayola and raise a family, while Watt indulged in a dizzying array of creative endeavors.
In addition to maintaining his 25-year-old internet radio program and podcast, “The Watt From Pedro Show,” and spending 10 years manning the bass for Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Watt has released a couple of dozen albums, including conceptual rock operas and Italian avant-garde music. But he would always maintain his bond with Hurley in various projects, including the Bottle Conjurers, their current recording collaboration with Cris Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets.
I can ask Georgie to play with me and he’ll do it every time — you don’t know what a gift that is,” Watt said. “D. Boon may not be here, but Georgie is. I can look him right in the eye. I can feel his drumbeats, all his little licks and things. We’re still here, doing this together.”
Hurley — who worked as a contractor and now manages a nonprofit — said he worries for Watt, who still tours hard. “Sometimes I feel kind of sad for him, really, because he’s out there doing it and he doesn’t have his close buddies like me and D. with him,” he said. “It seems kind of lonely.”
Watt admitted it isn’t always easy. “But see, my father was a sailor, he was never home. I saw that life and I think I had to choose it. I feel like you’re only as good as your last gig, so I keep doing it.”
As the sun began to set over San Pedro, the recording session wrapped up. Hurley donned a leather jacket and helmet and hopped on his motorcycle. Leaning against a wall outside the studio, Watt began to riff on history, politics and rock ’n’ roll. His wide-ranging rapid-fire spiel came back around, inevitably, to Minutemen and D. Boon.
“Sometimes I can’t stop remembering and talking about him,” he said, and sighed. “But I would’ve never had the nerve to get onstage without him. There’s something about that I won’t ever get over. I still carry it with me. I owe D. Boon for everything.”
A correction was made on March 26, 2026: An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the town near which D. Boon died. It is Quartzsite, Ariz., not Quartzite. An earlier version of this article also misstated the number of years Mike Watt spent manning the bass for Iggy Pop and the Stooges. It was 10, not 13.
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