This is a series of oral accounts of the early San Pedro punk scene and what it connected with at its fringes. The word 'punk' here may mean something far broader and less defined than what you have in mind too, that fact being a big part of the worth of reading this. The story comes together cumulatively, between the lines even, becoming more rounded and fleshed out as it demands that you make your own decisions about where the truth might lie when those accounts or the judgement assigned to them differ in any way. Craig Ibarra admits that he learned this from Brendan Mullen (worth reading too), and others, because it’s such an effective approach.

It's a story of people in their own time and place, and you might have some connections to it, or you might not. It may be that you have other people, places and events that it's more worth your time to connect with, because of who you are and in whatever context. And that's a cool thing about this book: that it, or what it's a vehicle for at least, actually asserts that. It's a melting pot of reactions and approaches that led to such statements as 'start your own band', or 'there should be a band on every block', or '______ is whatever we made it to be' (insert whatever in that space; it's not just punk, and this book isn't just about punk). That's also your band, your block, your whatever it is that you do and made into whatever you made it to be. Everyone's story is their story, and that's the best way any story goes, and that also means you decide what is relevant to yours, so that it is yours. That's the approach the book takes, but also the core value of the story told.

It probably took me a little time in life to clearly see that there are 'politics' in the sense of ideas out there that are negotiated or fought over between people about how to organise society, and that there is the fact that any assertion of our presence in the world or self-expression is our vying for a space for ourselves and that expression, and political in that sense, and really the substance of politics in any sense, because the worth of any policy can only be sensed from that individual viewpoint.

Earlier on I had few sources to tell me about the Minutemen's approach and intentions, but that these were people focused on their own meaning and on building a place in life on the substance of that grounded humanistic focus, was something I always sensed in what they created. And I think you can say that's the essential form of politics, and that the other needs to stem from that. The purely 'organisational', even with the seemingly good intent of very nice-looking moral codes, stripped of that deeper connection, will always be dehumanising.

That, I think, was the 'punk rock impulse' pretty much from the start, letting go of rules and falling back on the basis of real meaning in your own responses, giving yourself up to the sensations you enjoyed and the direct reactions that came from them, expressing that, living by its fluid nature, even not knowing what it is exactly, never letting it just be an explicable thing, definitions, rules or whatever, because that's already a contradiction. Much of punk lost that, becoming too codified, limited, and based only on explicable ideas, cutting out the core of free response that always needs to be connected to maintain genuine meaning. And this isn't selfishness, this is where feeling for others exists, and this approach only gives space to that.

So this focus on themselves, their feelings, their friendship, though seemingly about them, and not us, becomes a universal thing, and it's beyond a simple expressed message, but engaged in and brought out into something that can be felt, via the direct emotional connection of the music, concepts, imagery and style of performance. It was focused on the practical fact of life and people and togetherness, inclusive of all (you too, if you happened to find yourself with them), reacting emotionally and intellectually to that, blurring those distinctions, where the ideas coming out of it never became a rigid structure that comes first, and freedom of movement to follow a fluid river of meaning should never be restricted, and also no other factors should creep in to distract from that, for example musical elitism, hierarchy, prioritising commerce, or any other deviation from real purpose. Those things are external, and distract from the core flow, and they become solid, and take away that authentic fluidity and direct response to life and others.

And this applies to the whole story, which is about far more than the Minutemen and what was directly attributable to them. It includes a whole variety of characters, the whole range of 'types', a mass of different perspectives, and not a small amount of conflict and disagreement. There is the natural lack of clarity of borders between the 'punk' and the 'straight' world or any other subdivisions and their supposed respective values and motivations. It's the whole real mess of life, with people open to that reality. And at the core there is an attitude of mutual interest in each other for simply being each other, an allowance of space to be and do whatever, a lot of support, and a simple focus on enjoying life and creating this space to do so on terms that are inclusive to all, freedom and lack of rules being the key to real meaning.

The Minutemen become the main vehicle for this, or the main focus, but it's everywhere in this story, and sometimes getting closer to that authenticity takes a very different form for one person than for another, but is just as valid, and sometimes perhaps people are more or less successful at this process of self-liberation, fooling themselves or holding themselves back maybe more or less, but all the same it's what the 'project' was, where no-one can be the ultimate judge of success or failure, good or bad, and the process is validated simply by its focus on the here and now, us, our friends, our place and what we, here and now, actually feel. So it might not be your place, but that process and focus applies to you and your context too. And you'd be as included too, if you were there. So this is very likely not a story about any place or people you know, but at the same time it is, because it's about how we relate to each other, our openness, our acceptance, our giving space, our falling through idealism into something deeper and subtler. Tear up your dictionaries.

This is at the core of why I myself got into punk. There were people connected to it whose motivations maybe I didn't respect so much, and that contradiction grew over time, as it changed due to different people coming into it, plus I was full of contradictions myself, but at its core it was about this, and even when others were messing it up from your point of view, or you were failing somehow too, then that was people being people, their life, their context, and we're going to live and let live the best we can, and maybe connect to each other and find some mutual meaning in the process, meaning being within us while also finding that within us is a need for connection. I guess it's maybe simply accepting the mess of life, instead of trying to lock it into simple patterns out of fear of its unpredictability. Funnily enough a few of the general patterns of what occurred over time here in this SoCal punk environment has many parallels in what I experienced simultaneously very far away, particularly the gradual encroachment of violence, absolutism, conservatism of form, and the like; i.e. an inability to really deal with this level of freedom.

Engaging with these ideas and feelings is why I would read a book like this, and maybe a reason for you too. Maybe you could say it's an exercise in trying to figure out how to balance your love and hate, your rejection of and acceptance of the world you find yourself in, and of finding ways of relating to that to make your space in it more appealing to you, instead of hard, rigid, unyielding and stifling. The punk rock attitude meant freeing yourself and enjoying whatever you enjoyed, but it was killing itself if it didn't allow that to others, so a learning process of how to coexist and self-express in that situation had to take place.

I was actually made to think of the idea of mindfulness in here, when someone says that D. Boon, when he played music, really let rip and was exuberant, but was also very aware. We have this dichotomy in our culture of intellect vs. impulse, or logic vs. emotion, or something, and meditative practices are often co-opted by a western idea of rejecting emotion, or defining what kind of emotion is valid at least, but mindfulness is actually about integration of those things, denying or suppressing neither, or even letting go of any feeling of their separation. It's acceptance of emotion, even anger or hatred, regardless of whatever chaos or confusion might seem connected to it, and just letting it be, and accepting whatever ideas and intentions come from it too, but not closing it into a rigid form or tagging it to a fixed idea, but by that very openness letting it be and grow into the fullness of our awareness of it and everything else, so that it actually has a genuine context for us, becomes what it really needs to be for us, changes and carries out what it needs to, and plays itself out.

Punk rock might not seem on the surface at all similar to anything of the kind, but I think there's a commonality. It was, at its origin, a letting go of judgement and rules and denial, and finding a place for internal feelings to external realities, letting them play out. It was probably a massively positive phenomenon of release for many involved. I think that's hard to deny. Not at all something leading people into negative behaviour, but a liberating approach that led them, via chaos and not fearing that insecurity, away from negative restrictive patterns into connecting themselves and taking responsibility by genuinely being here in this world, instead of hiding in some idea of it and fake relationship to it.

Hearing the Minutemen for the first time I had that feeling of openness. I was led to them by Black Flag, who also had a sharp kind of open awareness, but who also, despite their powerful catharsis, often got no further than a kind of passionate frustration or anger, while the Minutemen took it somewhere else. Maybe you could say it wasn't anger about anything, but just a view of it, a distinct kind of viewpoint on something, opening it up, but narrowing less into a fixation on a particular response to it, whilst encouraging the most total appeal to your own senses and intellect via the fun and breadth that was somehow present in their music, though paradoxically via a very focused almost 'haiku' type approach. Maybe you could call that 'mindful'.

It really does feel like a fusion of mind and body, emotion and logic, etc., etc., to me. Chuck Dukowski interestingly gives a little description of D. Boon here with 'soul, passion, vision' and of Mike Watt as 'manic intensity clinging futilely to logic'. And that points at what comes over here and elsewhere: that D. Boon was very comfortable with himself. I myself cling too much to logic, I fall into making explicable sense of things, and am probably too self-conscious, but the meaning is in the doing and the reacting and the feeling that is just there and then, and kept meaningful by being open and aware, instead of narrow and fixated, and he could somehow give himself over to that and have less conflicts within himself, not find a feeling to hide behind, but find a feeling of connected openness, just do it, express it, find the meaning right there.

Though a lot also probably resulted from the combination of them all. Mike Watt is harsh on himself about his input, saying he's not an artist, etc., etc, and looking up to D’s lyric writing, but much of those kind of haiku-like lyrics, creating interesting images and causing sharp focus on questions of meaning, came from him, though it seems George had a good few too; I’m less clear in my mind about what he wrote. And Mike was the big organiser and a huge driving force, and the logic he 'futilely' clung to maybe was an essential part of the fusion they created. And then George is also characterised by Chuck Dukowski here when he says that in all arguments he became the judge and moderator. And Gary Jacobelly gives an interesting image in a little anecdote about Joe Baiza going to buy coffee, about how each band member reacts to the offer of coffee. Again it maybe makes Mike seem kind of in his own head, D more socially oriented, and George the more balanced, grounded, seeing the full situation, and practical of them all. I don't know of course, I'm so distanced, but there's food for thought about the way different people relate to life and what approaches they use as a result. And about distance and closeness, openness and barriers, channels of interaction, means of communication, words, music, performance, getting drunk, fighting, philosophising and debating. The whole art/music project of this community of people is the common ground they create in order to explore that more seriously.

And so this isn't just about the Minutemen, they, of course, as well as all of the bands, people, etc. who are part of this story, existed in a whole, infinitely complex context of people, places, events, ideas, emotions and probably even that list could be infinite, if words could be too. But, I guess, due to the fact that he was the open and aware kind of guy he was, D. Boon kind of became what the energy of most of the activity progressively focused itself around. Spreading further from that centre you find the Minutemen, you find Saccharine Trust, you find a whole host of bands, artists, organisers, friends and family. The importance of certain people in some contexts is made plain, but all the same that everyone else is a centre in themselves is apparent throughout. There are no clear boundaries and hierarchies, and even the visibly more successful are dependent on all the other factors around them.

The whole picture becomes therefore so much more detailed and vivid than it was for most of us who took an interest in any part of this story before. The Minutemen are contextualised and made far fuller characters for us. The reality of their environment becomes more vivid and possible to relate to. The driving force of human relationship and searching for some kind of place and expression becomes a substantial medium that we can feel it all existing within. The schools, the neighbourhoods, the cliques, the explorations in environment, social connections and culture, all give it so much more dimension. And even more so all the different viewpoints on it all and on each other from all the various 'players'.

Highlights for me are Gary Jacobelly's parts at the beginning, in the form of a very sharp and original expression of a kind of 'definition' of punk (though in the end it's an 'anti-definition') and also his story of discovering punk, which also highlights where it wasn't to be found, whatever they might say; a fanzine interview with Greg Hurley (one of George's brothers), who was plainly very sharp and original, though by some accounts also difficult; Jack Brewer's almost self-deprecating account of how he got into it all, which kind of ends up like him just wanting girls and rock stardom, but how Joe Baiza came and messed it all up for him, leading him into art punk, or whatever, I picture a barely suppressed smile as he talks; and then simply the deeper story of the Minutemen, pretty much completing what you might have already learned from 'Our Band Could Be Your Life', the 'We Jam Econo' movie, Mike Watt's 'Spiels of a Minuteman', and other various sources. Their personalities become more vivid and genuine, with normal fallibilities and points of conflict, the process becomes more grounded and physical and gritty, creating a way to feel what the music and other connected art was responding to and moving within, the social reality becomes far larger, with a whole host of interesting personalities, some very influential (for example, Jimmy Mack, who I never heard about, or Regis Ginn, who I had some inkling of but becomes a real character here, even if not talked about a lot, just to mention a couple of very many) and there is just the more basic level of facts being clarified, which maybe are 'trivia', even if not always about trivial events, but somehow all of this is part of the landscape that makes up the whole story and frames all the human response and activity, and thus means something, even if we can't put our finger on it. In the end this is the strength of books like this, they allow every story from every centre of perception to be told, and the whole thing comes out as it matters to people, and we take what we do from it, and, although some of it may be more or less important to us, some details I didn’t need to know, but many other times I got some insight or amusement, the whole picture is an amorphous and chaotic yet authentic one that arouses human recognition and compassion.

The biggest 'trivia' here is the account of what actually happened when D. Boon died, and why we had always heard this rumour about his girlfriend falling asleep at the wheel. I have to say I always wondered about her, and felt sure I should sympathise, whatever the story, so I'm glad she got to put the record straight. Hopefully it brings something positive to her too. The fact and not the why was always more important though, and these people know more than most, I’m sure, that shit happens, though feel as much pain in the face of that as anyone.

And the book ends there, quite starkly, with D. Boon's death. It was published on his birthday too, in the 30th year after his death, so his life, work and death are the focus and the framework for it, just as they were probably for the scene. But it's not a hierarchy thing, he isn't 'King of the Hill' here, but the guy who shouted out and bounced up and down perhaps the most uninhibitedly for everyone else to do the same and feel free to do the same. I'm sure, despite their devastation when he went, that that helped them all in so many ways later in their lives. A far deeper and cutting picture of that loss is painted here too, becoming vivid and very sad, with accounts of the funeral and also of Mike Watt's grief. If I ever meet him I guess I'll feel more of an urge to give him a hug. But you can see in how he's spent his life since, and how he's so inclusive and open to others, that he took so much from this experience, community and friendship. Corny it might be but what we give to each other lives on in those who live after we've gone.

Your town too, your band, your friends, your story, whatever we make it to be. Though it’s still true and a shame, that we still often somehow find it so hard to just relax and open up to each other. This story is a lesson in that. The punk attitude in general is that too, when properly seen. You and your own, nothing better than that, let it fly shamelessly, that's the only standard, on every block, in everybody. ( )