AUSTIN — Mike Watt came to South By Southwest this year, not just to play a show, but also to talk about music. They picked the right man for the job.
The punk rock bassist — who started with the highly influential Minutemen in the early '80s and later played in Firehose, in the Stooges and as a solo artist — is a famous talker. Sharp, quick-witted and, most of all, contemplative, the 58-year-old participated in a panel about the history of Southern California punk. Also on the panel was X's John Doe, who has just written Under the Big Black Sun: a Personal History of L.A. Punk, with contributions from Watt, Black Flag's Henry Rollins, Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go's, and others.
Watt and Doe also played shows at SXSW, rocking a small, steamy bunker of a room, with brick walls and a concrete floor. Just like the old days. Also like the old days, Watt and his band, the Secondmen, played 30 Minutemen songs in 40 minutes.
While Watt was in Austin, the hosts of USA TODAY's Dad Rock podcast paid a visit to his hotel for an interview full of memories and philosophy. From his days with childhood friend D. Boon in the Minutemen (who died in a traffic accident in 1985), to opening for R.E.M. to playing with Iggy Pop in the Stooges. And there's talk of vaudeville, Walt Whitman and what constitutes a properly made shirt.
"You don't copy each other, but you are inspired by each other," Watt says of the Minutemen's kinship with other punk bands, such as Husker Du. "The movement was a state of mind; it wasn't a genre, a sound. It was a parallel universe, where cats who didn't fit in would try to get their own thing going."
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