| Mike Watt Having
survived several different trends in popular music, Mike
Watt stands apart from many of his contemporaries who are
no longer innovative and poignant and has come across as
one of the most "honest" musicians in the industry.
In the eyes of many, Watt is a hard-working regular guy
gifted with his musicianship, who spent a great deal of
his life on the road perfecting his musician skills doing
tour after tour. When he's not on tour he spends a great
deal of time working on his website.
Watt got his start in the American punk music scene just
about the same time that the Beastie Boys were becoming
a New York Hardcore group, the only difference being that
Watt was doing it on the other side of the United States,
in California. Watt's punk group, the Minutemen, were extremely
popular during the early 1980s and even ventured out on
tour as far as New York City's CBGBs club. New York fans
embraced them with the same fervor that they traditionally
would reserve for downtown acts like the Beastie Boys. By
the end of 1985, the Minutemen's punk rock legacy would
be cut short when guitar player and vocalist D. Boon was
killed in an automobile accident.
The end of the Minutemen was not the end of Watt's career
though...it was a new beginning. The following year in 1986,
Watt formed fIREHOSE who picked up where the Minutemen left
off. In 1991, Watt's group signed with Columbia Records,
their first major label contract. The following year fIREHOSE
opened for the Beastie Boys, who were touring in support
of the Check
Your Head. The Beastie Boys had just recently gone
back to playing instruments on stage again, so to have an
old punk colleague like Mike Watt along on the road eased
their transition. Although fIREHOSE had a strong fan base,
the group never achieved the commercial success that the
label assumed they would. Sadly in 1994, as the Beastie
Boys were releasing Ill
Communication, fIREHOSE broke up and Watt went
on to pursue other creative ventures.
One of those creative ventures was the very populoar Ballhog
vs. Tugboat album, which featured as huge line-up of
guest musicians including the Beastie Boys (1995). The Beastie
Boys influence was evident in two of the album's songs:
"E-Ticket Ride" and "Coincidence is Hit or
Miss." Later down the road Watt would go on to work
with Money Mark, who he first met while on the Beastie Boys
1992 tour. Mark and Watt teamed up along with others to
create music under the name Banyan. Banyan's self-titled
release and tour that followed were best described as alternative
jazz.
The least talked about Beastie Boys/Mike Watt project
was an appearance that both Mike
D and Mike Watt made on the Arsenio Hall Show as members
of a three member supergroup formed by J. Mascis. We can
only speculate as to whether or not this supergroup ever
recorded, but with Watt on bass and Mike D on drums, we
can all hope they did and that someday the rehearsals will
surface.
|
