The Minutemen were a punk rock band from San Pedro, California comprising singer/guitarist D. Boon, singer/bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley.
They recorded in the late 1970s and early 1980s, never finding (or even seeking) much mainstream success, but influencing many subsequent musicians. The group ended when Boon died in a car accident in December 1985.
They were influenced heavily by bands such as Wire, The Pop Group, and The Urinals, and nearly all of their early songs had unusual structures and were less than a minute long — even later when the Minutemen's music became slightly more conventional, their songs rarely passed the three-minute mark. Though somewhat influenced by the speed, brevity and intensity of hardcore punk, the Minutemen are generally not classified in the genre.
Boon and Watt split songwriting fairly evenly (and Hurley made many contributions as well), though Watt rarely sang, and Hurley even less so. Boon's songs were typically more direct and progressively political in nature, while Watt's were often abstract, self-referential "spiels". Lyrics and themes would thus often veer from surreal humor, as in " Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs" and "One Reporter's Opinion", to the frustrations of blue collar life in California, as in the enduring " This Ain't No Picnic". While many contemporaries rarely displayed a sense of humor, the Minutemen were generally more light-hearted and whimsical. One example of this can be found in the title of their legendary album Double Nickels on the Dime, which poked fun at Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" by implying that the Minutemen preferred to take risks with their music rather than behind the wheel of a car.
The Minutemen were fans of Captain Beefheart, and echoes of his distinctive music can be heard in their songs, especially their early output. Through most of their career they ignored standard verse-chorus-verse song structures, in favor of experimenting with musical dynamics, rhythm and noise. Later in their career they blended in more traditional song elements they had initially avoided. They also played covers of classic rock songs by bands such as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steely Dan and Blue Öyster Cult. Their covers were done out of appreciation for those bands' work rather than to be ironic, thereby diverging dramatically from hardcore punk orthodoxy of the 1980s.
