from the LP What Makes a Man Start Fires, SST Records, 1982Boy, SST really had the market on arty punk rockers back in the day, managing to score some of the most inventive & brilliant musicians around, not least of which having been the LA-based crew the Minutemen; from the music to the lyrics, it never felt so good to think this hard! There aren’t enough adjectives in a thesaurus to describe how magic and inimitable the whole package was, born of the truest & deepest of friendships; guitarist (and singer for this lone album) D.Boon died in a car accident just before Xmas of 1985, and brother for life Mike Watt (bassist) has since dedicated all his musical endeavors to Boon’s memory. The existential question found within this song isn’t beyond the grasp of anyone’s basic understanding, and yet its depth remains unknowably bottomless, “you lie there naked, I lie here naked, both on the pavement; why are we different?”
