In 1995, Kurt Cobain was dead, Pearl Jam were fighting Ticketmaster, and the most popular rock song in the country was “Run Around” by Blues Traveler. Alternative rock as a cultural and commercial force hadn’t peaked, really—we were still a year away from Gavin Rossdale playing “Glycerine” in the rain—but its brightest stars were beginning to search for newer, quieter horizons to shine upon.
Enter Mike Watt. The Minutemen, his hugely influential first band, dissolved after a fatal car crash took singer/guitarist D. Boon, and fIREHOSE, which Watt formed with Minutemen drummer George Hurley and Ohio-based guitarist Ed Crawford, called it quits in 1994, leaving Watt without a band for the first time since he was thirteen. At the same time, his marriage to Kira Roessler (herself a onetime bassist for Black Flag) was dissolving.
So he rallied a gang. The list of contributors to Ball-hog or Tugboat?, Watt’s first solo record, was absurd in 1995 and is even more ridiculous in retrospect: Frank Black, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, Henry Rollins, J Mascis, Cris and Curt Kirkwood, Flea, Mike D, Ad Rock, Kathleen Hanna, Bernie Worrell, Dave Pirner, Evan Dando, Petra Haden, Nels Cline, and Mark Lanegan all contributed. A post-Nirvana Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, and Krist Novoselic played extensively. Eddie Vedder sang lead on the album’s lead single, “Against the ’70s.”
Vedder—who, writer Michael Azerrad notes, was the biggest rock star in the world at the time—would join Watt on tour, along with Smear and Grohl (though promoters were forbidden from spreading that info ahead of shows). Ahead of Watt’s headlining sets, Vedder would sit in with Beth Liebling’s band Hovercraft, while Grohl debuted his new band Foo Fighters, who hadn’t yet released their debut.
The group, who were occasionally augmented by Sunny Day Real Estate/Foo Fighters drummer William Goldsmith, made their way to Wrigleyville to play Chicago’s Metro on May 6. That show was recorded, and those recordings will finally see the late of day next month when Sony/Columbia releases “ring spiel” tour ’95. You can get a taste of the record today, though, as we’re premiering the ring spiel version of Ball-hog single “Against the ’70s.” The remarkably clear recording shows Watt, Vedder, and Grohl at full power, roaring through the cautionary tale on the dangers of succumbing to other people’s nostalgia—and Vedder turning in a pretty decent Watt imitation as he takes hold of the mic midway through the first verse. Check it out below.
Naturally, there’s some kind of irony in a bunch of guys who are now for all intents and purposes classic rockers complaining about “Baby boomers selling you rumors of their history” and “forcing youth away from the truth of what’s real today.” Behind the irony, though, is an ethos that was inherent to the movement that birthed The Minutemen and gave rise to Pearl Jam: take nothing, least of all the idols of the generation above you, for granted, but remember too that to reject something wholesale because of its status is to grant it that very same status. After all, Watt and Vedder were products of the ’70s themselves, and The Minutemen placed a faithful cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Don’t Look Now” on the first side of their 1984 double LP Double Nickels on the Dime. Make of it what you will.
