6B - The Michigan Daily - Wt"~e 4c. - Thursday, October 5, 1995 Mike Watt still rocks, gray hair and all Youthful musician drives his own punk van By Brian A. Gnatt Daily Music Editor Mike Watt is a punk rocker. De- spite graying hair, a lumberjack ap- pearance, and a giant smile perma- nently branded across his face, the 37-year-old bass player extraordinaire is one of the most congenial and tell- it-like-it-is musicians in the business. Never caught without a flannel, Levi's, and Converse All Stars, Watt's 15 years of touring and recording have never succeeded in extinguishing his child-like enthusiasm and sincerity that come through in everything he does. With his start in the legendary '80s punk legend the Minutemen and later founding fIREHOSE, Watt's solo debut "Ball-Hog or Tugboat," released earlier this year, continued his tradi- tion of honest and passionate music. With a slew of guests including Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, ex-Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, Soul Asylum frontman Dave Pirmer and just about every big name in rock today, the album turned into a humble all-star super-record featuring numerous talented artists performing Watt's powerful new ma- terial with the bass player himself. "I hadn't done anything like that," Watt said in an interview with The Michigan Daily. "It was my 20th record and my 24th tour, so I wanted to do like a goof, like a freak. I still put entertainer on my work." With the new record, Watt said he hit the road like any punk veteran would; by getting in the van. "One good thing about being a punk band is you get to travel, to drive your own van and learn all these towns," he said. "I've done 25 tours, all kinds of tours. One tour I just ties rags around my fuckin' ankles because I was shitting so hard for three days, I just said fuck it. Land O' Lakes in Florida, some ranch dressing blew me out big time. But now after all that I'm like one of those turkey vultures, you see them eat the road kill? You can't kill those things with a pound of strychnine. I think Watt's like that now too." But while Watt is a card carrying member of the old ethics of punk rock, he has a problem with the newer "punk" bands surfacing in the mainstream. "I understand in a way why punk rock come about," he said. "We had all the misfits. We didn't want to be with them so we went and made our own world. But what happens when that world gets to be the big world? Then it's just rubber stamp culture. We want to run, so my anecdote to that is to try to get things more personal. "I don't know if some guy in a tour bus, they call it alternative or heavy metal, I don't know what they call it, but the guy is still isolated in his own world. I talk to people, and they can't believe I'm putting away my own gear on my amp. They think I fly to gigs. I think punk was a way for the music to get back into people's hands, and that way I just see them taking our clothes and our music and doing Gap ads. And they forget about the value and the ethics. It's not really the big guys on top. A lot of the guys in bands are trying to do this. They're trying to get it away from a fingerprint and more like a rub- ber stamp, because then they don't re- ally need to work. You just do the Mike Watt with Six Finger Satellite Where: Blind Pig When: Tonight Tickets: $10 in advance Doors open at 9.30 p.m. connect the dots, you do the coloring book." But after 15 years of traveling the globe in a van, Watt said he's happy that he has had the chance to see and experience the world, even if it meant tying rags around his ankles because of digestion problems a few times. Watt's rock'n'roll diary is full of ex- periences, both good and bad. One of the worst: "Getting hit with a bunch of used rubbers in Austria was pretty bad," he recalled. "The lights went on after the first note, and they were hanging on me. D. Boon got hit with a couple. But you know, they didn't understand our punk." But Watt's energy and music are far from being tapped, and the musician doesn't see any type of retirement in sight. "Time keeps pushing us forward," he said. In the future, Watt said he'll "play bass, hopefully be vital and not be a museum thing." And in another 20 years? "Doing another interview with you." Mike Watt - still smiling after 24 tours. Artists, labels take away cash with movie, TV soundtracks By Ted Watts Daily Arts Writer If you've been paying attention, and I'm sure you have, then you've recog- nized that in the last few years movies have been bringing forth soundtracks of some note. And I'm not talking aboutDanny Elfman-type scores, either. I'm talking rock/alternative artists showing up on CDs released in con- junction with a film. This isn't anything new. The1987 sountrack for "Less than Zero" featured artists like Aerosmith, Poison, Slayer, LL Cool J, the Bangles and Public En- emy. Prince produced an entire concept album for the first of Tim Burton's "Batman" movies. But the "Less Than Zero" soundtrack was fairly isolated and the Batman soundtrack provided a full album ofPrince songs. Now, though, there are a slew of soundtracks with several artists of varying talent who recorded unique (also known as "not appearing elsewhere") songs on them. Remember the "Bill and Ted" soundtracks? Littered with artists like Extreme, they also contain tracks by bands like FaithNo More, Primus and Megadeth. And who can forget Kiss covering Donny and Marie Osmond's "God Gave Rock and Roll To You?" Well, at least the movies had to do with music (albeit the terrible "Wyld Stallions.") And Faith No More's Jim Martin and the whole of Primus did appear in "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey." Nevertheless, some bad precedents were being set. Another noteworthy effort was the "Judgment Night" soundtrack, the Emilio Estevez vs. Dennis Leary movie of about two years ago. Notable for its mixing of rap acts with other acts, this was one ofthe all too few reallygood soundtracks. Com- bining the two bands on each track fairly well, the rock halves ofthe acts tend to get lost a bit in the shuffle, but the album hangs togetherwell, with rap dominating. One of the important selling points of the album was that if you liked one of the bands on the album, you'd still have to buy it to hear them. And for the most part, those Teenage Fanclub fans aren't really into the heavier aspect of rap and roll. Now we come to the descent into mad- ness. Soundtracks with new songs by many artists have begun coming out with frightening regularity. "The Jerky Boys." "The Basketball Diaries." "Johnny Mne- monic." These three albums have come quency of B-side collections by bands I like, there is little other choice. Ironically, Helmet, a band with tracks on both the "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Jerky Boys". soundtracks, did recently release a B-side collection. It was released afterthe "Jerky Boys" soundtrack, but it failed to contain either album track. The Helmet situation is complicated even further by the fact that a different song had been planned for the "Jerky Boys" soundtrack and was included on an edition of the English CD magazine"Volume."Thepeople in charge of that particular soundtrack thus made the life of Helmet fans even more compli- cated. The "Jerky Soundtrack" also added insult to injury by making me get a CD with Green Day on it. My tastes aside, it seems that any given person who needs to buy a soundtrack for a single song has pretty high odds of ending up with tracks by someone they find extremely repug- nant. That overarching concept of "alter- native," as wide-ranging and wrong- headed a term as "rock," throws disparate forms of music together. This adds the aspect of not being able to listen to a soundtrack inactively, as there is aneedto skip to the one or two songs desired and then remove the CD while cursing record and movie company executives. Another annoying aspect is that a lot of these songs aren't even appearing its the movies. It would be an interesting contest to see ifanyone woufd be abfe to find the PJ Harvey track on the "Batman Forever" soundtrack in the damn movie itself. Although you can hear the Flam- ing Lips song in the Riddler's apart- ment, this is more of an exception than a rule. And do you even really want to hear Bono singing in the background of a movie with the darkest of all heroes? Something just seems a little wrdng with that. Andthe listofsoundtracks keeps grow, ing. "National Lampoon's Senior Trip," "Empire Records" and "Angus" all have soundtracks. Of course, ifyoujust decide to ignore soundtracks, you're left with the unsavory option of potentially missing songs by one of your favorite bands. If you don't pay attention, how can you know that one of those has a Green Day song on it, just like the "Jerky Boys" record did? Essentially, you wouldn't. Ha ha ha. Don't you love it when the man is stickin' it to ya? Bono Is turning tricks with his crucifix on the 'Batman Forever' soundtrack. out within the last year and all three have had unique songs on them by bands I personally like sufficiently to feel the need to acquire them. The problem being that none of the soundtracks had more than two songs on them I wanted. With list prices spiraling ever higher, the cost of each song was around eight dollars. Rather pricey, but with the relative infre- . 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