MIKE WATT & THE MISSINGMEN
MIKE WATT & THE MISSINGMEN
MYSPACE :: FACEBOOK :: TWITTER :: FANPAGE
The Missingmen are a punk rock trio fronted by bassist Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, Stooges). The band features Watt, guitarist Tom Watson (Slovenly, The Pair Of Pliers, The Jom And Terry Show, Red Krayola), and drummer Raul Morales (FYP, Killer Dreamer, The Leeches, The Secondmen). The band's name is a humorous reference to the fact that during a 2005 European tour behind Watt's album The Secondman's Middle Stand, neither of the original Secondmen (Pete Mazich and Jerry Trebotic) were able to participate.
Hyphenated-Man, The Missingmen's forthcoming record out March 1 on Watt’s own Clenchedwrench imprint, is his third self-described “opera,” following 1997’s Contemplating the Engine Room and 2004’s The Secondman’s Middle Stand. However, the new album differs from Watt’s previous releases in the sense that there is no standard narrative. Hyphenated-Man consists of 30 short tracks that are actually “thirty parts of one big tune,” Watt says on his website. Rather than having an ordinary beginning, middle and end, he says the album is "simultaneous in the way a mirror from just inside my head – right in this middle-age moment of mine – was then shattered into thirty pieces and then each piece stuffed in the head to show a piece of my state of mind (or out-of-mind) as of now.” Fair enough.
GRANT HART
Hüsker Dü was founded by Grant Hart, Greg Norton and Bob Mould in 1979. Only 17, Grant Hart was nonetheless a veteran of a handful of previous bands and had already been playing music professionally since the age of 13. Hüsker Dü made several records for the legendary "SST" label including the much-loved Zen Arcade, New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig. Moving on to Warner Brothers Records in 1985 they made two fine albums, 1986's Candy Apple Grey and the band's second double album, Warehouse.
LEISURE BIRDS
Crawling out from the primordial muck of rhythm and reverb, Leisure Birds concoct a hallucinatory brew of squealing keyboards, thumping floor-toms, stabbing guitars, chant-like vocals and sinuous basslines. Hailing from Minneapolis, Leisure Birds sound like a lost artifact of the first psychedelic era; the British Invasion meeting swamp boogie along the muddy banks of the Mississippi.


