D. Boon

When they met as teenagers in the working-class port city of San Pedro, Calif., Mike Watt marveled at the way Dennes Boon could not be brought down with a football in his hands. Read More

And "King Of The Hillvery, very good song that metaphorically equates the brutal world of geopolitics to the childish game of the title, exactly the sort of blending of the personal and political the band was known for. It's tough to blame the group for the accompanying video; a lack of commercial success and dedication to the D.I.Y. ethos of "jamming econo" made a big-budget high-concept production seem silly. But "King Of The Hill," filmed in one afternoon in an L.A. suburb, is so low budget that it's almost a warning against doing it yourself. As the pudgy D. Boon cooks up a heapin' helpin' of store-brand hot dogs, local punks enact a depressingly literal-minded version of the lyrics in a cinematic anti-extravaganza that couldn't have cost more than ten bucks. Top it all off with Boon's absurd roll down an actual hill and the song's sublime metaphor being communicated in the form of a cheap costume-shop crown, and you've got a video that's as lousy as the band was great. Videos are notoriously tricky to do well, and The Minutemen are far from the only respected act to transform a good song into an egregiously awful video. Even artists acclaimed for their visual sense, savvy iconography, and canny self-presentation, like Madonna or David Bowie, can stumble horribly. It's all too easy to fuck up a good song both by trying too hard and not trying hard enough. 2. Read More