Today would have been the 51st birthday of an American Musical Legend…

Dennes Dale Boon, known to most music fans as D. Boon, was born on this day. D. Boon was the guitarist and frontman for the mighty trio known as the Minutemen.

It is pretty much inconceivable to think of how the American music scene would have been without the Minutemen. The Minutemen would probably have been just another short-term band from California had Black Flag not taken the initiative to invite them to make a record – the Paranoid Time seven-song 7″ EP – for Black Flag’s SST Records label. Had that initiative not been taken – or had been turned down by the Minutemen, we probably would not have been blessed with The Meat Puppets, Saccharine Trust, Husker Du, Sonic Youth, or Dinosaur Jr. And American independent music itself would have been drastically different.

But thankfully, the Minutemen did go into the studio with Black Flag’s Greg Ginn one hot California night to record Paranoid Time, and the rest was an important part of music history. For the next six years, the Minutemen would create a wide body of material, all of it now considered classic and influential. Their 1984 double album Double Nickels On The Dime is considered to be a must-own, must-hear, classic album.
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A couple of months back, Alternative Tentacles Records held a contest where they invited their customers/followers to send in a story about the most prized vinyl record in their collection. Top prize for the contest was a set of Alternative Tentacles’ latest vinyl releases. Alternative Tentacles said that they would print every story they had received after the contest.

Apparently, they got a whole shitload of entries, as it took awhile for their small staff to read through every entry and decide on the winner of the contest, but they kept to their word and posted every entry they could – including mine. It’s up on Alternative Tentacles’ website at this link, but I’ve also reposted it here at TGML, behind the jump: Read the rest of this entry »