Seventeen years earlier (on December 22, 1985), the co-founder, co-lyricist and guitarist for the Minutemen, Dennes Dale Boon (a.k.a. D. Boon), died at the ripe young age of 27 in a car accident. Boon started the Minutemen with his best friends Mike Watt (bass) and George Hurley (drums) in early 1980. They released four LPs and seven EPs, all amazing, all vital, with a majority of their repertoire clocking in around the one-minute mark. Watt went on to form fIREHOSE (with Hurley); he has also played bass for Porno for Pyros and the recently revitalized Stooges, while juggling several of his own musical endeavors.

Two days after his 50^th birthday, Watt will be performing in Los Angeles with his trio Hellride (featuring drummer Stephen Perkins [Jane’s Addiction, Porno for Pyros] and guitarist Peter DiStephano [Porno for Pyros]) at the Strummerville Benefit concert.

Joe Strummer’s wife, Lucinda Tait, established Strummerville shortly after Strummer’s death. The Joe Strummer Foundation “seeks to reflect Joe's unique contribution to the music world by offering support, resources and performance opportunities to artists who would not normally have access to them.”

True kindred spirits (though they never met), Strummer and Boon shared a seemingly limitless knowledge of politics and keen ability to coherently siphon their political ideologies into song. It’s only fitting that Watt jam politico on the Strummerville stage commemorating the two late great punks on the anniversary of their deaths.

We could go on and on for hours regarding the significance of The Clash and the enormous hole that Joe Strummer’s death left in the world. Instead we opted to chat with Watt, getting his thoughts on Joe Strummer’s legacy and the politics of music.

Los Angeles Journal: Do you remember the first time you heard The Clash?

Mike Watt: Yeah, it was a single about pirate radio. There’s an antenna on top of the building and it’s about some guy running the play-lists. The pirate radio station was on a boat - that was such a great thing to write a song about. It was called “Captial Radio.” They were idealizing this pirate station on a boat that was outside jurisdiction so the deejay could play anything he wanted. The other guy would give you all the hits to play and keep you in your place; this whole idea that music was connected with hierarchy and the way that people were organized by economics and political structure. We were trying to put together The Minutemen that way. D. Boon wanted the guitars to be all treble so the bass guitar would no longer be in the background, and bring the drums way up. This was a concept of putting non-musical ideas such as democracy into music. Those cats in The Clash were in on that too. Then, the other side of that single is an interview [with Tony Parsons]. They’re riding on a subway talking about how they got the band together. It was a really weird trip. Like when me and D. Boon first saw The Germs, we thought “we could do this.” It was very empowering. Even though it was so alien and foreign and different - the way they talked and their slang and their references. We heard it and thought we could make a band, too.

LAJ: What does Joe Strummer’s music mean to you?

MW: I put him in a Minutemen song called “History Lesson Part 2” along with Richard Hell and John Doe. Strummer was an early punk rock hero to me and D. Boon. We really only ever knew the early Clash singles and the [eponymous] green album. A lot of the English punk bands were that way. We liked their first album and then after achieving success they turned into, according to us at the time, regular rock bands. Looking back now, I think we were kind of silly. I still don’t really know The Clash music after that. We really liked that green album. I came to find out later on that Joe Strummer said some really nice things about The Minutemen. Wow! We didn’t even know that he knew we even existed! Then he ended up dying on the same day as D. Boon, 17 years later. The Clash songs wondered out loud about why things were the way they were and the way power was divided up amongst people. I think The Minutemen really shared in that. They had two guitars in the band, which was kind of different for a punk band in those days. That organized things differently, gave it a different sensibility. There were just certain things…We thought for sure that Joe Strummer sang with a cigarette in his mouth, [Paul Weller] of The Jam too; then, when we saw The Clash live, Strummer talked between the songs and it was like, “Wow, he sings like he talks.” That blew us away. We saw The Clash play at the Civic Auditorium [in Santa Monica] with Bo Diddley and The Dils. That was the only time we saw them. It was pretty intense. They were playing all of these songs that we didn’t know, since they had made another record [Give ‘Em Enough Rope] by then. That was [February 9,] 1979. And the Clash concert was where we met up with Black Flag. They were handing out flyers. That started that whole trip, making records and touring with them. It was a really profound gig for us. It was like the biggest punk gig, probably a thousand people. In those days that was huge. It was so crowded that I couldn’t get back to the toilets to take a piss. So I pissed right there where I was standing - not on anyone though! We were all shoulder-to-shoulder and no one even knew. I just pissed right there as the gig was going on. And I remember Joe Strummer’s eyes being so white. In arena rock gigs, if you were ever lucky enough to get close, everybody had red eyes. That really tripped me out to see how white Joe Strummer’s eyes were and how intense he played too. He had his own way of playing that was really interesting. And all the slang they used. We didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about because it was so specific. It made us realize that we could sing about San Pedro. Nobody knows about our fucking world either so maybe that’s what they do in this punk thing, just talk about stuff that’s so close to you because it’s intense on you.

LAJ: What’s your favorite Clash song?

MW: I love “Remote Control,” “Hate and War” and “Janie Jones.” There’s something about “Janie Jones” that is so fucking intense. ‘You’re going to tell them exactly how they feel / pretty bad!’ That is so trippy, a guy singing like that. I heard later that Strummer came from a privileged family. That shows you in the human condition there is so much common ground. You could come from anywhere. I mean, keep it real. What is reality? Art is about transcendence and things. You don’t pick where you’re born but you can pick what you do. Wherever he came from, I don’t give a fuck, I’m just listening to his tunes. His songs touch me, and I come from…wherever.

LAJ: Are Strummer’s songs still relevant today?

MW: You know that green album was made 32 years ago. Wow, it could have been recorded next week. It’s almost like The Stooges’ Fun House to me, the way it touches me. When I hear, ‘We’re a garage band!’ [“Garageland”] – that is a song for me now. It holds up great! All of it. All of it. I hadn’t heard that record in a long time, but when I listened to it to prepare for this gig it was like the same rush as when I first heard it. I’m not jaded by it. I haven’t figured it all by now. It still has this spirit in it. And the bass lines too. Fuck, I really love the bass lines!

LAJ: So, what can the Strummerville audience expect from your set?

MW: Well, it’s going to be the old stuff because that’s all I know. We got eight songs from the early singles and the green record, like “1977,” “Complete Control,” “Janie Jones” and “Career Opportunities.” They actually sang about work! The Minutemen all came from working families. My first gig was T.Rex and I don’t remember a lot of songs about work coming from Marc Bolan. There were some from Credence Clearwater Revival, you know, they were probably the only guys singing about work back then. The Clash just came at the right age when we were thinking a lot about those things.

LAJ: And there haven’t been many bands since The Clash and The Minutemen that have sung about work with such profundity…

MW: There’s another English guy that sings with a British accent, in fact we have the same birthday [December 20, 1957], Billy Bragg. He’s from the old days, too. We talked to him after a Minutemen gig one time. He and D. Boon had no problem. They could just sit in the same room and talk politics on the same level. But you’re right. There isn’t a lot of that anymore.

LAJ: Do politics belong in music?

MW: Shit yeah, why not?! Music is for expression, which is nothing that we ever thought about before punk; then we realized that songs really could be a vehicle for your expression. You could get stuff off your mind. Everything under the sun you’re wondering about. Of course there’s an art to it, right? That’s up to the individual. But when you talk about the common ground of the human condition, politics is about power and I don’t think that’s a problem that’s ever going to get solved. I don’t know if songs can solve political problems but it lets the mind out to trip on those troubles anyway. A good band is a conversation between the instruments, and between the listener and the dude making the song. Why should it just be [Bill] O’Reilly and [Sean] Hannity on the radio? What?! They’re the only ones who get to talk about this shit? Why can’t people make songs about it and freak on it that way? Or like [John] Coltrane doing “Alabama.” That has no lyrics! He did it all with just a title, but in the music there is a definite awareness about the way that the power is being dealt with. I’ve never been ashamed. I’ve never grown out of that. I feel the same way about music now as I did when I was a kid.

Stummerville will be on Dec. 22 at The Key Club (9039 Sunset Boulevard), doors open at 8 p.m.; tickets for the benefit art $25. In addition to Hellride, Love and Rockets, Zander Schloss & The Wilderness Years, La Plebe, Three Bad Jacks, and The Devildolls Rock 'n' Roll Street Gang are scheduled to perform Strummer’s oeuvre.