Mike Watt and Tim Kerr just released a new 7" album on Red Parakeet Records where they pay homage to each other's bands. The album features Tim Kerr of the Big Boys covering a Minutemen song (History Lesson – Part II) and Mike Watt of the Minutemen covering a Big Boys song (We Got Soul). Joining Tim Kerr are Jerry Hagins on banjo and a big group friends on vocals who also happen to be stalwarts of the 80s and 90s punk scene, including Mark Arm, Stefanie Friedman, Cait O'Riordan, Scott Stanton, and more. Joining Mike Watt are the Secondmissingmen, Pete Mazich (Hammond B3 Organ), Jerry Trebotic (Congas and Shaker), Tom Watson (Guitar), and Raul Morales (Drums).
Stereogum provides more info:
Tim Kerr was the guitarist in the Big Boys, the great underrated Austin band who brought their own subverted frat-party aesthetics and funky strut to hardcore. On the new split, Watt and his band the Second Missingmen cover "We Got Soul," the bouncy and horn-happy shout-along that the Big Boys first released on their classic 1982 EP Fun, Fun, Fun. The whole joke of the Mike Watt cover is that Watt and his band have turned "We Got Soul" into an actual Stax-style soul track, slowing it down and putting Hammond organ and congas all over everything.
For his part, Tim Kerr has covered the Minutemen's "History Lesson – Part II," the mythic origin-story number from that band's canonical 1984 double album Double Nickels On The Time. Mike Watt wrote that song, but his late bandmate D. Boon did the narration, and it gave Michael Azerrad's underground rock history Our Band Could Be Your Life its title. Kerr has covered "History Lesson – Part II" as an acoustic folk song, and he's brought in a whole mob of other punk veterans to deliver the whole monologue, line by line. Dozens of musicians repeat those words on the cover, including Fugazi's Ian MacKaye, Mudhoney's Mark Arm, the Oblivians' Eric Friedl, the Pogues' Cait O'Riordan, and X's John Doe. Below, listen to those two covers, as well as the original versions of "We Got Soul" and "History Lesson – Part II."
You can listen to the two songs on bandcamp and order the vinyl at American Laundromat Records.
