"Our band could be your life", sang D. Boon, singer/guitarist for the Minutemen, and many of us believed -- still believe, still try to live by -- those six words. The Minutemen were a complete inspiration from start to finish: unfashionable guys with lots of passion, lots of sweat, and a completely idiosyncratic take on music that distinguished them as one of the most groundbreaking bands to come out of the early '80s, a band that set up an archetype for so many bands that followed. Today it's a different world, of course -- from ProTools to home CD burners to MySpace to well-established tour routes to a greater openness for all kinds of music in bars, the life is, in a sense, substantially easier.

But the Minutemen still stand above so much of the musical world, even now. The reason why is part of the story of WE JAM ECONO, now out on DVD, and let me cut to the chase briefly: with two discs including tons of bonus scenes, three concerts (one -- holy shit! -- is acoustic), and music videos, any Minutemen fan should consider this a mandatory purchase. As for people that aren't familiar with the Minutemen, I can't consider myself a fair representative of your world views, but regardless of your opinion of the band, I think there's some larger themes at play here that can resonate.

One is the creative poverty that many feel exists today. Driving around San Pedro, giving a tour of the various sites instrumental to the Minutemen's development, bassist Mike Watt notes that "nowadays you're kept more in place by your mind rather than having the material and wherewithal to do things." It's a quote that resonated with me, certainly; the Minutemen prided themselves on doing much with very little, a point that recurs through the documentary, and despite the fact that nowadays most people can get much more equipment for a much lower cost, few have scaled their heights.

And that may be an accident of history, but it's also the testament of two brilliant friends who pour all their energy into their work at the expense of everything else. While drummer George Hurley gets his due, WE JAM ECONO ultimately casts the Minutemen story along the Watt/Boon creative axis, showing how the two pushed each other on. It's telling that we never hear of girlfriends or romance in this documentary; if D. Boon had anything in his life other than the Minutemen, one wouldn't know it from here. And one's tempted to believe he didn't need it -- between political paranoia, musical and poetic ambition, and the realities of being a touring band in the early '80s, life was full enough.

"Our band could be your life." Indeed, and while it's always been an optimistic mantra for those of us who fly the flag of indie-rock and one co-opted in the title of Michael Azerrad's excellent book on the bands of the primordial indie-rock scene, there's more than a hint in WE JAM ECONO of a different reading. (SPOILERS for those who don't know how the story ends and would rather find out watching the film.) The Minutemen's life was cut short when D. Boon was killed in a car accident, and this unexpected tragedy clearly still lingers to this day for Watt and Hurley. If the Minutemen were your life, what happens when the Minutemen don't exist anymore? George Hurley describes the loss of D. Boon as there being a hole where his heart once was, and hearing D. Boon sing "our band could be your life" after this -- one of the most inspired filmmaking touches in the movie -- brings a whole raft of meanings to the lyric that go beyond simple pro-DIY sloganeering.

For those who care about this sort of thing -- and I certainly do, but many don't -- the documentary is fairly rudimentary stylistically, pretty much consisting of interview footage (not just of the surviving band members but family members and various musicians that knew them and/or were inspired by them), live show performances, and a few insert shots of album covers and such. At first, the stylistic simplicity seemed a bit bland, but over time it really provided a strong sense of connection with Watt and Hurley especially and seemed very fitting for a band with such a simple but powerful aesthetic. (Doug Dillaman // 07/15/06)