Mike Watt: Hyphenated-Man

"The bassist and bandleader Mike Watt, who once played in the great Southern California punk band the Minutemen and now spends half his life on the road with five different groups, turned 53 in December. ... 'I had this need to write about this period in my life,' he said. ... The subtext of the resulting album, 'Hyphenated-Man,' is a fragmented self-portrait: 'a mirror busted up in 30 pieces,' as he put it. But on the surface it’s a detailed description of 30 different characters painted by Hieronymus Bosch. ... The songs on 'Hyphenated-Man' start and stop without much throat clearing: sung in Mr. Watt’s stern sea-chanty voice and threaded with his strong bass lines, they’re bizarre, taut and precise, with a pared-down sound. ... Growing up in Navy housing about three miles north of where he lives now, Mr. Watt read the World Book encyclopedia in alphabetical order. He stumbled on the Netherlandish artist Bosch ... in the second volume" (Ben Ratliff, "The Midlife Thing, the Nightmare Thing," New York Times, 2/27/11).
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