Mike Watt found his life’s calling as a teenager when a kid fell on him from out of a tree. The kid turned out to be D. Boon, the guitarist for the Minutemen, with Watt beside him on bass. Watt wove together funk and Rush and politics and passion. The Minutemen played two-minute songs that changed gears every eight or nine seconds. After Boon’s terrible death in 1985, Watt’s subsequent bands did much the same, just a little less frenziedly. He played bass in the reunited Stooges, although Iggy Pop told him not to play so many notes. Watt has joined, jammed, and/or feuded with everybody in so-called indie rock you could name. His new band? Well, he’s back to a trio. But don’t expect punk rock. Nothing so simple. by Andrew Hamlin