Besides just a passion for their respective fields of expertise, most Tufts professors also share a status as published authors. Michael Fournier, the Tufts lecturer who teaches the popular "History of Punk Rock" class in the Experimental College, is joining these ranks with the release of his book, "Double Nickels on the Dime," an intriguing, comical insight on the stories behind the 45 tracks on Southern Californian band the Minutemen's record of the same name. Detailing the heroic tales of the D.I.Y. (do-it-yourself) punk band, this read is sure to be more enjoyable than 400 pages on the molecular composition of your toe or 18th century French literature.
Not your normal angsty teenage background
A farm in New Hampshire seems an unlikely setting to inspire a love for punk rock. Fournier, however, proves that an appreciation for innovative music can come from anywhere. As a 15-year-old only child, Fournier spent his spare time in the most entertaining way possible: skateboarding on a dented metal satellite dish his grandfather hit with a snow plow.
Most assume that an interest in punk rock comes from a sense of oppression, a hatred for the man or overall teen angst, but for Fournier, skateboarding introduced him to the realm of mosh pits, Mohawks and D.I.Y.
To improve his moves on the dish, Fournier started watching videos. "One of the videos was this Santa Cruz skateboard video and they had a hook up with SST [a record label] and there was this dude, Jason Jessie, a pro skateboarder, who is skateboarding a ramp and 'Paranoid Chant' [by the Minutemen] was playing [in] the background," Fournier said, "I was like, 'Who's this?' I was already listening to the Sex Pistols and the Dead Kennedys and stuff, all the sort of the basics. Then I heard that and I was like ... oh my God, this is it."
Soon thereafter, Fournier made the trek over to the Harvard Square Newbury Comics and picked up the tape, unaware that Boston would be the scene of his various, future literary endeavors. He moved to the city in 1997 with relatively little else in mind other than to experience urban life.
Beginning a new "chapter" in Bean Town
"I had a collection of slacker jobs for a long time - I worked at a restaurant, at a record store, did catering - and it was really fun to be young and living in the city and having this series of low rent jobs," Fournier said. "I decided for a couple of years that I was going to go to as many baseball games as I wanted to, so between 2003 and 2004 I went to 36 Red Sox games, [and] saw the World Series team 16 times.
"But the whole time, I was writing. I did a decade's worth of music reporting and criticism for fanzines - Jersey Beat, The Noise ... Adhesive X, Punk Planet, HeartattaCk, Pitchfork Media, Chunklet - before I really got serious and started making any money writing," Fournier said.
The monumental shift occurred about three years ago when Fournier decided to change his pace and try his hand at a novel. "I wrote the obligatory terrible first novel and got that out of the way," Fournier said.
"It was the semi-autobiographical political intrigue at a summer camp. And I was going along and I was like, 'Hey I know what I'm doing, I don't need chapters' - and then I tried to edit 150 pages at once, and was like, 'This is why you use chapters.' "
Luckily for punk rock/Minutemen enthusiasts, it appears that he got the hang of it. Fournier's impetus to write a book about The Minutemen came from the Continuum Press book series, 33 1/3, which devotes each book to one specific album.
After noticing that the Minutemen's best known and most unique album, "Double Nickels on the Dime" (1984) had not been covered yet, he approached the publishing company with a proposal.
"I knew I had to get ammunition," Fournier said, "I had to have something behind this, so I'm just not some schlub who is overintellectualizing this band, so I told Continuum Press that [the Minutemen's bassist] Mike Watt was going to help me."
With the recent release of "Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991" (2001), a popular book about punk that highlights the Minutemen, Fournier knew that there would be interest in the topic. All that was left to do was to actually get the interview with Watt, which Fournier knew would be far from easy.
Double Nickels on a Lucky Penny
Fortunately for Fournier, around the time he was pitching his idea, a documentary had just been released about the band entitled "We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen" (2005), named for one of Watt's famed catchphrases. He hit another stroke of luck when he discovered that the filmmakers themselves were at the screening in Boston.
Fournier recalls approaching the filmmaker and saying, "Hey, I'm going to write this book about the Minutemen ...' and we talk about the process for maybe, maybe three minutes ... and [a month later] he sends this e-mail to Mike Watt that says, 'I don't know who this kid is, but if you want to talk to him about this thing that I don't understand....'"
When Watt found out about Fournier's proposal, though, he had a far warmer reaction than the filmmaker because, according to Fournier, he really liked the 33 1/3 book about Pink Floyd's 1967 album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn."
Around New Year's 2006, Fournier boarded a flight to L.A. and stayed at a friend's house waiting impatiently for a call from what might become the most important interview of his life. "[My friends] gave me a ride to his place in San Pedro," Fournier said, "and [Watt] comes out and is like, 'All right, we're going to get a sandwich and then we're going to get some coffee.' "
He went on to describe what must have been a completely surreal experience, "It's like in ["We Jam Econo"]; he's driving and he's like, 'That's where [singer/guitarist] D. Boon used to live ... that's where we played with Black Flag, our first show.' It was a day like that."
Fournier then found all of his anxieties melting away; as he recalls the ideal interview experience with Watt, "You put the tape recorder on, and he just goes; it was incredible, I couldn't believe it."
Entering Watt's own Joycean stream of conscious
Knowing that much of the band's history - their rise to punk prominence and the tragedy surrounding Boon's death - had already been covered in "Our Band," the topic of conversation centered on the music. "I just wanted to sit down with the guy and get the breakdown of ... all 45 songs on the album," Fournier said. "I wanted to find out what the jokes are behind all this stuff; some of it was just totally hilarious."
One example is the song "One Reporter's Opinion," which sounds like a collection of trash talking by the press at Watt's expense. Watt explained to Fournier that the idea of multiple voices within one song had roots in modern literature. "[Watt] actually wrote it about himself, because he was reading 'Ulysses,' and there are all these different viewpoints..." Fournier said. Lead singer D. Boon, however, had other motives for liking the song: "D. Boon really liked talking trash about his friend," Fournier said.
After the interview, Fournier did what he mentions as "part of the process" and let the tapes sit for a couple months while he stressed about how he was going to get started. "There comes a point," he said, "[when] it is easier to not be successful than it is to be successful, so I had to get over that hump and be like, 'Okay, I'm going to do this thing I've always wanted to do,' so I wrote it from March through November 1."
Fournier's writing forges its own continuum
After his book hits the shelves sometime in June, provided that the date is not pushed back any further, Fournier's next idea is to write a book about the last Black Flag album, which represents the wear, tear and animosity of the band's later years.
In the meantime, he has a book coming out in May called "Wah-Tut-Ca Scout Reservation," on Arcadia Press about young boys' experiences at Boy Scout Camp through a photo collection accompanied by a narrative. Fournier said, "I'm going to send the Boy Scout one to my grandmother and the Minutemen one not to my grandmother."
He is also interested in someday interviewing the less punk, but equally interesting John Irving and Stephen King, because "talking to those guys would be the same thing as talking to Watt - just put on the tape recorder; John Irving would talk about bears and wrestling and King would talk about the Red Sox."
Though Continuum is not yet ready for another Fournier project, he remains intent on writing. After his successful experience writing his first book, one could imagine that very little could slow him down.
