Dennes Dale Boon died 30 years ago this month, on Dec. 22, 1985, to be exact.

14 years before that, when he was 13 years old, he dropped out of a tree in Peck Park in San Pedro park in front of startled fellow teen Mike Watt, saying “You’re not Eskimo.”

Watt replied, “No, I’m not Eskimo.” “Eskimo” apparently was a friend that Boon thought might be in the park, Watt found out later.

Boon then proceeded to regale Watt with note-for-note comedy routines from George Carlin albums, which Watt, unfamiliar with them, originally thought Boon was making up on the spot.

They became fast friends. They attended Dodson Junior High, and then San Pedro High School together, graduating from SPHS in 1976.

George Hurley also graduated that year, and though he would become the inventive drummer for the Minutemen, the influential band that Watt and Boon would form in 1980, he didn’t know them in high school.

But we’re getting ahead of the story. Before forming the Minutemen, Boon and Watt spent their formative years playing together for fun. They were fond of jamming on songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Blue Oyster Cult, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper.

In the definitive documentary on the band, 2005’s “We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen,” Watt, a military brat who moved to San Pedro from Maryland when he was 10, describes how the two would get together in Boon’s mom’s house, in a former Navy housing tract that had been converted into a housing project.

Mrs. Boon learned to live with the constant guitar playing emanating from D. Boon’s room. It comforted her; she preferred knowing where the boys were to having them roam the streets. She died when Boon was 18.

With the arrival of the first wave of punk-rock in the mid-1970s, Watt and Boon realized that the music’s do-it-yourself ethic applied to them as well. The quest to form a band begun, and, in 1979, The Reactionaries were born.

Boon and Watt hooked up with drummer Hurley, and they recruited Martin Tamburovich to be their lead singer.

While attending a Clash concert at the Santa Monica Civic in February 1979, they came across Greg Ginn of Black Flag, who was handing out flyers for an upcoming Black Flag show in San Pedro.

After Boon and Watt described the Reactionaries to him, Ginn invited the band to be on the bill at a Black Flag show in San Pedro, which ended up being held at a teen center at 240 N. Mesa Street, having been moved at the last minute from the nearby Star Theatre.

The Feb. 17, 1979 bill for San Pedro’s first punk-rock show included the Alley Cats, the Plugz, and South Bay bands the Descendents and the unbilled The Last, who played two songs. It was Black Flag’s second gig ever, and the Reactionaries’ first, and it ended in chaos when unruly punk fans began trashing the recently remodeled teen center.

The Reactionaries lasted only a few months before Boon decided they didn’t need a separate lead singer. In January 1980, they reformed as the Minutemen, a three-piece consisting of Boon, Watt and original drummer Frank Tonche, who played the band’s first two live gigs before being replaced by Hurley to form the band’s classic lineup.

The band’s name referenced the New England Revolutionary War fighters, though many assumed it referred to the length of the band’s songs, few of which broke the one-minute barrier in length.

By now, Boon had become a talented guitarist with a distinctive staccato picking style that meshed with Watt’s increasingly fluid bass playing and Hurley’s innovative, jazz-influenced drumming. They were a part of the punk scene, but the band’s music, with its elements of funk, hard rock, jazz and punk, was unlike anyone else’s on the scene.

Bands and club owners expecting a typical hardcore punk band often were baffled by the band’s distinctive sound.

The band assimilated its varied influences – the 1970s rock bands mentioned above, Captain Beefheart, Wire, improvisational jazz, Parliament/Funkadelic – into a series of arresting bursts of sound and fury.

The band performed its first gig as the Minutemen at the Seahawk Center at Los Angeles Harbor College on May 30, 1980. Also on the bill: The Plugz, The Gears and Red Cross (who would be forced by the charity organization to change their name to Redd Kross).

As the Minutemen began to find themselves musically, Boon transformed himself into a natural frontman. He sang on most of the band’s songs while playing lead guitar and bouncing around the stage with a manic glee.

Daily Breeze music writer Michael Lev captured it best in this 1985 appreciation of Boon:

“On stage, D. Boon as performer and singer was pained. He didn’t bother to keep his huge body under control. Instead, it grabbed him, flinging him around the stage so it appeared he was holding onto the neck of his guitar for dear life.”

The band’s first record, the 7-track, 7-minute “Paranoid Time” came own on Black Flag’s SST label in 1980. It would release four albums on the label, the most successful of which was its double-album opus, “Double Nickels on the Dime,” in 1984, considered to be its masterpiece.

D. Boon also was a visual artist, designing the album covers for five of the band’s records.

By this time, the band had received critical acclaim for its unique sound and vision throughout the rock music world. R.E.M., then in the process of becoming one of the most popular bands in rock music, insisted that the band tour with them for a month’s worth of dates on its 1985 tour.

On Dec. 13, 1985, the Minutemen played what would be its final show at the Park Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. R.E.M. called the band onstage for its final encore, a cover version of “See No Evil” by Television.

On Dec. 22, 1985, D. Boon was headed for a New Mexico vacation following the tour in Boon’s 1979 Dodge van being driven by his girlfriend, Linda Kite, whom he’d planned to marry in 1986. Kite’s sister, Jeanine Garfias, also was in the van.

Boon wasn’t feeling well and was lying down on a blanket in the rear of the van when an axle broke 50 miles east of Quartzsite, Ariz. The van rolled over, and Boon was killed instantly. Kite and Garfias suffered serious injuries.

He was buried in Green Hills on Jan. 4, 1986.

Boon’s bandmates were devastated. They later would regroup and form fIREHOSE, and Mike Watt has gone on to a successful solo career, but there was no replacing D. Boon.

Sources:

Daily Breeze files.

Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground, by Michael Azerrad, Back Bay Books, 2001.

A Wailing of a Town: An Oral History of Early San Pedro Punk and More, by Craig Ibarra, END FWY Press, 2015. (Essential.)

“We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen,” a documentary directed by Tim Irwin, 2005.

Some of the South Bay venues played by the Minutemen:

Harbor College, Harbor City (the Minutemen’s first gig, May 30, 1980)

Capones, San Pedro (1980)

Croatian Hall, San Pedro

Dancing Waters, San Pedro

The Barn at Alpine Village, Torrance

Wilson Park, Torrance (May 22, 1982)

Fishermen’s Fiesta, Ports O’ Call (Oct. 2, 1982)

Longshoremen Memorial Hall, Wilmington (June 24, 1983)

Angels Gate Cultural Center (Nov. 16, 1985)

(Source: A Wailing of a Town: An Oral History of Early San Pedro Punk and More, by Craig Ibarra, END FWY Press, 2015.)

(Live at the Angels Gate Cultural Center, Nov. 16,1985)