THE MIKE WATT DICTIONARY
A lickety-split lesson in the Minutemen’s native tongue
Talking to Mike Watt is—to borrow one of his favorite phrases—a trip. One moment he’s sharing ribald stories of pissing in water bottles, and the next, an exegesis of Wittgenstein. What begins as an anecdote about a beat-up Porsche 912 ends as a meditation on the nature of reality itself. Political rants, cryptic philosophical musings, and plenty of four-letter words abound, often within the span of a few minutes. Watt speaks how his music sounds—careening, contorted, and totally one of a kind.
If there’s one constant to his free-associative spiels, it’s the arsenal of slang words he calls “Pedro-speak,” after his hometown of San Pedro, California. Pedro-speak largely developed between Watt and his comrades in the Minutemen—an insular vocabulary that pervades the band’s album titles and lyrics.
We caught up with Watt to help us assemble a guide to this homegrown vernacular, with particular focus on some of the phrases heard throughout Double Nickels on the Dime, the band’s crowning achievement, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
THE BIG FOIST
Origin: From the song of the same name, inspired by the writings of James Joyce.