What Makes a Man Start Fires?

What Makes a Man Start Fires? is the second studio album and fifth release by American punk rock band Minutemen.

Background
At almost twice the length of their previous album, The Punch Line, the Minutemen's songs began surpassing the two-minute mark. Breaking another Minutemen record, the band took the longest time they took to date to record What Makes A Man Start Fires?. The basic tracks were recorded in one late-night session, but then the band held two separate late-night sessions for guitar and vocal overdubs. Watt has said that he considers this to be Minutemen's "first real album."

While the songwriting credits are shared among all three Minutemen, all of the music for the album was composed exclusively by bassist Mike Watt; the bass-centered origins of the songs is especially apparent on such tracks as "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs", "Sell Or Be Sold", and "The Anchor". All three members contributed lyrics.

Also for the first time on a Minutemen record, the band had a guest musician, Saccharine Trust guitarist Joe Baiza, who added improvised guitar leads to "Beacon Sighted Through Fog" and "East Wind/Faith". Drummer George Hurley introduces his first non-drum percussion work on a Minutemen album, playing a collection of empty oil drums on "East Wind/Faith".

For what would be the only time on a Minutemen release, all of the lead vocals were sung exclusively by D. Boon, although Watt does contribute backing vocals.

Content
The opening track, "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs", is actually meant as a tribute to Dylan (a hero of Watt's since his childhood) as well as a tongue-in-cheek parody of Dylan's classic early lyrical style. Further showing off their sense of humor, Watt introduces "Mutiny In Jonestown" by slating the take during the basic track recording as "Pavarotti, take one".

"Split Red" is remade from the band's previous release, the 1982 EP Bean-Spill, with some different lyrics.

Release
What Makes A Man Start Fires? also appears on the My First Bells cassette and the Post-Mersh Vol. 1 CD. It would be released as its own separate CD by SST in 1991.

Reception
In a 1983 Trouser Press review of the album, Charles McCardell said "the approach is fast and furious, the results dazzling." Noting, "[p]ervasive beat poetry influences," McCardell called the band "the rockin' beat poets of the 80's...[who] slash through the pretense of their bohemian antecedents." Noting that "[i]nstrumentally, the Minutemen are far superior to many of their hardcore competitors," McCardell concluded, "[t]he Minutemen's music is seldom pretty, but always challenging." Writing for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau similarly praised the band's lyricism but wrote that he "prefer[s] their music." "The more you listen", he continues, "the less fragmentary these eighteen tense little guess-you-have-to-call-them tunes sound--each transforms its own riff into an identity that meshes with the album's guess-you-have-to-call-it gestalt."

Years later, Mark Deming would also review the album positively for AllMusic, writing that "on their second (relatively) long-player [...] the three dudes from Pedro opted to slow down their tempos a bit, and something remarkable happened -- the Minutemen revealed that they were writing really great songs, with a remarkable degree of stylistic diversity." "It says a lot about the Minutemen's growth that The Punch Line sounded like a great punk album," he concludes, "but a year later What Makes a Man Start Fires? sounded like a great album -- period." In a 2022 review of the album, Huw Baines describes the album as "just a killer record by a charismatic band who know what they’re about".

In a 2015 retrospective piece on the album written for The A.V. Club, Noel Murray wrote: "What’s particularly radical about What Makes A Man Start Fires? though is the way that it documents Boon and Watt’s dawning understanding that maybe music for and about “the workers” should be something that blue-collar types might actually enjoy. It’s not that Paranoid Time and The Punch Line aren’t entertaining, but there’s very little in the Minutemen’s first two years of songs as hooky as “’99” or “Life As A Rehearsal,” or that feels as fully fleshed-out as “Sell Or Be Sold” or “Fake Contest.” The simple addition of the occasional overdub, extended break, or guitar solo was all it took to make even a minute-long Minutemen song seem “finished.”"

Personnel

 * Minutemen
 * D. Boon - guitar, lead vocals
 * Mike Watt - bass, backing vocals and lead vocals
 * George Hurley - drums, oil drums

Additional musicians

 * Joe Baiza - additional guitar on "Beacon Sighted Through Fog" and "East Wind/Faith".