I’ve noticed that I often rather solipsisticly assume that anyone reading this will have heard, or not heard, of the same artists as me. I think, though, for the past three albums that it’d be safe to assume that anyone reading a blog about 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die has at least an inkling about the existence of Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince. It’s likely as well that even if you only know one song by them it will have been off the albums we’ve just covered.
Which is to say, that I’ve never heard of Minutemen before, but maybe you have. They’re classed as “punk” and are label-mates with Black Flag and Hüsker Dü, but despite the usual circa 2-minute songs, they’re more "punk" like Violent Femmes or Meat Puppets are "punk". Not 140bpm thrashing noise and shouting, but more small polished gems of garage music.
The title refers to adhering to a 55mph speed limit (double nickels referring to five-five and “on the dime” here meaning “spot on”). And is itself a reference to a Sammy Hagar song complaining about adhering to a 55mph speed limit. To which Minutemen decided “What’s so big and rebellious about that?”. And this attitude, much like Minor Threat, makes the music a kind of slacker punk, rebelling against stupid rebellion as much as establishment.
I had to check, because all the playlists I found were about 43 tracks long. Quite often this is because what gets put online is a re-issue with bonus tracks (which are usually endless demos and out-takes) but, no, it really does have that many tracks. It’s the first double album for a while, with the first three sides mostly written by each member of the band. This it starts with “Side D” with songs from guitarist D Boon, then “Side Mike” with tracks by bassist Mike Watts, and then “Side George” with tracks from drummer George Hurley (which starts with a kind of free-jazz percussion jam You Need The Glory which sounds like a drummer’s song). Side four is “Side Chaff”, acknowledging that it’s a kind of miscellany of leftovers.
Because of this, it’s hard to pick out any particular tracks. Musically it reminded me a lot of a more acoustic Red Hot Chilli Peppers, with a funky bassline going on under proto-rap and rock guitar. Some are a little more country in places, like the Mexican-styled Corona, used as the theme tune for Jackass (a different way for a band to get MTV airtime). Cohesion is an instrumental that sounds like the underlying track to Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne. I got a little bit of Eels in there too, in tracks like My Heart And The Real World. Their influence on later punk/indie seems to have been pretty strong – I'd like to say I got a bit of Jane’s Addiction there as well, but I may be misremembering. We’ll come back to that.
There are some great titles – Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing, or The Roars Of The Masses Could Be Farts. Not all of the songs land – for me some of the better ones could have been drawn out to 3-4 minutes without losing anything, and removing some of the weaker tracks, or merging some of the very similar-sounding ones. But then, that would lose the punk aesthetic of tracks that are brief and to the point, sometimes almost seeming like a prop for Boon to utter a brief political statement.
Like most double albums, it did drag a bit, but individual tracks are so short that they never outstay their welcome, the net effect is to keep drawing the listener on for the next little nugget of oddness.
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