SST
MINUTEMEN - The Politics of Time LP
$45.95
This album collects previously unreleased outtakes, demos and live recordings from early in the Minutemen's career. As such, the quality, particularly the sound quality, is almost necessarily uneven, to say the least.
However, that doesn't prevent it from being an excellent documentary of the Minutemen's raw energy; obviously it's perfectly useless as an introduction to the band, but fans get some unadulterated material that's unavailable elsewhere.
Minutemen were a band that absolutely took their name to heart. They would fill their songs (usually under two minutes) and releases with ideas and explore almost all of them to their fullest extent, a batting average higher than most complex and eclectic bands. It helped that not only were they firmly rooted in punk, but that the trio were highly attuned to each other. Mike Watt plays funk as if his life depends on it. George Hurley could have easily played in a 60s jazz group. And D. Boon filters funk, jazz, and power pop through a punk lens with a guitar tone not only clean enough to have every sound heard in clarity, but tough enough to knock you in the chest.
From the opening sounds on Paranoid Time to when the band dissolved, they experimented with many styles and sounds, able to play funk, country, pop, and alt rock. They could make saxophones and goddamn recorders fit in right with their sound. And even with their heavy and still relevant political lyrics, they always managed to have fun with the music, sounding like children excited to play in a band for their fans. It's said that they made Double Nickels on the Dime a double album in response to Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, writing "Take that Hüskers!" in the linear notes; that sums them up well.
However, that doesn't prevent it from being an excellent documentary of the Minutemen's raw energy; obviously it's perfectly useless as an introduction to the band, but fans get some unadulterated material that's unavailable elsewhere.
Minutemen were a band that absolutely took their name to heart. They would fill their songs (usually under two minutes) and releases with ideas and explore almost all of them to their fullest extent, a batting average higher than most complex and eclectic bands. It helped that not only were they firmly rooted in punk, but that the trio were highly attuned to each other. Mike Watt plays funk as if his life depends on it. George Hurley could have easily played in a 60s jazz group. And D. Boon filters funk, jazz, and power pop through a punk lens with a guitar tone not only clean enough to have every sound heard in clarity, but tough enough to knock you in the chest.
From the opening sounds on Paranoid Time to when the band dissolved, they experimented with many styles and sounds, able to play funk, country, pop, and alt rock. They could make saxophones and goddamn recorders fit in right with their sound. And even with their heavy and still relevant political lyrics, they always managed to have fun with the music, sounding like children excited to play in a band for their fans. It's said that they made Double Nickels on the Dime a double album in response to Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, writing "Take that Hüskers!" in the linear notes; that sums them up well.
