The 1981 Listening Post - Minutemen - The Punch Line

 Minutemen - The Punch Line

#553

November 1 1981

By Tom Mott

Minutemen

The Punch Line

Genre: Funky Econo-Punk

Allen’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Tom’s Rating: 4.8 out of 5

Highlights

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The Struggle

The Punch Line

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I owned this. I didn't know it. I had the cassette "My First Bells" which was a 1985 compilation of their first five EPs and LPs. I never had the foggiest idea where one EP or LP ended and the next began. It was a pleasing ongoing shmear of brief, noisy, funky, shouted or half-sung songs. I couldn't name a single track but I liked it and for part of a college summer or winter break it was part of my life, experienced in 10-15 minute spurts as I drove to friends' houses or ran quick errands.

That's the strength and weakness here. 18 tracks, 15 minutes. Experienced more as a complete thing, like a 15-minute prog-rock song made up of 18 individual frantic blasts. Hard to know which song is which or find something to sing along to.

But I mean, come on. A fifteen minute LP with 18 songs! Step aside, Residents! You, with your eyeballs and high-falutin' Commercial Album of one-minute songs. The Minutemen jam econo with 41-second songs and you KNOW they're wearing cheap flannel shirts from K-Mart and drinking cheap beer and playing on "stages" the same height as their audiences.

I like the sound. A lot. An AllMusic user described it as "The Byrds having an epileptic seizure." I'd say more like Love than the Byrds, but yeah. More like Da Capo Love too, not Forever Changes Love -- the polish isn't there yet that would appear on Double Nickels on the Dime, which is their sprawling White Album.

I can't give it a full 5. X, The Clash, Violent Femmes -- they get 5s because you can sing/shout along. With the Minutemen, you just nod or vibrate or smile or something and think "yeah, man!" and "wow, they're tight!"

Funky like early Red Hot Chili Peppers but without the 'tude. More like spiritual brothers to the Meat Puppets. But Meat Puppets are muddy guitars or intricate delicate guitars and desert psychedelics, whereas Minutemen are anchored by Mike Watt's muscular funky bass and George Hurley's machine gun drumming. Both bands have a similar "prog rock" approach to punk: super-tight, super-fast, quick time changes, intricate instrument lines. And similar lead singers with defiantly untrained voices who are happy to be making music and happy to wait for you to come around to them. (The cover to Meat Puppets II looks an awful lot like this cover as well!)

This is cool. I just listened to it four times in a row in an hour. Strong whiffs of Fugazi here too. DIY!

https://open.spotify.com/album/3nRg0CgSxbpXVd3yyujVN4?si=rce5n344RCqI2a8MesXfiA