Minutemen "Double Nickels on the Dime" [1984]

Few bands either sound as ugly as they look or look as ugly as they sound, but Minutemen -- the blue-collar nobodies from the lame part of Southern Cal -- sound exactly as ugly as they look. Their "masterpiece" called "Double Nickels on the Dime" is a double-LP toss-off of bratty attitude, snot-nosed irony, garage-rat funk, unfinished failed experiments, sour-grapes-belching Socialism, and inside jokes way too nerdy to bother with. Essentially the product of guys who rightfully knew nobody would be listening, D. Boon and Mike Watt create a chummy pastiche of warbly, minute-long (get why they're called Minutemen? and you thought it was because guys like this couldn't have sex for longer than 60 seconds... likely true, as well) demos that the punk pranksters at Black Flag's SST Records thought would be a good idea to release. Probably they just needed someone for Henry Rollins to beat up in the van when he got bored on the road. Impossibly, the end result is both a social embarrassment and also the very sketchy blueprint of an influence on future wise-ass white indie bands: they're the Chili Peppers if they never had a girlfriend, Meat Puppets if they'd ever read Karl Marx, etc. That such doofuses should be so influential demonstrates how wide the schism had already gotten by the mid-80s between major label twits and twats owning everything and indie losers feeding out of garbage cans. Capitalism killed quality pop music. Minutemen knew it would, but they couldn't get anyone to give a shit. You won't either if you listen to this album, which you won't.