MINUTEMEN

Double Nickels On The Dime (1984)

The great trio’s third album is considered by many to be the band’s apogee, a 45-song double album that regularly appears in all-time great lists, but Watt reckons it has a patchiness about it that wasn’t necessary. “It was never intended to be a double album – until we heard Hüsker Dü were doing [their acclaimed 1984 album] Zen Arcade. We’d already recorded a bunch of songs the previous November, so like four months later, we recorded a second batch. It was epic, but was it ready for primetime? As always, shame the fuck out of me: ‘Mr. Robot’s Holy Orders’ was part of that second batch in March, and I could have done it way better. I just wasn’t ready

– I was only 25 years old, so not a lot of experience under my belt. I was still a greenhorn in the studio and we rarely got involved with the recording process. It was almost like playing a gig in front of microphones for the producer, Ethan James. On that track

I soiled myself in front of the world. It was six sessions, six days, one night to mix it all. It was basically bare-bones stuff, trying to capture the essence of Minutemen with the least amount of pollutants in the way. Ethan got the idea from R&B bands where guitar players would leave room for the bass and the drums. Not like that arena-rock shit where the guitar dominates.”