Timely, I'm Assuredly Not

After twenty-three years of ignorance, followed by ignorant procrastination, I've decided to finally buy Double Nickels on the Dime -- the classic Minutemen album, of course, to which I will likely add the new 33 1/3 book by Michael T. Fournier.

...Sammy Hagar had scored a big pop hit with "I Can't Drive 55." The Minutemen thought it would be funny to comment on the nature of Hagar's little ditty by letting listeners know that driving fast wasn't terribly defiant. "So to wear red leather and say that you can't drive 55 like that's the big rebellion thing...to us, the big rebellion thing was writing your own fuckin' songs and trying to come up with your own story, your own picture, your own book, whatever. So he can't drive 55, because that was the national speed limit? Okay, we'll drive 55, but we'll make crazy music," says Watt.

If that's not the epitome of punk, I don't know what is.

When the album was first released, back in April 1984, I was a freshman at the University of Illinois who was excessively enamored with George Thorogood, the Who and Dire Straits. (I still appreciate each, to a dramatically lesser degree, but my ardor back then is inexplicable now.) I'll even sheepishly admit to having Billy Joel and Chuck Mangione LPs hidden in my dorm room closet. I knew about the Clash and the Jam from MTV, but my punk indoctrination came so late that I didn't even really discover the Sex Pistols until about 1990. I didn't get into Hüsker Dü until after they'd broken up, and only caught the Replacements on their final tour. And now I'm finally coming around to the Minutemen, twenty-two years after D. Boon's death.

Shameful, indeed.