Minutemen - The Politics Of Time Minutemen

Minutemen had as high a batting average as any band to emerge from the California punk scene, releasing a series of superb records that confirmed their status as one of the finest, most intelligent, most forward-thinking, and most individual bands of their time.

This compilation brings together a bagful of studio outtakes, rehearsal recordings, and live tapes of highly variable quality. The album opens with seven songs originally recorded for an unreleased album. Stylistically, these tracks sit comfortably between the ambitious What Makes a Man Start Fires? and the band's magnum opus, Double Nickels on the Dime. On their own, they would have made a superb EP, with "Working Men Are Pissed" and "Shit You Hear at Parties" standing out as particular highlights.

The second half of the collection features lo-fi live recordings and early material from The Reactionaries, an embryonic version of The Minutemen. While these recordings are historically fascinating and offer an insight into the band's formative years, they also document a group still developing the ideas that would later define one of punk's most original voices.