Double Nickels

I have been listening to a podcast about Double Nickels on the Dime and I thought I'd write about why it's my favorite album and one of the most formative pieces of art I been exposed to.


I think that any change in a person comes from something being awakened in them and more often than not people need this to be done to them, shaken awake. Punk rock changed my life, changed how I thought, changed how I felt about my angst. Angst is the most popular buzzword of punk rock and it is the jumping off point for any punk rocker. Angst is the beginning of a process, a growing up process. It  evolves into plain old anger and when that anger is pointed a boy becomes a man. I became a man when I heard Double Nickels.
It was the summer going into my sophomore year of high school and I can't even remember what swill I listened to, but it wasn't much of anything. I think it was mainly Arcade Fire and TV on the Radio and I loved them and some of that has stuck through, but I no longer call that poetry. Pop is too easy and cleanliness is not godliness when it comes to music. I can dig easy listening and I can dig simple beauty and it's good in small doses, like a friend you share a few things with, like friends from your high school football team. They'll never be your best friends, but they have value. Punk is your best friend, your lover, your friend that you can talk to because he talks to you.
My sister gave me a CD of hardcore punk bands and this was spurred by my telling her how much I loved Dinosaur Jr's "You're Living All Over Me" She told me a little bit about each band on the CD and gave me a book about some of the bands. Black Flag, Minor Threat, Negative Approach, Descendents, and a few others that were less important to me upon listening. One band I had an immediate prejudice against was the Minutemen because I had one album of theirs and it was 40 some songs. That was just plain intimidating. I remember the day I sat down and made myself listen to at least half of it. I ended up listening to all of it.
I had already listened to Minor Threat and Black Flag and loved it. The raw aggression spoke to me because I was a fucking teenager hating the fucking world because fuck everything. I still love this music because now it passes my Minutemen test. The Minutemen were artists and punk rockers. They are all my favorite musicians now and D. and Mike are the best songwriters I've ever listened to.
I read the one chapter in the book my sister gave me about the Minutemen (the book was "Our Band Could Be Your Life"). I learned that all the men in the band were history buffs, argued about everything, and were philosophers in the most real-world sense of the word. They were the man I wanted to be, wished I was. Reading on, I learned that they felt like I did about the world: that it was unfair, confusing, and that hope was dubious at best. They made something out of themselves, so maybe I could to. They were poets that put their thoughts to music, which is the beauty of any writing.
The Minutemen became my measuring stick for punk music. It has to be artistic, it has to be musical, it has to be true.
When I stopped listening to Double Nickels for the first time I had to go talk to my sister.
"It's completely different, Em. It's not like anything else on the CD. It's my favorite."
We just sat there saying the only thing you can say when love is shared: "Yeah man I know." Poets can describe this love and poets can make you feel this love. The Minutemen didn't write about love, but they helped me understand it. Punk rock changed my life for the better and made me see that it's okay to hate the world, but if you're not more than that then you're a childish angst-filled boy. I feel like a man when I listen to Double Nickels, but I'm filled with boyish excitement.
"The people will survive. In their environment." The environment may suck, hell it always will, but we'll survive. The Minutemen help me survive.