Suffice it to say that this record features on nearly every "Top 100 albums of the 1980s" list you'll find - and for good reason: it's utterly fantastic.
But being a double album, it didn't fit on one disc in 1987 (the land of the 74-minute maximum CD timing). So Mike Watt, having to edit the record already to fit in the 74-minute time constraint, decided to remix the entire record with Vitus Matare in August 1987. (The original record was mixed by Ethan James on 8-track in one long marathon session in 1984.)
Besides remixing the whole album, Watt and Matare also removed the tracks "Don't Look Now", "Mr. Robot's Holy Orders", "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love", "Doctor Wu" and the remake of "Little Man With A Gun In His Hand".
Released in 1988 and subsequently available for a short time only, this is the rarest Minutemen CD. The remix does nothing for the music, and Watt thought so himself: the CD was quickly withdrawn and the original mix restored, with "Don't Look Now" and "Doctor Wu" re-added to the proceedings.
In 2007, Watt said that this remix was a "nightmare" and "totally worse than the Ethan James mix."
When I bought my Double Nickels... CD in 1988, it was this version I purchased. I immediately realized it sounded "different" than my original vinyl copy, so I eventually sold it because it just didn't sound right. The version I subsequently purchased was the restored-mix version, and that's what I've had since.
Since I found out what the issue was with the 1988 CD, curiosity has lead me on a search for this thing and to this day the best I've found are high-bitrate MP3's on the internets. So of course I'm featuring it here, and also casting the net out there for anyone who has this CD and can rip it losslessly for the public.
Enjoy! You won't want to replace your common Double Nickels... set with these, but as a companion piece of history, it's pretty good.
MINUTEMEN
Double Nickels On The Dime
SST 028 CD
Remixed August 1987 by Mike Watt and Vitus Matare
Withdrawn sometime in 1988/1989
01 D's Car Jam
02 Anxious Mo-Fo
03 Theatre Is The Life Of You
04 Vietnam
05 Cohesion
06 It's Expected I'm Gone
07 #1 Hit Song
08 Two Beads At The End
09 Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Truth?
10 Shit From An Old Notebook
11 Nature Without Man
12 One Reporter's Opinion
13 Mike's Car Jam
14 Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing
15 Maybe Partying Will Help
16 Toadies
17 Retreat
18 The Big Foist
19 God Bows To Math
20 Corona
21 The Glory Of Man
22 Take 5, D.
23 My Heart And The Real World
24 History Lesson - Part II
25 George's Car Jam
26 You Need The Glory
27 The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts
28 West Germany
29 The Politics Of Time
30 Themselves
31 Please Don't Be Gentle With Me
32 Nothing Indeed
33 No Exchange
34 There Ain't Shit On T.V. Tonight
35 This Ain't No Picnic
36 Spillage
37 Three Car Jam
38 Untitled Song For Latin America
39 Jesus And Tequila
40 June 16th
41 Storm In My House
42 Martin's Story
43 The World According To Nouns
44 Love Dance
Grab the files here - 320kbps MP3.
PLEASE I beg of my readers, someone somewhere has to have this actual CD. You know you have it if track 01 is "D's Car Jam", and track 02 is "Anxious Mo-Fo." The common original-mix CD has a snippet of "D's Car Jam" appended to "Anxious Mo-Fo", and the whole thing is titled "D's Car Jam / Anxious Mo-Fo" as track 01 on the 1989-to-current CD.
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