Double Nickels on the Dime

Double Nickels on the Dime, The Minutemen, Rolling Stone Magazine's #411

exile staff consensus: Top 400 album

the breakdown:
3.5 cannons - venerableseed
3.0 cannons - lenbarker
2.0 cannons - polchic and eurowags
1.0 cannon - angryyoungman

the essays:
10/22 - And our last post about these two albums is Dave's tale of glue ear, hippies, erotic sandwiches, John Goodman, and laundromat theft. (I bet you've clicked (or scrolled down) already.

10/19 - First time poster Audrey has a terrific zinger about the essence of Double Nickels: driving around, youth, and, er, other bodily essences.

10/16 - Then comes my personal Double Nickels lament.

10/12 - First up is Mr. Barker's terrific look at Double Nickels and its '80's emo punk brother-in-arms Zen Arcade.

the introduction (done with the Funkadelic's Maggot Brain):
After a week of OK Computer's numbing familiarity (a/k/a no alarms and no surprises) the next two albums, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain and the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime are sure to jolt us back to their disparate realities. Just how disparate? Lets just look at the raw facts:

Origin:
DNotD: San Pedro, California
MB: Parts unknown

Band Members:
DNotD: Three permanent members. Drums, Guitar, Bass
MB: Too many to count

Album Length:
DNotD: 81 minutes
MB: 37 minutes

Number of Songs:
DNotD: 45
MB: 7

Average Song Length (Longest Song):
DNotD: 1:46 (3:05)
MB: 5:15 (10:20)

And that's before we get into the sound, the politics, the album covers, the spirit, the time, the genres, the dance-ability, the audience, the attitude, and the legacy.

Despite all their surface differences, these albums both rock, are both underappreciated, and have both become wonderful treasures for legions of devoted fans. They both also carry on the message of the forthcoming apocalypse that OK Computer began so well.

Why else did we connect the two? Believe or or not Minutemen bassist Mike Watt covered Maggot Brain's title track on his own debut solo album, with J Mascis on guitar and Funkadelic's own Bernie Worrell on keyboards. (We'd be a lot prouder of our combo if we'd have known that fact before the choice was made.)

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It's All In How You Get There

Yes, Double Nickels rocks, you dumbass. You'd have to be afflicted with glue ear to not recognize that. It wasn't easy for me to figure it out myself, though, since I came to Double Nickels by way of fifteen years and a friend's gift card.

I ran with a pretty strange crowd during my freshman year in college. I met a number of folks at the new student orientation, none of whom seemed to have anything in common, and many of us ended up on the same floor in the dorms. There was the hippie transfer student, the football player who hoped to transfer to Emporia State to play after he failed at walk-on tryouts, the big-toothed virgin and his hiphop-obsessed midget roommate, and the deadhead. It was a motley group that somehow figured out how to get along by drinking and destroying property. But I digress.

Through the hippie, Chris, I met another hippie, Shana. Cute girl who self-identified as being a Jew despite being raised Baha'i. I'm not sure that it is even remotely relevant to this tale, but I always found it interesting. I don't remember the introduction much or what we did that night, but the evening came to a close with Shana looking for a place to stay. I thought she was cool and I was kinda interested in her, but another guy seemed a bit more into her and so she left with him. More specifically, she told me she needed a place to stay and I wasn't too aggressive in making my pitch.

Later on, she told me that she knew that she was going to sleep with one of us, which might have been her way of flirting with me, except it just made me think that she might have been the village bicycle. In any case, fast forward a week or two and they were an item. I quickly became the third wheel who had to listen to the guy talk about how her butt was so nice that he wanted to eat a sandwich off it. Just think of what I missed out on.

Shana's beau, whose name totally escapes me, introduced me to some really amazing music: Muddy Waters, Suicidal Tendencies, Infectious Grooves, and a few other funky things. Then he dropped Mike Watt on me and fIREHOSE and The Minutemen. And here I was listening to the Singles soundtrack and putting "Would?" on repeat. We got along well, despite my earnest comment to him that the celebrity he most resembled was John Goodman. He didn't appreciate that much. I made tape copies of all the stuff he shared with me and I perfected my ability to redraw album covers and band logos on cassette inserts.

Over time, I stopped listening to tapes and lost touch with Shana and her man. I heard that they got married, so I bet they've enjoyed dozens of sandwiches together. And, I never forgot about some of the music that I heard back then. The Minutemen were always on the list of bands I wanted in my collection, but they never hit the top of my list and I never found any of their stuff when I checked out used CD stores. Then, recently, a friend of mine who happens to know a great deal more about music than I, came into a gift card. And, as luck would have it, he too was interested in the Minutemen, so he got himself a copy of Double Nickels. Yes, that means I soon had my copy too. And from there, well, I was finally able to say that I learned something during freshman year - The Minutemen rock. I did also learn how to rip off coin-operated laundromats, but I don't think my parents would consider that to be knowledge.

A chance encounter, fifteen years of waiting, and a bit of electronic piracy all came to aid me in my journey to one of the greatest rock albums of all time. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm not going to bother commenting on the other album outside of saying that I think it is bloated masterpiece of boredom. It can't keep me awake on my evening commute, which is the measuring stick I use for these albums. Can it make me feel something other than feeling like a beaten down working stiff? In the case of Maggot Brain, the answer is no. click here to
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Maggot Brain

Maggot Brain, Funkadelic, Rolling Stone Magazine's #486

exile staff consensus: Top 500 album

the breakdown:
3.5 cannons - lenbarker
2.0 cannons - angryyoungman, venerableseed, and eurowags
1.0 cannon - polchic

the essays:
10/18 - LenB is up again with his more complimentary take on Maggot Brain along with a 1983 video performance of the title track done from Columbia, Maryland.

10/17 - Its me again: tell us what you really think about Maggot Brain.

10/15 - Next up the Ancient Scientist's Rising from the Sh!t: Is a guitar solo enough for canonization? Well, is it?

the introduction (done with the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime):
After a week of OK Computer's numbing familiarity (a/k/a no alarms and no surprises) the next two albums, Funkadelic's Maggot Brain and the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime, are sure to jolt us back to their disparate realities. Just how disparate? Lets just look at the raw facts:

Origin:
DNotD: San Pedro, California
MB: Parts unknown

Band Members:
DNotD: Three permanent members. Drums, Guitar, Bass
MB: Too many to count

Album Length:
DNotD: 81 minutes
MB: 37 minutes

Number of Songs:
DNotD: 45
MB: 7

Average Song Length (Longest Song):
DNotD: 1:46 (3:05)
MB: 5:15 (10:20)

And that's before we get into the sound, the politics, the album covers, the spirit, the time, the genres, the dance-ability, the audience, the attitude, and the legacy.

Despite all their surface differences, these albums both rock, are both underappreciated, and have both become wonderful treasures for legions of devoted fans. They both also carry on the message of the forthcoming apocalypse that OK Computer began so well.

Why else did we connect the two? Believe or or not Minutemen bassist Mike Watt covered Maggot Brain's title track on his own debut solo album, with J Mascis on guitar and Funkadelic's own Bernie Worrell on keyboards. (We'd be a lot prouder of our combo if we'd have known that fact before the choice was made.)

Poll Results
question:
is Maggot Brain's title track:
pantheonic - 75%
overindulgent - 37%
so amazing - 25%
unending (in a good way) - 12%
unending (in a bad way) - 37%

click here to
read it all...

The Heavy Sh!t

Maggot Brain oozes forth its greatness from all orifices. The title track guitar solo alone works on an impressive number of levels: eulogy for Hendrix; Eddie Hazel's signature track; the cries of our dying mother earth; and, certainly, the mourning over a dead mother followed by a suprise reunion that Hazel imagined to spur his playing on this work.

First, some trippy delay effects bring in George Clinton's spooky spoken word intro, and we know something huge is coming. Next we have Bernie come in with those four moving chords, and I love the snare with the delay effects. When Eddie does come in, his wah is cocked to a perfect point for his first few riffs, before he starts to work it up and down as some tasteful studio doubling, reverb, and delay sweetens it all up. He proceeds to go off for a while, his guitar singing to us about his dead mother with gut wrenching impact for several minutes until, his last tears squeezing out, he sees her coming towards him, and is reunited with her. Sounds to me like he is simultaneously overjoyed to see her and furious that he has been put through all of this, an octave fuzz giving us the higher octave along side his fretted ntoes to show what these two different-pitched souls are enduring together. Clinton speaks again, exhorting us: "Come on, maggot brain; go, maggot brain", before we hear the last few licks trailing off. Not for everyone, but, as a Hendrix-worshipping guitar player, it's irresitably moving to me.


Afterwards, "Can You Get to That" brings some bouncy relief, but then "Hit It And Quit It" has to come and kick our butts again, this time with a sick Hazel riff. Play this one loud to fully appreciate how badass it is when the whole band kicks in. If you don't dig it, then get a new stereo.

"You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" reprises the "Can You Get to That" riff, and with meat like "Hit and Quit It" in between those two slices, it makes for one damn great sandwich in the middle of this tasty meal called Maggot Brain (so appetizing!).

"Super Stupid" rocks like all hell, and "Back in Our Minds" stands perilously close to sucking with its loud percussion instrument. I can't remember what that thing is called, but I have played in a couple of bands with percussionists who had 'em, and they never found a good use for them, except to annoy their bandmates in between songs at rehearsals. Clinton manages to make it work, though: listening to the way the high pitched, modulating thing is rolling over the rest of the tune packs plenty of entertainment for this brief tune.

The full band jam of "Wars of Armageddon" is a perfect end for an album that started off with the sparse "Maggot Brain" making the whole thing feel almost like a concept album that had been building up to this point, but, really, this track, while pretty good, does not have nearly the impact of "Maggot Brain", so it's almost fitting when they just blow the whole thing up. . .but that snippet of the band launching back into it at the end lets us know that not even "Armageddon" can stop this funk. Excellent final touch on this classic!

So, yeah, I'm sold on the greatness of this album and its place in history. It's great to see Bernie Worrell and George Clinton still out there doing it, and I particularly love how Worrell has been embraced by the jamband community, whether with his own band the Woo Warriors or jamming with Gov't Mule or Les Claypool, since there seems to be more people trying to play funk within that scene than anywhere else these days, and I know that they all appreciate the presence of the master. I sure as hell have loved seeing him at some festivals where my band has played, and I will always regret being too ill to stick around to see my band's keyboardist jam with him on stage one night. If Maggot Brain is a state of mind, as Clinton claims, then one day I hope to tap into it just long enough to unleash one great guitar solo; until then, I'll keep on practicing for that day, whenever it may arrive. click here to
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Exit Mothership

Mother. That's Maggot Brain's first word and it's no mothership. It's Mother Earth, earth, mother, earth mother, old earth. The Mother is the earth and she's dirty, grimy, funky, pregnant and bursting. There's no water on this album, no air (aside from some human flatulence), and no fire.

The cosmic powers here are all terrestial. When George Clinton speaks of drowning it's in sh!t, not water. The refrains speak of roaches and rats while cows moo and monkeys howl at Armageddon. We hear a cuckoo clock; no flying animals could ever really exist. Armageddon, in fact doesn't come from the sky or from the ocean, it comes from Mother Earth's womb. After the requisite bomb sound we hear: "it's a (bad? fat? fad?) funky person." Whatever that means.

Maggot Brain is impossibly dirty and disgusting. It revels in its stink. Its spoken words all aim to disturb and revolt. The album never cares and it doesn't even believe in its own Armageddon. Which is, as the album's most memorable moment broadcasts, the "power of the pussy," the power of the mother, the power of the Earth. George's swift dismissal of his own album is "more pussy for the power."

Of course that's his reaction. Of course he told Eddie Hazel to play his guitar solo like his mother just died. Of course it's about control. Control of his mother earth. Of course Maggot Brain attempts to disgust and disturb in the most puerile of ways. And of course it succeeds. click here to
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Rising from the Sh!t

Amazing what a guitar solo can do for a record's reputation. I mean, when your friends ask you for the prototypical face-melting guitar solo, just put on Maggot Brain's title track. It's all set up by Clinton providing the necessary philosophical context, about rising from the sh!t of the earth. That's what rock can be, finding something celestial in the mundane. And Eddie Hazel's solo takes you on that trip: it starts off sad, despondent, a lamentation, and then, still in the same seam, about halfway through it elevates and becomes triumphant. It's a real spiritual thing, bringing tears to the stoned for decades, I'm sure.

I can talk about the solo for days. It's in the pantheon, Eddie Hazel the black Jimmy Page. The rest of the record... not so much. I mean, the second track is a funk hippie gospel rave-up structured around acoustic guitars (FUNKY acoustic guitars) and a rising girl chorus, and after tracks #1 and #2 you think this is going to be one of the best records of all time. Then things slow down. I mean, it stays funky and loose and far from uptight, but it is just a bit scattered, and it doesn't work quite as well.

So I guess we should talk about whether this deserves to be on a greatest list, and historical significance and whatnot. I mean, what makes Funkadelic so exciting? On this album, they seem like hippies to me. This is a committed, fried, acid-head psychedelic record, really, but with an exciting black twist. "Wars of Armageddon," the sound collage freak-out that ends the record, is really like a lot of other efforts, and not as good as those of the Beatles or the Deviants (not on this list... a tragedy) or others. I personally think that they're still finding their sound here, and that the later records really display Funkadelic at their Funkadelic-est. As an announcement of purpose, this must have been exciting, rawer and rock-bandier than Sly and the Family Stone, less ego-y than Hendrix, looser and funkier than Led Zeppelin, more blue collar than the Pink Floyd, more American than Black Sabbath. But they would get better...

... except for the guitar solo. Nothing would get better than that. In fact, when people talk about this record, they inevitably talk about the guitar solo, the story behind it (Clinton told Hazel to "play like your mother just died.") It's sort of like people always talk about tilting at windmills when they talk about Don Quixote - that happens in like the first 50 pages, which I suspect is all that people read. I think people listen to the first 2 tracks, and then they are just so blown away that the rest doesn't matter. Maybe that's the right reaction, really, but I want a little more for a rock canon. click here to
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