Double Nickels on the Dime is the third studio album by American punk trio MINUTEMEN, released on the Californian independent record label SST Records in 1984. A double album containing forty-five songs, Double Nickels on the Dime combines elements of punk rock, funk, country, spoken word and jazz, and references a variety of themes, from the Vietnam War and racism in America, to working class experience and linguistics.
MINUTEMEN had originally recorded an album's worth of material in November 1983 with producer Ethan James, but after hearing HUSKER DU's Zen Arcade, decided to write and record more material in April 1984. After recording the new material, the band members each selected songs for different sides of the double album, with the fourth side named "Chaff". Several songs on Double Nickels on the Dime were outsourced to or inspired by contemporaries, such as BLACK FLAG's Henry Rollins and Jack Brewer of SACCHARINE TRUST.
Double Nickels on the Dime is seen not only as MINUTEMEN's crowning achievement, but, as critic Mark Deming notes, "one of the very best American rock albums of the 1980s." The album now appears on many professional lists of the all-time best rock albums, including Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Slant Magazine listed the album at #77 on its list of "Best Albums of the 1980's".
Review
Eleven of the titles are over 2:00 and thirteen more over 1:40, but structures are still so abbreviated that the way one riff-song segues into the next changes both. This is poetry-with-jazz as it always should have been, and while D. Boon may be a somewhat limited singer, he's a hell of a reader, with a guitar that rhymes. - Village Voice 5/5