Thanks to my recent discovery of Das Damen, I'm in a bit of an SST Records phase at the moment. Aside from the bigger, well known bands that everyone is aware of, there is a hell of a lot that SST put out that I have never bothered with. Some of these are even relatively popular bands, but ones that I was never interested in for one reason or another. Recently I sat down and scrolled through a list of everything that SST had released, and I decided to check out Minutemen for the first time. I had never been remotely interested in them in the past, but I can't be sure why I never bothered to check them out. I mean, there aren't enough hours in the day to listen to everything, and a lot of my decisions in the past were based on my own perceptions about a band, sometimes based on their name and sometimes the artwork on their records. Given that I love the fIREHOSE records on SST, it makes little sense that I never gave Minutemen a go, but that's the way it goes.
So I checked them out online and I was immediately into it. So of course, I had a look for records, and I immediately felt that I got lucky. I spotted a blue vinyl copy of their fourth LP, '3 Way Tie For Last' for sale on eBay UK and I ended up winning it for less money than a new release would cost. It felt like destiny. Being on colour vinyl, it's obviously a repress from circa 1990, but it is in top condition, in shrink wrap with the 'color vinyl' sticker still attached.
I don't usually like getting into a band and listening to their stuff in non-chronlogical order. But I couldn't not buy this for the price and condition. Of course, after ignoring the band for half my life, I'm immediately way into this. I get the feeling that this is possibly their least popular record, which may be to do with the fact that a bunch of the songs are covers. Mind you, I'm not familiar with any of the originals, so I don't feel too duped.
Obviously I feel like aq fool for never checking this band out in the past, but I definitely intend to try to find more of their records. Given that I would mainly want the color vinyl 90s pressings, this could run for a long time and be quite expensive, but I guess that's half the fun.
