''Paranoid Time'' is the first EP by American
hardcore punk
Hardcore punk (also known as simply hardcore) is a punk rock music genre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots can be traced to earlier p ...
band
Minutemen.
It is also the second ever release by the
SST record label, founded by
Black Flag's
Greg Ginn
Gregory Regis Ginn (born June 8, 1954) is an American guitarist, bassist, singer and songwriter, best known for being the leader, primary songwriter, and the only continuous member of the hardcore punk band Black Flag, which he founded and led ...
and
Chuck Dukowski. The album cover is a drawing by the American artist
Raymond Pettibon
Raymond Pettibon (born Raymond Ginn, June 16, 1957) is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. Pettibon came to prominence in the early 1980s in the southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art mainly for ...
.
Background
Minutemen's first record occurred almost immediately after they opened for Black Flag in Minutemen's hometown of
San Pedro, California
San Pedro ( ; Spanish: "St. Peter") is a neighborhood within the City of Los Angeles, California. Formerly a separate city, it consolidated with Los Angeles in 1909. The Port of Los Angeles, a major international seaport, is partially located wi ...
. Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn offered the group a chance to record and release a record, and a late night session at
Media Art Studio in
Hermosa Beach, California
Hermosa Beach (''Hermosa'', Spanish language, Spanish for "Beautiful") is a beachfront city in Los Angeles County in the U.S. state of California, United States. Its population was 19,728 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. Census. The c ...
was booked.
Recording
The group recorded all seven songs in the order in which they appear on the record, with no overdubbing except for backing vocals by the group and drummer
George Hurley's brother Greg. At the beginning of "Joe McCarthy's Ghost", bassist
Mike Watt can be heard telling guitarist
D. Boon and the Hurley brothers, "You just sing 'Joe McCarthy', want to do that?". A discussion between the four participants can be heard underneath George Hurley's previously recorded drum introduction.
Ginn later told Minutemen how to put out a record, which spurred Watt and Boon to form
New Alliance Records
New Alliance Records was an independent record label founded by American musicians D. Boon and Mike Watt (of The Minutemen) and longtime friend and associate Martin Tamburovich. They were inspired by the example of their friends in southern Cali ...
later that year.
The EP also appears as part of the ''
My First Bells'' cassette (1985) and the ''
Post-Mersh Vol. 3'' CD. Two tracks from the EP, "Paranoid Chant" and "The Maze" appeared on the SST compilation ''The Blasting Concept''.
A sample of the intro to "Joe McCarthy's Ghost" can be heard on one of the radio ads compiled on the "Crass Commercialism" track on Black Flag's ''
Everything Went Black
''Everything Went Black'' is a compilation album by the American hardcore punk band Black Flag. It was released in 1982 through SST Records
SST Records is an American independent record label formed in 1978 in Long Beach, California by music ...
'' album.
Packaging
Early released copies of the EP were printed with black artwork. All other editions are green. In 1982, in ''
Trouser Press
''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference ...
'', Robert Payes said the record is "a must for the savage Ray Pettibone artwork alone." The following year, however,
Byron Coley
Byron Coley is an American music critic who wrote prominently for ''Forced Exposure'' magazine in the 1980s, from the fifth issue until the magazine ceased publication in 1993. Prior to ''Forced Exposure'', he wrote for '' New York Rocker'', '' B ...
- writing for ''
The Boston Phoenix
''The Phoenix'' (stylized as ''The Phœnix'') was the name of several alternative weekly periodicals published in the United States of America by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts, including the ''Portland Phoenix'' a ...
'' - would note that the artwork didn't fit the music.
Reception
John Leland and
Ira Robbins
''Trouser Press'' was a rock and roll magazine started in New York in 1974 as a mimeographed fanzine by editor/publisher Ira Robbins, fellow fan of the Who Dave Schulps and Karen Rose under the name "Trans-Oceanic Trouser Press" (a reference ...
wrote in ''Trouser Press'' that the EP "offers dogmatic politics redeemed by idiosyncratic
Wire
Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm
A wire is a flexible strand of metal.
Wire is c ...
-type songs. Kicked along by drummer George Hurley, each abbreviated blurt of rhythm serves as a backdrop for the rants of bassist Mike Watt and guitarist D. Boon. The best is the apocalyptic “Paranoid Chant,” in which Boon screams, “I don’t even worry about crime anymore.”" According to
Robert Christgau - who commented on it in his review of the band's
first full-length album - the EP "could pass for speed-rock".
Coley was more mixed: he found that the band's early music "didn't give much leeway to the imagination", going on to criticize the band's seriousness and the "naive wordplay" in their lyrics.
A retrospective review by
Stephen Thomas Erlewine for
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
found the EP to be "a startlingly coherent set of primal minimalism -- a cross between Californian hardcore punk and the succinct experimentalism of Wire. It speeds by too quickly for any particular song to stand out, but the band's terse, frenetic energy is invigorating, as are their imaginative ideas."
In a perfect score review from 2008, Punknews.org reviewer John concluded that ''Paranoid Time'' "is infinitely important to
independent rock
Indie rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the music they produce ...
. There is no excuse not to own it."
[
]
Track listing
Personnel
;Minutemen
* D. Boon - guitar, vocals
* Mike Watt - bass, vocals
* George Hurley - drums, backing vocals
with:
*Greg Hurley - backing vocals on "Joe McCarthy's Ghost" and "Paranoid Chant"
Production
*Greg Ginn
Gregory Regis Ginn (born June 8, 1954) is an American guitarist, bassist, singer and songwriter, best known for being the leader, primary songwriter, and the only continuous member of the hardcore punk band Black Flag, which he founded and led ...
- record producer
*Spot
Spot or SPOT may refer to:
Places
* Spot, North Carolina, a community in the United States
* The Spot, New South Wales, a locality in Sydney, Australia
* South Pole Traverse, sometimes called the South Pole Overland Traverse
People
* Spot (prod ...
- engineer
References
{{Authority control
Minutemen (band) albums
1980 debut EPs
SST Records EPs