When I was a freshman in high school, I wanted to go see Billy Bragg play the 9:30 Club in D.C.. My parents nixed the idea since it was a Tuesday night, D.C. was a long way from our house, and finally there just wasn't a precedent for that sort of thing. I sulked for awhile, bemoaning the fact that I had been cruelly forbidden from seeing my beloved socialist folksinger open up for some punk band from San Pedro. That is until a few days later when I heard that the lead singer of that band was killed in a freak car accident. Of course the band was the Minutemen and the singer was the late D. Boon. Almost immediately my regret about missing Bragg dissolved into a greater regret about having just barely missed out on something that I would never be able to hear again. And years later, when finally I began to buy and listen to the Minutemen, I realized how inadequate that regret ultimately turned out to be. Boon is one of the truly great songwriters. And this double album is his masterpiece.

Harold Check