The Punch Line is the first 12-inch and third record release by influential American punk rock band Minutemen, and the fourth-ever release from SST Records. After their previous release Paranoid Time sold out it's 300-copy pressing, Greg Ginn invited the band to record another album. Less than half the length of most LPs, the total playing time for all 18 songs is a mere 15 minutes. The album was an early milestone release for the band and SST.
The Punch Line is also notable for being the only album to feature lead vocals from all three Minutemen. Bassist and primary songwriter Mike Watt sings lead vocals on several tracks, including the opening track "Search", "Ruins", and the last 3 of the album, "Gravity", "Warfare" and "Static", while drummer George Hurley does a lead vocal (referred to on the album's back cover as "giv(ing) a speech") in the middle of "Ruins".
The title track makes fun of General George A. Custer's death at the hands of Sitting Bull during the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Another track on the album, the instrumental "Song For El Salvador", reflects D. Boon's support of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front in El Salvador. (He was a member of the NGO Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, or CISPES).
Even though the group's name was a reference to their personal and political ideology and not a reflection of the average length of their songs, only two songs on The Punch Line pass the one-minute mark. Most average between 30–45 seconds.
Minutemen, seeking to be as economical as possible in recording their first album, recorded The Punch Line during one late-night session (when studio time was the cheapest), recorded on previously used tape, and recorded the songs exactly in the order in which they appeared on the record. Overdubs were minimal if anything; Hurley's vocal on "Ruins" was actually cut during the basic track stages and picked up by the overhead drum mics.
Spot revealed during his interview for the Minutemen documentary We Jam Econo (preserved in the DVD's deleted scenes section) that the first pressing of the record was done with what he considered to be an inferior mastering job and set of stampers; he took possession of the stampers in order to prevent further pressings from being done, forcing a remaster that was used on all vinyl pressings since then. The remastered vocals sound significantly different than the original pressing in which the voices are deeper and slightly muffled.
The Punch Line also appears on the My First Bells cassette and the Post-Mersh Vol. 1 CD. The opening track, "Search", represented Minutemen on the second Rodney on the ROQ compilation album on Posh Boy Records, while four other songs, including the title track, were featured on the compilation cassette The Future Looks Bright Ahead, jointly issued by Posh Boy and SST in 1981. "Boiling" and "Games" were featured on the seminal SST compilation The Blasting Concept.
Read more about The Punch Line: Musical Personnel, Other Personnel, Artwork
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—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
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—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“Expediency of literature, reason of literature, lawfulness of writing down a thought, is questioned; much is to say on both sides, and, while the fight waxes hot, thou, dearest scholar, stick to thy foolish task, add a line every hour, and between whiles add a line.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)