Mike Watt & The Minutemen Wiki
Joycover

Joy is a three-song seven-inch EP by The Minutemen.

History[]

Recorded not long after the release of their first EP Paranoid Time, it was the first release that the Minutemen had issued on their own New Alliance Records label in 1981, under catalog number NAR-004. According to the record's liner notes, the entire EP was recorded and mixed in five hours on August 1, 1981, at Casbah Recording Studio in Fullerton, California.

The Mike Patton credited with producing Joy is actually one of the members of California punk band The Middle Class, not the Faith No More/Mr. Bungle frontman as sometimes believed.

The Minutemen's prolific nature would continue when their first full-length album The Punch Line hit record store shelves three months after the release of Joy.

On the original sleeve, D. Boon's vocals are semi-facetiously credited as "yelling".

D. Boon drew the front cover artwork. The back cover contains a drawing of D. Boon directing a baby (presumably the same baby pictured on the front cover) on a movie set, drawn by one Ken Starkey.

The EP also appears as part of the My First Bells cassette and the Post-Mersh Vol. 3 CD, both on SST Records. SST reissued the EP in 1987 with catalog number SST-214 not long after buying New Alliance Records from Mike Watt and Martin Tambourovich. When SST took over the New Alliance label and back catalogue, the label redated the copyright on the EP to be 1987, unintentionally causing some fans to believe that the EP contained previously unreleased material. The EP was also reissued in 1988 as a three-inch CD and in 1990 as a 10" colored vinyl EP.

Track listing[]

Side one[]

  1. Joy (Hurley, Watt)

Side two[]

  1. Black Sheep (Hurley, Watt)
  2. More Joy (Boon, Cadena, Watt)

Musical Personnel[]

Other Personnel[]

  • Mike Patton - record producer
  • Jon St. James - recording engineer
  • Tom Trapp - recording engineer