Songfacts®:

• This song targets a racist boss who Minutemen guitarist, D. Boon, worked for at an auto parts store. Boon asked if he could tune the store's radio to a funk station, but his boss refused, calling the station "African-American excrement." Boon was so appalled by his boss' attitude, that he considered quitting his job on the spot, but because he needed the money, Boon wrote this song to express his frustration instead. An early live version mentions the boss by name. >>>

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• This song spawned Minutemen's first ever music video. The video, which cost just $600 to make, incorporates footage from a public domain war film of a young Ronald Reagan piloting a military aircraft. Reagan is made to look like he bombs a defiant Minutemen, who are performing in a desolate field below him. Contentious plot aside, the video received some airplay on MTV.
• In 1985, Minutemen handed out ballot slips at their gigs. Fans were invited to vote for the songs which they thought should be included on a future live album. "This Ain't No Picnic" topped that poll and a live version was consequently included on the compilation album, Ballot Result, which was released in 1987, two years after D. Boon's untimely death in a car crash.
• Double Nickels On The Dime, which spans an almighty 45 tracks, was Minutemen's third studio album. Bassist, Mike Watt told us that fellow Hardcore Punk band, Hüsker Dü, inspired the band to write a double album: "The Hüskers came to town and recorded Zen Arcade. And we go, 'Wow, they made a double album, we should do that, too.' So we wrote a whole bunch of songs and recorded another album and put them together." Double Nickels..., which is famed for its expansive sound and lyrical content, is widely regarded as one of the most influential albums of the 1980s. In 2003, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at #411 on their "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.