HUSKER DU V. Replacements

I have about the same amount of music from each, but I'll take Let It Be over Zen Arcade so there ya go.

i like both a whole bunch but it's not close for me, husker du

why can't they both win

the Replacements, because we all know the Huskers are gonna walk this on ILM and the Replacements deserve some love, too :-(

as for my actual choice: impossible. two bands with vastly different styles and sounds, no way to compare the two.

You could probably do this mathematically (i.e. Sorry Ma Forgot to Take Out the Trash > Land Speed Record {though not by much}; Metal Circus > Stink; Hootenany > Everything Falls Apart {oh wait, did I get those 2 Husker records chronologically backwards? who cares, EPs deserve to get compared to EPs}; Let It Be > Zen Arcade; New Day Rising > Tim; Flip Your Wig > Pleased To Meet Me; Husker Du's boring later crap > Replacements' boring later crap; don't even ask me about their even more boring solo records; I probably missed some stuff; I have no idea what this is adding up to; okay never mind.)

Okay, here's a better math question: Husker Du + Replacements =
A. Soul Asylum
B. Squirrel Bait
C. Nirvana
D. All of the above

using the fabled "C theorem" (which is that C is statistically the likeliest answer on a multiple choice exam, according to lore) I conclude Nirvana to xhuxk's question.

I voted for the Mats. I even love Don't Tell A Soul. I was too young to get into Husker Du in the 80s, and when I bought the cds in the mid 90s I couldn't get into them b/c of the production, no punch. So I still await getting into their music. Even given the production I love a few songs on Warehouse; "These Important Years" is killer and so is "She's A Woman (And Now He Is A Man)".

the 'Mats

The `Du rocked harder, but the `Mats wrote better tunes.

^^^ yep, 'MAts.

>>Sorry Ma Forgot to Take Out the Trash > Land Speed Record {though not by much}

I agree with all of those matchups but this one. Even looking online at titles, I can't recall a single song on LSR. I can hear almost every song from Sorry Ma in my head WITHOUT a tracklist.

The answer to xhuxk's question is D. I went with Husker Du, whose records on balance gave me slightly more pleasure than the Replacements', despite the bad production. "Diane" and "8 Miles High" are two of the great tracks of the 80's. I saw Husker Du live more than any other band in that decade, and they were always great.

I just never feel like listening to Husker Du anymore. The records are terribly produced in general - way too trebly and thin - and I quickly tire of the unhappy-relationship themes of nearly every song.

I don't listen to the Replacements all that much either, but their sense of humor makes them more palatable. Also had a wider sonice pallette.

You can't make me do this.

sonice reducer

Husker Du by a hair, but for me Green demolishes both (and did so live a few times).

i love land speed record and new day rising and zen arcade a ton, and zen arcade certainly meant a hell of a lot to me when i was 16, but those are really the only three albums i need and still own. not that i play them that often anymore. i pretty much like everything by the replacements up to and including pleased to meet me. that's actually a lot of stuff. including b-side stuff and live stuff and all that. i might have to go with the replacements. in fact, i will. i don't own ANY of it anymore though. which is weird. wait, i do have a copy of tim. i should play it. i used to wear that stuff out. same with my brother. he's an even bigger replacements fan than me.

there's nothing like hearing "sixteen blue" for the first time when you're actually 16. so it's a sentimental vote for me. i loved du too, but i didn't feel like one of them. replacements records felt like joining a gang.

Every once in a while I have an urge to hear Stink, and that's about it. If the Husker albums sounded better, I'd pick them in a second. But they don't.

the only Replacements stuff I listen to nowadays are "If Only You Were Lonely" and sometimes "Pleased to Meet Me"

time for decisions to be made

I've heard more Husker Du albums than Replacements albums, but I prefer Let It Be to any Husker I've heard.

>>Sorry Ma Forgot to Take Out the Trash > Land Speed Record {though not by much}
I agree with all of those matchups but this one. Even looking online at titles, I can't recall a single song on LSR. I can hear almost every song from Sorry Ma in my head WITHOUT a tracklist.

But I said Sorry Ma was better! So we agree (though maybe not on the "though not by much" -- though I'm not even sure I agree with myself on that one, to be honest.)

Toss up:

"Statues" vs. "If Only You Were Lonely" (actually, I'm not even sure I ever heard the former. Didn't it sound like Wire or something? I used to own the 45 of the latter, but I retardedly got rid of it along the line.)

Btw, like Scott sort of, I now own nothing by either band on vinyl. At all. I don't think. Which, yeah, is weird. I've got the first four Replacements on CD, since they were reissued a few years ago. I've got Zen Arcade on a fucking CD-R, which has even worse sound quality than the album orignally did. But that's it, I think.

Because of the Husker Du sound quality issue it seems recorded comparisons are a bit unfair, so -- Husker Du were better live. A Replacements show was a party, a Husker Du show was an event.

Grant's songs had more in common with Westerberg's -- both sounded young, dumb, full of cum, with a weakness for hokum (love them both). Adulthood always peeked out of the best Mould songs.

Aargh. This is impossible. At this moment I'd rather play "Shootin' Dirty Pool" than "Books About UFO's."

husker du by far, 2 good songwriters > than 1. i like variety.

My answer is obvious, as my argument with Mr Que on the Replacements book thread likely inspired this one, but...

Replacements = one of the five greatest rock and roll bands of all time

Husker Du = one of the most overrated, bland, and horribly produced bands of all time

No contest for me.

Oh goodie, a poll just for me

Hmm. Replacements wrote songs that have & had devastating emotional effects on me, and got me thru some difficult times when I discovered them as an undergrad.

Husker Du is far better at obliterating me sonically, and so far more into my realm of what i want music to be like, with hypersonics and a wide spectrum of distorted harmonics, the kind that link up with Dino Jr/MBV/Pixies/Nirvana. They far more inform the kind of music that i would personally make, too.

Let It Be as an album, Husker Du as a catalog. I can still listen and enjoy every album, but I can't really stand the last coupla Mats albums(singles aside).

Husker Du by a nose.

Also, husker du + replacements = Superchunk.

bland

I can grant you the bad-production beef but "bland" is crazytalk

gotta go with huskers

My answer is obvious, as my argument with Mr Que on the Replacements book thread likely inspired this one, but..

Inspired by the Replacements thread, yes, but I haven't posted there.

i think you mean M@tt???

tie

Husker Du by a hair, but for me Green demolishes both (and did so live a few times).

otm. i saw said demolition a couple of times. it wasn't pretty.

Husker Du by far. But while Metal Circus and Zen Arcade sound okay, but the rest of their recordings sound like shite. So if/when Merge or Ryko reissues them, will the remasters help? Is there hope? The Meat Puppets and Dinosaur Jr. fared well...

'Mats by far. But I'm a sicko who likes All Shook Down (but not Don't Tell a Soul). i bought New Day rising when it came out and liked four songs. The Mats bootlegs I've heard are better than their albums. The Husker boots sound like putting your head in an incinerator...too loud, maybe? recorders didn't capture it...

Just great—a death match between my two fave rock bands of the mid '80s. I think I’ll just cop-out totally and go with Nirvana—who seemed to split the difference between ‘em, after all—thanks.

<i>Don't Tell a Soul</i> is Replacements most underrated album by far -- bad production (man, they had three shit-sounding records in a row there, Pleased is OK but drums are way too loud), and the Goo Goo Dolls kinda developed their later sound out of it, but I look at the track list now and remember how in love I was with it when it first came out and if my copy were still around I bet it would hold up.

Don't Tell A Soul is great, and worth tracking down again (probably available for 1 cent online, it was bargain bin shortly after it came out). "Talent Show" is one of my favorite album openers, esp. when the drums come in. "Achin' To Be" holds up; I even love "We'll Inherit The Earth" which I reckon drew battlelines for longtime Mats fans. And "I'll Be You" is a great single.

^^^ OTM, all four of those tracks are fantastic!

i like that record. wrote an embarrassingly enthusiastic review of it for my college paper (i think i was mostly excited to be writing about the replacements), but it holds up ok. lyrics get kinda shaky -- i think paul read too many articles calling him a poet -- but the songs are pretty nice.

I liked DTAS at the time too. That bit on 'Rock'n'Roll Ghost' where Westerberg's voice breaks down a little, dunno if that was planned or spontaneous or what, but that always moved me. 'Talent Show' is a great song too, but I don't remember all that much about the rest of the record now.

Gotta go with Husker Du, whose music at its best sounded like it was busting through the atmosphere.

I wonder why no one in the '80s though HD records "sounded terrible"

(I'm sure someone did, but no one read them)

I have never understood the appeal of Husker Du at all. They're a hardcore band but they're not that intense or crazy. They've got pop hooks but they aren't memorable. They experiment in the studio but everything sounds thin and shitty. And Bob Mould's lyrics and voice are awful.

So Repleacements.

The Mats. More. Better. Holds up longer.

I wonder why no one in the '80s though HD records "sounded terrible"

(I'm sure someone did, but no one read them)

xgau:

Zen Arcade [SST, 1984]
I'll swear on a stack of singles that "Turn on the News" could rouse as much rabble as "London Calling" or "Anarchy in the U.K." I play side three for pleasure and side two for catharsis. And I get a kick out of the whole fucking thing, right down to the fourteen-minute guitar showcase/mantra that finishes it off. But though I hate to sound priggish, I do think it could have used a producer. I mean, it was certainly groovy (not to mention manly) to record first takes and then mix down for forty hours straight, but sometimes the imperfections this economical method so proudly incorporates could actually be improved upon. It wouldn't be too much of a compromise to make sure everyone sings into the mike, for instance, and it's downright depressing to hear Bob Mould's axe gather dust on its way from vinyl to speakers. Who knows, put them in the studio with some hands-off technician--Richard Gottehrer, Tony Bongiovi, like that--and side two might even qualify as cathartic music rather than cathartic noise. A-

Very funny, from Mark Prindle's website a review of a Replacements bootleg:

Any fan of The Replacements should own this. The rarities are key - KEY - to understanding why Paul Westerberg's solo work is a little sketchier than his band material. It's bacuz he ALWAYS wrote songs like this, but used to have the inimitable creativity to back it up with incredible melodies time and time again. He STILL pulls it off quite a bit - he's just not as invincible as he used to be. He's too old for this shit. A buddy film with him in it would be opportune. He could star with Bob Mould as a couple of former Minneapolis rock stars who get paired together as rookie policemen. No! Paul could be the rookie policeman who's paired with an older GAY partner. Bob is close to retirement and gay but he's agreed to do one more case for the Chief. And Paul Westerberg keeps messing up because he's so excited and nervous about his new job. And Dave Pirner could be the bad guy who steals thousands of dollars worth of jewels from the nightclub, which is generally where jewels are kept. And Prince could play a hilarious Martin Short-esque character who runs around screaming and flapping his arms up and down effiminately. Maybe an anvil could fall on his head and little birdies could start flying around in a circle as he passes out. And then The Cows could come in and the action could stop for several hours while, at my insistence (I play the hardboiled but good-hearted bartender), they play every single song in their catalog, including "Danny Is A Faggot."

They're a hardcore band but they're not that intense or crazy.

Shhh! Don't tell him about their cover of "Eight Miles High"!

I went ahead and voted for Dü Hüskers since they at least acted like they gave a shit.

I wonder why no one in the '80s though HD records "sounded terrible"

I dig the aesthetic of a lot of Spot's productions for SST. Listen with headphones and they're a whole lot better -- enveloping, or 'gelatinous' as he termed it himself. Zen Arcade sounds fantastic through headphones to me.

But remastering could help bring out their better qualities, for sure. (According to Jack Brewer, at least some of SST's CD output was transferred from the vinyl, not the master tapes. Eek.)

Voted for HD, but it was close. I wish this had been a HD vs. Mats vs. Minutemen poll.

the mats' take on hardcore, though, was so much looser than the drill-tight thrash of minor threat or the brawny malevolence of flag - you could hear a lot of, y'know, rock'n'roll within 'sorry ma forget to take out the trash' (which is a wonderful, wonderful album), a looseness and lightness that certainly owes more to, say, the faces than husker du.

Course. That's accepted within saying they were odd ones out. Love that old PW line about songwriting - he would only play things with melody, Bob would only play things that rocked. Hence the sound.

the mats' take on hardcore, though, was so much looser than the drill-tight thrash of minor threat or the brawny malevolence of flag

That's one place in Mould's book where he does single out Grant for praise - he refers to Minor Threat and similar hardcore bands as "oom-pah hardcore" because of their fast polka-like drumbeats, and compliments Hart for being able to give the Huskers some variety and swing.

hells yeah... 'land speed record' is like an album full of cro-magnon two-chord riffs sent skyward by grant's crazed dervish drumming and bob's speed-fuelled soloing.

i guess the thing about the mats, re: hardcore, is it was always obvious from even their earliest days that pw could write, y'know, actual songs. you wouldn't necessarily think, listening to 'land speed', that bob would end up writing stuff like 'if i can't change your mind'

i figured Tarfumes was tweaking my nose cuz grant/greg brain spaz

I was indeed. fwiw, not only can I hear Greg's bass playing loud and clear, but it's always impressive.

The bass is hard to hear, especially on the later records. There are some demos out there from Candy Apple Grey where Greg's playing pokes out through the fabric more, only highlighting how much the hiss and treble got raised later on in the mixing.

Weird, because CAG might be one of my favorite two albums by them.

Been reading more of Bob Mould's book, and it's hard for me to come away with any other impression than he consistently underplays others' contributions to his success, and overstates his own. It's kind of gross to read, and frankly, I'm surprised a writer as even-handed as Azzerad went along with putting his name on this book as co-author.

TS: Mould getting haughty over slide-guitar part on "Heaven Hill" vs Westerberg giving Bob a bottle of champagne and saying "Drink this or you're out of the band."

Basically this is:

TS: Character assessments based on systematic patterns of behavior vs. Character assessments based on specific incidents

Both can tell you interesting things, surely... but that Westerburg incident was 25 years ago, when they were in their 20s. Mould is much older and I would think wiser now, and he's consistently writing like a smug, self-aggrandizing tool.

To be honest, I'd have them both over for dinner.

maybe grant norton could cook for us.

I was wondering, wrt to the discussion upthread about the late 80s shift away from hardcore to that 70s sound, whether the Replacements might in some way be progenitors of that. Not that they ever sounded like Sabbath. But they certainly had no shame in liking and playing 70s hard rock and classic rock in an era when it was distinctly unfashionable in the underground. Must have been noted by other alternative scene musicians.

― Manfred Mann meets Man Parrish (ithappens), Friday, April 20, 2012 3:49 AM (9 hours ago)

i remember evan dando back in melody maker circa shame about ray identifying dinosaur jr as the band that lifted the veil of shame from the 70s hard rock stuff for him and his contempos... lee ranaldo told me something similar, wrt you're living all over me, reclaiming uncool reference points and influences for the post-hardcore age. they ref'd the 70s hard rock stuff with a little less archness than the 'mats, say, rewriting 'cat scratch fever' as a tune about a dude getting a boner.

― I accidentally sonned your dome (stevie), Friday, April 20, 2012 4:51 AM (8 hours ago)

Black Flag & SST followed and started unironically worshipping the Sabbath skull-head doom bong in 84 on side two of My War and the Saint Vitus debut. Same year saw Meat Puppets II and, so it was pretty clear by that point that classic rock and American post-hardcore were gonna get along just fine. Dinosaur's debut finally came out in 85, and the Flaming Lips dropped the sonically & thematically similar Hear It Is less than a year later. All of these albums and bands got a lot of positive scene and press attention at the time, so it's hard to pick any one as ground zero. If I had to point my finger at anyone, it would probably be Redd Kross (another acknowledged influence on Sonic Youth).

^^^ was gonna say that about Black Flag myself

And of course the Minutemen were covering Van Halen, Steely Dan and CCR on Double Nickels in '84 too.

yeah, good point. green river's come on down = another c.84 doom-dirge 70s metal album that was made by and marketed to punk peoples (with little success, irrc).

lol, 84 was the year the 70s broke.

Wasn't Blue Oyster Cult D. Boon's favorite band?

Minutemen cover choices did more to predict/determine what my tastes would later evolve into than I care to admit...

xpost i thot watt was the cultist

maybe both. i though d. boon took his name from e. bloom.

Minutemen cover choices did more to predict/determine what my tastes would later evolve into than I care to admit...

me too. first place i ever heard "the red and the black" f'rinstance.

thx guys

re: all that history junk i posted upthread, i do understand how dino's 70s revivalism might have been or seemed especially influential on punk people and scenes in the NY/PA/MA/CT/NH area.

like minutemen, flag, meat pups, red kross and the surfers were all west coast, 'mats and lips were midwestern. dinos were some of the first northeastern ex-hardcore types to really go that way.

uh, if arizona = "west coast"

you know

or y'know, texas

wow this 85 full huskers show youtube posted upthread is solidfying my already pro-huskers opinion

Makes sense.

No--makes no sense at all. (I didn't scroll back far enough to see what made sense--just couldn't pass that up.)

or y'know, texas

lol, yeah. i get caught up in the typing and forget to thimk. add a seperate category for "southwest" i guess...

It occurs to me that this was "MY MUSIC", the post-hardcore 70's revival moment. This is the sound that introduced me to a world larger than the radio, MTV and my friends' & parents' record collections. I loved all the bands & albums mentioned up above, along with associated & similar stuff like Camper Van Beethoven, Violent Femmes, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Pixies, Pussy Galore, Halo of Flies and Mudhoney. All of it seemed like punk to me, or like a version of punk I could relate to and make my own. As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I saw this music an "artful" version of punk, one "liberated" from the tiresome loud-fast orthodoxy and polemical simplicity I associated with 77 punkrock and American hardcore. It fit together in my head with the Nuggets & Back From the Grave comps; with The Stooges, Dolls & Ramones; freakazoid outliers like Chrome & F/i; and Aussie shit like The Saints, Scientists & Radio Birdman.

What seems strange now is simply the fact that this music seemed so radically adventurous and forward-thinking to me at the time. It's clear in retrospect that it was simply an attempt to forge a connection between punk rock, itself already becoming dated, and what punk had supposedly replaced. I flirted with more genuinely futuristic stuff like Skinny Puppy, Sonic Youth (and their Blast First sistren) and weird new trends in club music. I liked a lot of fairly straightforward punk-punk like Naked Raygun, Squirrel Bait, the Didjits and Husker Du, spent time with the thrash, speed and crossover metal my sketchier friends dug, but crit-approved revivalist rock-as-punk was MY SHIT. I wasn't inclined to follow Big Black into the Wax Trax scene, Foetus & Skinny Puppy into industrial goth, Voivod into death metal, or MARRS into house. Instead, I followed the children of Redd Kross into indie rock. GBV here we come...

No regrets, but there's something kind of funny about my naivete when I look back on it now. I was so certain that this was THEE MUSIC OV THEE FUTURE!

Arizona's Pacific Time for eight months a year anyway.

It occurs to me that this was "MY MUSIC", the post-hardcore 70's revival moment.

Me too, for real. Well, that, twinned with UK 'modern rock' (Echo, New Order, solo Robyn H, etc). Those were the left and right shoes of 14 y.o. me walking into THEE_FUTURE

Thread revival inspired a little "Makes No Sense at all" analysis:

http://thisiheard.blogspot.com

that's really cool tim, i've played in bands for forever but i never learned any theory or how to read music, i really regret that. love reading stuff like that though.

Can anyone recommend a Replacements CDR80?

I don't know for sure, but I bet "Hootenany," "Let It Be" and "Tim" total not much more than 80 minutes.

Yeah, I'd say that would be a pretty good primer, particularly the latter two-- though Hootenany kinds of captures the spirit of the band better than the second two

Wikipedia includes running times, so here are my personal favourites:

"Johnny's Gonna Die" (3:32)
"Kids Don't Follow" (2:50)
"Go" (2.29)
"Color Me Impressed" (2:25)
"Within Your Reach" (4:24)
"Hayday" (2:06)
"I Will Dare" (3:18)
"Favorite Thing" (2:19)
"Unsatisfied" (4:01)
"Answering Machine" (3:40)
"Bastards of Young" (3:35)
"Left of the Dial" (3:41)
"Alex Chilton" (3:12)
"Can't Hardly Wait" (3:02)
"I'll Be You" (3:27)
"Rock 'n' Roll Ghost" (3:23)
"Pool & Dive" (2:07)

That'd get you to around 53 minutes. I've left out songs that most everyone else loves--never cared for either their overly jokey side, or their loungey stuff--so maybe so one else can fill out the rest.

"someone else"

Clemenza left off "Swinging Party", "Waitress in the Sky", "Skyway", "Little Mascara", "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out", "Kill Me on the Bus", "Talent Show," "Anywhere's Better than Here,"... godddammit, there's a lot of shit missing

"Kill Me on the Bus"... jesus, I've been taking public transit too long.

Honestly, that Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? best of from 2006 is a pretty solid introduction.

1. "Takin' a Ride" (from Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, 1981) 2:23
2. "Shiftless When Idle" (from Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, 1981) 2:18
3. "Kids Don't Follow" (from The Replacements Stink, 1982) 2:50
4. "Color Me Impressed" (from Hootenanny, 1983) 2:27
5. "Within Your Reach" (from Hootenanny, 1983) 2:27
6. "I Will Dare" (from Let It Be, 1984) 3:19
7. "Answering Machine" (from Let It Be, 1984) 3:40
8. "Unsatisfied" (from Let It Be, 1984) 4:02
9. "Here Comes a Regular" (from Tim, 1985) 4:49
10. "Kiss Me on the Bus" (from Tim, 1985) 2:54
11. "Bastards of Young" (from Tim, 1985) 3:37
12. "Left of the Dial" (from Tim, 1985) 3:43
13. "Alex Chilton" (Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars; from Pleased to Meet Me, 1987) 3:13
14. "Skyway" (from Pleased to Meet Me, 1987) 2:05
15. "Can't Hardly Wait" (from Pleased to Meet Me, 1987) 3:04
16. "Achin' to Be" (from Don't Tell a Soul, 1989) 3:41
17. "I'll Be You" (from Don't Tell a Soul, 1989) 3:29
18. "Merry Go Round" (from All Shook Down, 1990) 3:40
19. "Message to the Boys" 3:27
20. "Pool & Dive" 2:07

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NcZ5BwQukE

Mine closely mirrors that Rhino compilation--I posted about how great I thought it was on a Replacements thread.

Plus yours adds "Johnny's Gonna Die," which isn't on the Rhino comp and which I think is a must-have.

I just happened to hear the demo of "Answering Machine" and I still can't figure out how the hell he plays it. Is there a tuning chart somewhere? Sounds great as demo as well, though lyrics are still in progress...