The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

they were so very good at this time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUFWnbz2siM

Here's their '86 SNL night, less sloppy than I remember: http://redredwineonasunday.blogspot.com/2009/11/replacements-banned-from-saturday-night_28.html.

I did remember them all falling down at the end of "Bastards," and one of my friends asking me in school on Monday, "Do you like that band?"

Remember that, taped it, watched it over and over, memorized it. Had a similar Monday-morning reaction from my junior high "friends," who made fun of me relentlessly for preferring the 'mats over Arcadia.

A few days ago I found this live version of "Buck Hill" with a pretty messed up verse of "Another Girl, Another Planet" tucked inside of it

IT'S GREAT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XALqfxtMGxY

oops i screwed up the link but you can find it
buck hill!

my brother and tommy are bastards of old. hahahaha!

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/560927_10152134194595298_331312184_n.jpg

I saw a late screening of Color Me Obsessed last night. Why an 11:30 start, I don't know--if they're gunning for a cult film, there was me, my friend, and about ten other people. (They're already there.) As someone who was immersed in the Replacements at the time and still loves a CD-80's worth of songs, I found the testimonials excessive after a while. Robert Voedisch's (beard and glasses, if you've seen it) "Gary's Got a Boner" story was funny, but I could have done with a lot less of him. Nice to see Pete Scholtes. I was genuinely surprised at how little their Twin/Tone stuff sold compared to the Sire albums--even the last one, which I've never heard, sold about 90,000 copies to Let It Be's 15,000.

I read an interview where the director said he intentionally did not include music (as opposed to your natural assumption, that it was a right's issue). For me, not a good decision. I know music would have made the film more conventional, but there's so much close discussion of specific songs, the absence is jarring--for me, because I wanted to hear them right there and then, and, on the chance that you didn't know any Replacements music, the discussion can only do so much. The interview subjects did tend to choose the same songs as me as their favourites.

I found the testimonials excessive after a while.

I guess it just seems that for a certain large set of Replacements boosters Time's Musical Arrow stopped at one point and didn't move forward or backward.

You don't mean the Azerrad book, do you?

The interviewees really up the ante in the last few minutes, as the credits roll--one guy says their albums stand alongside mid-'60s Dylan and Exile. Again, I'm a big fan. But there's not an album of theirs (I've got everything except the last one) that doesn't contain a number of songs that just fill space, even Let It Be. (On the other hand, there isn't one that doesn't have at least a masterpiece or two, usually three or four.) I'd almost start with the Rhino compilation I wrote about earlier in this thread, which is close to perfect.

Was a little thrown by the way Grant Hart looks in this.

I just listened to "All Shook Down" today for the first time since it came out, probably prompted by a call for reassessment from Steve Berlin. But the album sucks, and Westerberg's singing is either weak or put through a constant flanger effect or something. Bleh. But then I put "Don't Tell a Soul" on and I love it as much as I always have.

The producer/engineer for All Shook Down says in the film that he wishes it could have been released with his and Westerberg's mix. I don't know the record at all, but my first reaction to hearing something like that is always "well, songs are songs."

Not Azerrad, Jim Walsh. All Over But The Shouting.

Couldn't stand Don't Tell A Soul, All Shook Down was tolerable.

Don't Tell a Soul is an abomination. I like All Shook Down quite a lot.

The Lord-Alge brother's recorded all the guitars Asahi-style, super-dry, and said "Not to worry, effects we will add later!" but then THEY FORGOT

Aargh extra '

Why do you all hate "Don't Tell a Soul" (and abomination? really?) so much but find "All Shook Down" OK? You really like the songs on the latter better than stuff like "I'll be You," "Talent Show" or "We'll Inherit the Earth?"

I like boots from the Don't Tell A Soul era because a number of those songs are really good. However, he production on the album has always been a non-starter for me; I just hate the sound of the record so much that even the best songs fail miserably. That's why I call it an abomination because I can't bear to listen to it at all.

Don't Tell a Soul has higher highs of songwriting (all three you mentioned, for example), but All Shook Down is a better sounding record and the songs are solid if not spectacular.

Ditto

Huh, yeah, I can see not liking the production, but I hate both the songs and production of "All Shook Down" much more, to the extent that I wasn't even sure when the album ended and the unreleased b-sides of the reissue started playing.

DTAS at least is a sound of a band, even if it's Bryan Adams' band for the most of it.

Hate that big list of collaborators and guests on All Shook Down.

Really don't get where this 'masterpiece' thing comes from for the latter - all that sound of a band coming apart shit, 'Third/Sister Lovers' stuff (see any Uncut magazine article, ever). It was a PW solo album, that's it.

The sound of DTAS didn't really bug me at the time; that was just what major-label rock records sounded like (and compared to Poison or Bon Jovi, it was positively lo-fi). But I vastly preferred the sound of ASD, even if parts of it are godawful. So yeah, EZ Snappin OTM.

Parts of DTAS ARE awful, and I even knew that when I was 14 (I bought it when it came out, my 1st of theirs) -- looking at that dumb song about the environment in particular -- BUT
When you're 14 and feeling super misunderstood, Achin' to Be and Anywhere is Better Than Here and I'll Be You and even They're Blind sound really really good. Paul Westerberg was my bff back in those days. Sixteen isn't the hardest age, 14 is.

Don't know why anyone would "hate" the songs on ASD--only one really bad one: "My Little Problem"

I also first heard DTAS when I was too young to care about whether the production was cool or not

I thought ASD was boring at the time but it was just too adult for me. I was a lot happier when I heard Sorry Ma.
Anyway, DTAS is an album I will stick up for even though I know it's not their best.

looking at that dumb song about the environment in particular

Is that what "We'll Inherit The Earth" is about? Weird. Haven't heard it in about 20 years. I kind of dig how soaring it is, but the single-piano-note-with-delay near the beginning bugged me far more than something so inconsequential should have.

The ASD songs sounded way WAY better live, particularly "One Wink" and "Nobody." I wish they'd release their final show (Chicago, 7/4/91...I think I still have a cassette of it somewhere).

production on pleased to meet me bothered me more than the last two, by the time those rolled around i was over it and the songs weren't as great anyway so it wasn't as frustrating. still love dtas though every complaint i've heard of it rings true, all shook down never did anything for me.

xpost haven't heard 'we'll inherit the earth', could totally buy it's their 'enviromental' song, there was a lot of that in the air at the time, but in my head i'm remembering it as standard 'losers will be victorious' anthem plus westerberg shrug.

haven't heard it in forever rather

I really don't think "We'll Inherit the Earth" is about the environment. It was just a play on "us" being "the meek" and also Westerburg-ian undercutting.

shocking how nothing shocks anymore
something something something
as it washed ashore

bla bla trees sway and the aaaaaaair is still
blablabla
at the top of a hiiiiilllllll

if that's not about the environment, i've spent 20 yrs thinking it was!?

trees and air and water and hills
i dunno

i like all those things but that song is corny

Yeah, it makes references to nature, but it's more poetic biblical imagery than eco-whatever.

it had never occurred to me (until today) that it was about anything BUT saving the environment, and it always struck me as mildly hilarious that they wrote one song like that and just kinda feebly gave up caring about saving the planet. i must have been going past my nuclear holocaust fears and into my "this planet is going to hell" fears at the time. i must have decided that it was about saving the earth when i was 14 and never looked back. lol youth!

production on pleased to meet me bothered me more than the last two, by the time those rolled around i was over it and the songs weren't as great anyway so it wasn't as frustrating.

...like the defanging had already begun with Tim and PTMM was a letdown, particularly the wimpy version of "Can't Hardly Wait" there still were enough recognizable rockers in there to salvage it. By DTAS there wasn't any distinction any more between the sensitive ballads and the uptempo numbers, the songs had all been pureed in the same Bat-O-Matic. By ASD it seemed like the sound had at least stabilized into whatever it was supposed to be morphing into and they could reverse course a little and put some rough edges back in.

Sent from iPhone, if that isn't obvious

Since I wasn't around at the time I wasn't sure in '95 what principles the Mats were supposedly breaking by recording "Can't Hardly Wait" with horns and Alex Chilton guitar -- it just sounded fabulous.

I love that record, a prime item in the short list of Flawed Great Albums. PTMM does two things wrong: lavish fabulous songs with boilerplate arrangements ("Alex Chilton" is when I realized how boring a lead guitarist Westerberg is); and assume that the audience wanted to hear the dull likes of "Red Red Wine" or "Shootin' Dirty Pool" without Bob Stinson and without Westerberg already getting restless with anarchy.

Well put. Don't know if it was a matter of principle, just that we were already familiar with a much faster version of "Can't Hardly Wait" from the live show, with Bob playing the riff.

Since I wasn't around at the time I wasn't sure in '95 what principles the Mats were supposedly breaking by recording "Can't Hardly Wait" with horns and Alex Chilton guitar -- it just sounded fabulous.

^^^ this.

Being around at the time, the horns and Chilton and dramatic pause in "Can't Hardly Wait" were nothing short of completely thrilling. At the end of that song, you wanted to hear where they were going to steer this ship right now. And OTM re: "Red Red Wine" and "Shootin' Dirty Pool."

(But the show I saw in '87 was a depressing dud; they were sad-listless-drunk, and Royal Crescent Mob blew them off the stage)

haha! royal crescent mob! was this in columbus?

that SNL performance linked upthread is pretty good!

I look at Pleased to Meet Me in kind of the same way as Du Husker's Flip Your Wig: Kind of a sign-off to who they had been before jumping out into the corporate ether.

Yes, I know FYW was on SST and both Tim and PTTMM were major label records. I really think though that Don't Tell A Soul was Westerberg's first sincere stab at being taken seriously and being a Major Rock Star. And in making that stab, he gave up a lot of what had won over Mats fans in the first place. Maybe he thought he could keep them AND the new fans.

But the band couldn't. And All Shook Down, being just a whimper to the whole tale as it is, works well in its role. It's a band falling apart. It's the singer/songwriter striking out on his own. No, it's not SIsters Lovers or Let It Be (Beatles). But instead of turning off the lights before they left, it sounds like the album was recorded in the dark.

I like ASD better than DTAS, stripping away their release order and contexts. Maybe it's because ASD is a bit more macadam than the hollow flow of DTAS. We're talking about two records that have their fair share of stinkers, but All Shook Down has the title track, "Bent Out of Shape", "Torture", even "Someone Take the Wheel". (a major strike against ASD is that generic metronome beat all over the record that whoever the drummer in the studio was forced to play.)

I even used to sing Merry Go Round to my daughter as a lullaby, basically because it's one of the few songs I know the words to. I sure as heck wasn't going to sing We'll Inherit the Earth to her.

Nope, Chicago. RCM were roundly booed, sadly.

xp

this is toooootally off topic, but were you the one mourning the slow death of video adventure in evanston? they're finally closing ;_;

haha i wasn't really around, i was 12 and parroting stuff i'd overheard older friends and record clerks saying. at the same time i knew rolling stone called them punk and what i was hearing was about as punk as georgia satelites and didn't rock nearly as hard. credit to 'alex chilton' for getting me to track down what big star i could find. sometimes i love the slick 'can't hardly wait', the horns the dramatic pause and the STRINGS, sometimes i think preferring it to the bob stinson one is akin to preferring jenna jameson to ingrid bergman or something.

Saw the RCM in NYC a few times, don't remember if they were ever on the same bill as The 'Mats.

"Red Red Wine" and "Shootin' Dirty Pool" were indeed boring, but "IOU" and "The Ledge" were reasonably convincing.

(a major strike against ASD is that generic metronome beat all over the record that whoever the drummer in the studio was forced to play.)

I don't remember who drummed on most of the songs (I know it was Mars on "Attitude" -- the "Tea & Theatre" of their career -- and "When It Began"), but Charley Drayton kills on "Someone Take The Wheel."

this is toooootally off topic, but were you the one mourning the slow death of video adventure in evanston? they're finally closing ;_;

It wasn't me, but NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

So many fond memories of renting R-rated movies and having my friends pretend to be my parents when VA called to ask if it was OK that I rented these movies.

"One WInk" would have been so much better with just a little more spark in the drumbeat.