The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

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.

pplains long-form post otm

Yeah, session drummer on "All Shook Down" is pretty bland. But again, just listened to it today, and Westerberg's vox are totally not up to snuff, either.

I think of both "Tim" and "PTMM" as being flawed great records, mostly due to the production, which hampered Husker Du at the time, too. I wonder if the major labels at the time really didn't have an idea of how to produce/present these intrinsically unpolished bands. Mats and HD were pretty early to major labels; maybe the bench of producers the label would OK wasn't that deep? Like the story of "Nevermind," with the band picking and choosing from an approved list of producers and engineers?

Never thought of "We'll Inherit the Earth" as being about the environment, but I love the nihilism of "but we don't want it." At least, it really struck me at the time it came out.

Flip Your Wig is a much better record; I wouldn't know it was a major label debut if I hadn't read the press material.

but it isn't

Didn't Dü "give" FYW to SST as a sort of goodwill gesture, even though they'd already signed to Warners?

whoops -- meant Candle Apple Gray

*Candy

xpost they owed SST another record on their contract

Yes, I know FYW was on SST and both Tim and PTTMM were major label records.

iirc it could have been their major label debut but they gave it to sst out of misplaced loyalty. misplaced because of years of misplaced royalties. xxxp

at the same time i knew rolling stone called them punk

I tried to pitch "Kiss Me On The Bus" to one of my high school bands and the reaction I got was "Woah woah woah! We're not gonna be a hardcore punk band!" And here I thought I'd pitched something relatively gentle.

and what i was hearing was about as punk as georgia satelites and didn't rock nearly as hard.

One of my only memories of my first 'mats show was their hilariously desultory cover of "Keep Your Hands To Yourself."

It's important to keep in mind that the Replacements' love of butt rock and classic rock riffage preceded ironic - or not - appreciation of some by a pretty long way. I'm sure there are people who only listen to Kiss because the Mats covered them. I know I do. Well, I mean, I don't actually listen to Kiss. I used to collect their comic books and bubble gum cards, which were sold from the ice cream truck that circled my SoCal cul-de-sac in the late '70s, but I don't think I heard any Kiss until much later, and by then had no redeeming qualities (thinking of "Lick It Up" era). But when I got "Let It Be" I heard "Black Diamond" for the first time, and then I thought, um, I can see why so many people liked Kiss. That and the fire breathing, flying and blood and stuff.

Anyway, the classic rock covers were such a huge part of the band's personality, a big hint as to where they were coming from, in both sense. It might have been the same Steve Berlin interview that mentioned Bob Dylan walking in on them in the studio when they were playing "Like a Rolling Pin." Apparently all Dylan said was, "Uh, you guys practice a lot?" And then he left. No doubt wondering why he didn't write "Like a Rolling Pin" instead.

The classic/hard rock covers but also the bubblegum covers like "Heartbeat It's A Lovebeat." But yeah, otm about it being pre-ironic.

lol @ Dylan being politely snarky about acts who don't rehearse

Band also did a great "September Gurls" and "Another Girl, Another Planet." Wonder where they came across those, especially the latter?

The latter floated around for a while and got college airplay in the early eighties - not like the Mats went to college, of course.

Yeah, used to hear AGAP quite a bit on even commercial stations that played that kind of music. And "September Gurls" was written by what's-his-name.