The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

It's more re-re-evaluative. I'm pretty sure I went back to Stink sometime in the 2010s (around the same time I realized that side 2 of Zen Arcade really is my favorite side).

All I know is that it's really hard to finish my book on dark money with this book sitting on the table staring at me.

I spent a lot of time trying to appreciate post LIB Replacements, because it seemed like the right thing to do. That in itself is probably a bad sign. They're a band that existed on the cusp of "you have no chance of ever being important" and "you will be a band for the ages" and I think that's rarely a good thing. I'm sort of afraid to read the book.

xp I immediately set aside My Anonia when it came in the mail. No regrets.

obv that's yr opinion and that's cool but it's very dismissive of some really good tune

i think there are some really good tunes on the first two sires, less so on the last two sires, but i think dlp is basically otm. i'm sure i've said this elsewhere in this thread, but the difference between bob and post-bob replacements is the difference between a four-piece band gelling in unpredictable, chaotic and beautiful ways and a singer-songwriter getting his tunes across in a really linear, functional manner. i think so much was lost musically.

also, not sure if this is the players' fault or the producers' fault, but bob's guitar tone >>>>> paul's guitar tone.

He's kind of otm except for the fact that "Go" is a great tune too.

I don't hate it, btw. Just think it points in the wrong direction for the band.

Hey, good looking here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO_0HlOfBdI

Just as one example, was thinking about the line "17,18,19,21" from Stuck In The Middle, coming out of the guitar solo, and how completely brilliant that is. They lose the ability to do things like that pretty quickly.

I mean, "We are the sons of no one, bastards of young" vs. "17, 18, 19, 21" tells you a lot.

"Pirner was trying to be sexy" said his friend and West classmate Dave Roth. "Westerberg was trying to be working-class angry. Pirner was trying to get the chicks. It didn't seem like Westerberg was trying to do that"

that's a good line. and look where it got old dave... front row seats at the county fair bbq festival

It's "Wait on the sons of no one..."

Paul said that after he became a poet, but the recorded evidence is iffy...

fcc, like i said up thread i'm new to the replacements, so i'm under the impression that bob played up through tim at least is that an incorrect assumption? or are you just saying that after stink the production started to emphasize paul's song writing instead of bob's playing?

i like both but i can appreciate that perspective, especially as a johnny-come-lately who's perspective is, 'i heard these songs completely out of order and with no context whatsoever.'

nothin at all wrong with hearing songs out of order with no context. that's how i discover most bands.

tim was indeed the last album bob played on, though westerberg has suggested bob wasn't quite all there during those last sessions. but anyway, no, i'm saying i love 'em all the way through the twin/tone albums, and i still like 'em on tim and pleased but things are definitely shifting on those albums from band toward westerberg+friends. which is to say, i hung in there for a couple more albums than dlp did.

and for me it wasn't so much paul's songwriting vs. bob's playing as it was paul's songwriting vs. the entire band's playing.

paul on bob circa tim:

"Bob didn’t have a clue. He didn’t know the key of A from his left foot, so I’d sorta show him where to put his hands. ‘Just kinda start there, Bob.'”

Tommy Ramone said that Bob's contribution to the Tim sessions was showing up at the studio one day and improvising for few hours on tape, from which 'solos' were edited and placed into different tracks.

Also: those Charles Aaron Bob pieces (the one linked above and an obituary a couple years later) are so sad. One bit that stuck with me was a bit along the lines of how Aaron "...had always wanted to buy [Bob] a beer, but [I] finally got the chance, it became a six pack, a carton of cigarettes, a ride to the hardware store...and a $20 'loan'..."

ultimately Bob was literally the *only* reason why this band was important

come on man this is insane

Saying Stink is the best Replacements is like saying Land Speed Record is the best Husker Du record. Baby steps on the way to legitimate greatness.

Some of Stink seems like them trying to fit in with the hardcore punk scene

saw these guys play maybe 8x btwn '84-91, bought every album. I really don't feel like reading a book about em; it seems like i've heard all the stuff yer quoting already.

that's a good line. and look where it got old dave... front row seats at the county fair bbq festival

― hackshaw, Monday, March 7, 2016 9:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

got him rich & set for life with pads in mpls & new orleans, plus easy money gigs whenever he feels like it

xpost Haven't read the book yet, Morbs, but apparently it is revelatory.

westerberg just posted this (unreleased?) album from 2009
https://soundcloud.com/paul-westerberg/49-00

I got that from Amazon in '09. Not unreleased but quickly pulled.

The new book is absolutely essential and one of the best of its kind I've read. It does a very subtle job of interrogating the myth of the beautiful losers -- and why critics at the time especially liked them -- while not denying anybody their own story as much as possible. It's a story about a failure of 'society' in the broad sense to help people who need help as much as anything else, and it doesn't do so by identifying any obvious villain either.

otm

xxp ah, ok, it the title did sound familiar

The new book is absolutely essential and one of the best of its kind I've read. It does a very subtle job of interrogating the myth of the beautiful losers -- and why critics at the time especially liked them -- while not denying anybody their own story as much as possible. It's a story about a failure of 'society' in the broad sense to help people who need help as much as anything else, and it doesn't do so by identifying any obvious villain either.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 10:53 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ned the fact that you, hardly a flannel nostalgist, are so excited about this book really makes me want to read it
and i sit in the epicenter of replacements hagiography, to the point where sometimes i start to hate them and prince because i can't stand reading our local press genuflect any longer

def can understand that. dc can be similarly up its own ass w/ regard to, like, hardcore. which i like but sometimes start to hate for that reason.

man i'd love to see constant shit about fugazi and bad brains and rites of spring :)

honestly the loveable losers thing is what gets me, i love the replacements but ultimately i see them as kind of a failure of nerve, they could had a better career, made better records, played better shows

ned the fact that you, hardly a flannel nostalgist, are so excited about this book really makes me want to read it

Quite honestly I don't think I would have gone for it initially but Michaelangelo Matos helped edit it and had nothing but deep praise for it, and of course he knows his Minnesota too by default. So when a promo copy arrived in the mail in December, I was intrigued but didn't delve in -- then I finally went for it in late January and the damn thing was *compelling* from the get-go. No reservations about recommending this, and if anything, as mentioned, it puts the genuflection in its very particular place -- what, exactly, was and is being exalted, and why? (Not that Mehr is saying it was all built on sand -- anything but -- but I think he rightly, though very carefully as noted, places them in a specific context that seems less romantic the more you learn about it.) So when you mention the 'failure of nerve' as you did there, there was a reason for it -- it's talked about earnestly and openly -- but it's also interesting how the approaches that might have helped that nerve were either poorly understood or maybe not simply there at all. And in Bob's case, tragically so.

xp we should do a house swap :)

cool thanks Ned - will have to buy this

just checked at the Hennepin County Library there are 10 ebooks of Trouble Boys on order - already with 40 requests, and 27 copies of the book on order - already with 160 requests

and i sit in the epicenter of replacements hagiography
M@tt, I got annoyed pretty quick with the last Replacements book, by a local guy with an Irish name, for precisely that reason. Long on blustery boosterism, short on info. Also, there is a personage that pops up now and then in the book with your last name-a photographer, maybe?- wonder if it is a relative or it is just a common name there.

and i sit in the epicenter of replacements hagiography
M@tt, I got annoyed pretty quick with the last Replacements book, by a local guy with an Irish name, for precisely that reason. Long on blustery boosterism, short on info. Also, there is a personage that pops up now and then in the book with your last name-a photographer, maybe?- wonder if it is a relative or it is just a common name there.

― Jesperson, I think we're lost (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 12:03 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Verily do you dare besmirch the name of the MAD RIPPLE?! The Replacements Are Minnesota Music FOR MINNESOTANS!!!

One more MN centric post:

W/r/t the Spin article/interview with Mary Lucia's brother, the description of Edina as "affulent, artsy" is accurate on the first count, laughable on the second.

I'ma go back to my grape salad and pull tabs now thx.

got him rich & set for life with pads in mpls & new orleans, plus easy money gigs whenever he feels like it

― robbie ca$hflo (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 4:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? maybe that was that just my impression after watching a youtube interview where dave and dan are getting interviewed at a casino, and it just seemed kind of depressing, but they did sell millions and millions of records. not a total slight to them either as i like at least a few songs off each of their old albums.

Ned's rec sealed it.

It's kind of an amazing triumph of Twin/tone that the author can keep on writing page after page about all the silly rock and roll hi-jinx they engaged in without either celebrating them or wagging his finger at them, without it just turning into a wearisome laundry list.

ok, the time has come, i've re-read every page on this google books preview. time to pay a visit to my local library.

MINNESOTANS
Wait wasn't there some kind of interesting retro/world music/eclectic band called The Minnesotans led by some guy name Paul something? Hard to Google obv. Last name is kind of French maybe.

Guy loves Ry Cooder, I saw them once decades ago at Central Park Summerstage and was pleasantly surprised. Sorry that's all I got.

Are you thinking of Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans?

Martin Zeller and the Hardways/Gear Daddies?

Speaking of which: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamboni_(song)

(A friend bumped into Zeller in Mexico, where he apparently spends half the year thanks to said "Zamboni" song.)

and i sit in the epicenter of replacements hagiography
M@tt, I got annoyed pretty quick with the last Replacements book, by a local guy with an Irish name, for precisely that reason. Long on blustery boosterism, short on info. Also, there is a personage that pops up now and then in the book with your last name-a photographer, maybe?- wonder if it is a relative or it is just a common name there.

― Jesperson, I think we're lost (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, March 8, 2016 12:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha that book is a lot of what i was referring to

yes i do see that photographers name around, but we are not related, it's not an uncommon name in the upper midwest in norweigian settled regions

Zellar also had a gig doing a Neil Diamond tribute show that would always sell out weeks in advance.

This is straight up the dumbest town ever.

xp

So Sh@kedown isn't uncommon?