The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

The Goo Goo Dolls ("Boy Named Goo" era and earlier) had a lot more Replacements than the Gin Blossoms did. And they were nameehecking the Mats from stage their whole career.

At one point, someone told Paul that the Goos were name checking him as a huge influence and Paul said, "Well, they could show their thanks by covering one of our songs on an album" or something like that.

And I'd argue that a song like "Name" isn't all that far from where PW was in the late 90s, as far as his songwriting goes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oabUnaWBMfE
^good song, Westy co-write, and once it hits that chorus ... well, yeah, of course Westerberg co-wrote it.

"Outtasite (Outta Mind)" has definite Pleased To Meet Me vibes imo

I'm not going to argue about Wilco on the internet.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Tuesday, November 8, 2005 1:23 PM

never saw Mats in a real small place, but yes they were loud+

The big thing I regret about my Westernberg interview last year is that he told me he'd be sending a message to the fans via his T-shirts. I didn't know what he meant, and didn't pick up on it. Then, a month later, the Replacements started playing again and the T-shirts started spelling out the message. D'oh!

look at lewis largent being a dedicated fanboy. this song also rules and triggers deep sadness within me.

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

i wonder what Lewis Largent did when he aged out of that glorified modeling job. Ate a sandwich?

Something else I gleaned from the book was how loud the Mats apparently were. Like turn it up to 11 loud, too loud to mix. Louder than Motorhead, claims one guy in the book who had worked for Motorhead.
Saw them in a small club three times in 1986-87 (the first two with Bob Stinson). They were loud but I don't recall the volume being excessive or anything.

"Well, sort of like Husker Du, they were just at the wrong place at the wrong time."
I've heard this before, that they could have been as big as Nirvana or something if the timing was better, but I just don't buy it. Loved Husker Du, but they were too abrasive (not to mention badly produced) and just not pretty enough frankly to have been hit it big.

Not as they were, but Sugar has some success before breaking up, and that's essentially polished HD. Same thing with Goo Goos and Soul Asylum and the Replacements. Never said Land Speed Record or Sorry Ma were going top 40, but there is demonstrable evidence the bands were on the right track, just too early/poorly timed.

and just not pretty enough frankly to have been hit it big

http://s4.evcdn.com/images/edpborder500/I0-001/003/442/319-9.jpeg_/donald-fagen-19.jpeg

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f3/be/f5/f3bef585f132f92c840e1f9c05bc5500.jpg
Hey, it takes two.

Agree 100% with Jazzbo. It took me a few years to accept the truth of that. That the Husker Du of Flip Your Wig might have been one of those 100 bands of '93-95 to luck into a minor hit ("Pets," "Pepper," etc.), sure. But, as they were, even towards the end, they could never have broken through on the scale that Nirvana did.

"badly produced" as am impediment to success... didn't everyone after the fact say Nevermind was badly produced, including Cobain? Not that I can even TELL wtf that means anymore.

But yeah, HD were not just-missed-it hitmakers.

the production of NM and that mix in particular are its innovations.

Nirvana broke through because they sounded like Boston.

In 1976, I remember that "More Than a Feeling" broke through because it sounded like nirvana.

Speaking of Nevermind, can someone please explain what this strange PW quote from the Replacements book actually means (other than Paul Westerberg is a giant dick) :

"Nirvana sounds to me like Boston with a hair up its ass."

Was that a misquote? Was Paul Westerberg referring to a hare? Because as it reads that makes absolutely zero sense.

"Nirvana sounds to me like Boston with a hair up its ass." = Nirvana is pop-friendly AOR (note also that the riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is the riff from "More Than A Feeling") with just enough snotty attitude to seem "punk" and underground.

Everyone knows that the Smashing Pumpkins were Boston, come on. Nirvana was like Husker Du covering Boston.

Smashing Pumpkins were Styx.

Rage Against the Machine were England Dan and John Ford Coley. (I could go on for eight hours but I'll stop there.)

Was that a misquote? Was Paul Westerberg referring to a hare? Because as it reads that makes absolutely zero sense.

There's disagreement over whether the phrase is "wild hair" or "wild hare," though "hair" seems to be the much more common usage. In any case the top man's translation is more or less how I'd read that PW quote too.

Nirvana is pop-friendly AOR (note also that the riff from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is the riff from "More Than A Feeling")

Sometimes I wonder if people that claim that "More Than a Feeling" has the same riff as "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are a little tone-deaf—the rhythm of the guitar riff is hear-identical, but the Boston has a major key G-C-Em-D progression whereas the Nirvana goes F-Bb-Ab-Db, which is a bit more sour. (I never need to hear either song again, mind you.)

It's not like you expect a suddenly appealing side of any of them from the book, but I was quite unprepared for how hateful they all turned out to be. Bob, you understand why that happened. Chris seems to get fed up of it all. But Paul and Tommy behave like complete wankers from early on till late on.

Yep, just finished the book, and I almost wish I hadn't read it. I don't expect rock stars to be angels, and I knew that the Replacements had a big hand in sabotaging their own career, but I didn't really understand the degree to which they did so, nor the general awfulness they displayed to seemingly everyone around them. My life certainly wouldn't withstand the level of scrutiny that Mehr brings to bear on Westerberg and the rest of them, but it's a pretty depressing story nonetheless.

As some label person or someone says in the book, though, when you can write songs like "Sadly Beautiful" or "Unsatisfied," a lot is forgiven.

Has any other band been as plagued by press about how they should have been big?

Green perhaps?

Moby Grape?

big star (still plagued 40 years later)

really is sort of a dead-end -- if a band/artist manages to break out of the "why aren't they HUGE" mold, the same critics who have been harping on it for years will likely denounce them as lame.

I kind of suspect that the best candidates for "why aren't they huge" are all singers who had major $ behind them but fizzled, and we never really heard about them. Like, my first thought is people like Crack The Sky etc., but I'll bet the actual answer is much more mundane. The Replacements probably had the potential to be huge in the same way that Semisonic had the potential to be huge.

Green perhaps?

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, April 12, 2016 2:58 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

They were big in Europe! In fact, they were much more of a draw in Europe than the Replacements (not counting the 'Mats reunion shows).

Thing is, reading the book I learned they were much more popular than I thought they were! Maybe a couple of thousand seats filled at shows, hundreds of thousands of records sold ... not bad!

yeah compared to 95% of other bands, they were huge. obviously, the lovable loser thing became part of the image.

Some of the "why aren't they huge" bands -- especially Big Star and Moby Grape -- weren't big largely because of logistical fuckups (e.g., Radio City didn't even leave the Stax/Ardent warehouse, apart from promo copies).

While there were certainly any number of logistical fuckups on the 'Mats part, they were visible (on US TV twice, in Rolling Stone & Spin & other mags), and you could easily find their records (the Sire ones, anyway).

It was like Westerberg said when observing Petty's audience singing along to "Breakdown" or whatever: "we just weren't made of the stuff popular music is made of."

the surprise in the book: Benmont Tench and Tommy socializing.

I don't know if the book touches on this, but Westerberg being described as 'sober' post-Replacements seems like the Hollywood definition of that word.

Sobriety just made him meaner, at least in the book.

well, he fell off the wagon in the mid '00s, according to the book.

ok-I heard several firsthand reports of some drunken Mono/Stereo shows.

ok this is really gossipy, but do y'all know he's evidently dating juliana hatfield (they just did that project together)

"we just weren't made of the stuff popular music is made of"

I think what's confusing is that in some ways they were -- their musical reference points were all pretty mainstream, they just came at them kind of crooked. It's not like they were really trying to write hits, except I guess the singles on DTAS and All Shook Down.

Again and again the book shows that they did try for hits and success, but usually only once, and then they got bored/destructive/moved on. Which is a tough way to chase a career. If anything they succeeded despite their best efforts.

well I'm not really sure the book shows that they tried--the efforts seemed half heated and always with the condition that Paul and Tommy could still be assholes whenever they wanted. Becoming successful on your own terms--particularly when it requires a lot of help from, say, record companies and radio stations and fans--means that your "own terms" need to intersect with others. The book is not full of anecdotes of sweetness or protracted cooperation on the promotion trail, it's full of the opposite. In that regard, it seems like the Mats achieved their success despite themselves. "I just love them but they were total assholes" is a repeated sentiment in the book.

see then they fit neatly into my fandom for Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis etc

(the asshole part, not the millionaire success part)

i can sorta understand how their collective ambitions were offset by self-sabotage, fear of failure, and distrust of authority. given all that plus the obvious behavioral health issues, i prob agree w/ the observation that they might have in fact had more success than one would expect.

you know what isn't answered in the book so far (i'm up to the recording of DTAS). I never listened to the shit hits the fans until the other day, and one track list refers to a snippet of "merry go round" by the Crue, which I certainly wouldn't have noticed only by listening to it. To wit: this can only be that Tommy liked the Crue (possible although much less likely that bob did), which suggests that his interest in sunset strip shit goes deeper than GNR (maybe the post mats section elucidates how he ended up with Axl). he certainly had a commensurate interest in hairspray, and it would be funny if he liked some hair metal, since the Mats were held up as real and true relative to that stuff.

there's an anecdote later in the book that mentions that axl didn't like the replacements and that tommy didn't like gnr.

This song strikes me as hair metal with a grafting of a few bars of standard Westerberg.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVmygAXM03A