The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2017/07/18/replacements-for-sale-live-at-maxwells-1986/

awesome show, probably my fave 'mats bootleg — excited to hear it cleaned up ... I wrote about it way back when over here: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/514-invisible-hits-the-replacements-at-their-bestand-worst/

Hmm, this would have been less than a week after I saw them for the first time. (In Providence — still maybe the best show I've ever been to.)

hmmm...i didn't think i could get excited about the replacements again but this might do it

hmmm...i didn't think i could get excited about the replacements again but this might do it

also I'm sorry but as a MN dude this is one of the most o_O opinion lol djp

LIMITED WARRANTY was a more vital, entertaining and coherent band than The Replacements ever were.
― Dan Perry, Wednesday, February 14, 2001 7:00 PM (sixteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

damn, the hottest take

Live at Maxwells is an incredible recording, having suffering through so many cassette bootlegs. You can actually hear all the parts. And they sound competent.

Ah it is isn't it. mastered beautifully and caught at the perfect time too.

I wasn't at that show but a few nights earlier at the Ritz NYC i think

I have that Ritz show somewhere on a cassette Morbs. It's probably on the Internets someplace too.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/8005711/the-replacements-for-sale-maxwells-live

Ranking the only albums that matter

Pretty sure the click-track didn’t come in until DTAS, though a Fairlight was used on PTMM (and I couldn’t tell you where on that record it appears, but I think it’s buried somewhere in “The Ledge”).

Good list. I’d put PtMM higher, but I get your rationale. It is an album, for me, where the highs are so high that I barely notice the lows.

I still haven’t heard their last two albums.

Pretty sure the click-track didn’t come in until DTAS

slim dunlap didn't come in till then either. he joined them for the pleased to meet me tour but they made the album as just paul, tommy & chris.

co-sign your disinterest in the last two albums. like hootenanny more than you do.

Pretty sure the click-track didn’t come in until DTAS, though a Fairlight was used on PTMM (and I couldn’t tell you where on that record it appears, but I think it’s buried somewhere in “The Ledge”).

Iirc in the book they say the Fairlight was used to sample and loop good takes to clean them up, which is maybe why it sounds like it was recorded to a click.

I like DTAS a lot.

From what I remember, the Gehr book says that the Fairlight was present in '87 already?

DTAS up there as one of the most disappointing albums ever. Can’t stand those dry guitars. Can tolerate ASD as an okay Paul solo album.

DTAS was my first Replacements album and I bought it when I was 14 and I loved it intensely. I'm sure it objectively sucks but it reminds me of my prelapsarian self. Now that I have read Trouble Boys, my feelings about this band have changed and recently I had a dream that Bob Stinson was my best friend and he was super cool until I realized during the dream that Bob Stinson was actually not a very objectively good friend and also is dead.

The whisper in the song "Don't Tell A Soul" utterly disillusioned me - I loved the band for how they fitted punk to sentimentality, but the whisper was just corny. And yeah, Stink is their best output as a unit, brawling and hilarious.

I always put these guys, Minutemen and Hüsker Dü in the same bag labelled 'canonical 80s rock bands I just don't get'. Never gave it much thought tbh.

they were like my three favorite bands for a while!!
all so different
also reminds me of a deeply horrendous period of my life but HD has emerged as the most enduring favorite, Minutemen endlessly replayable, and Replacements are absolutely the shitty boyfriend who treated me like garbage.

shoulda made that plural tbh but who cares

I love the corniness of DTAS. Personal faves include Talent Show, We'll Inherit the Earth (no prob with this one), Anywhere's Better Than Here (great opening scream) and I'll Be You.

The opening scream on side 2 was what made me totally fall in love with this band. The sentiment too. I remember exactly where I was standing when I flipped the tape and listened to it for the first time. My friend's sister's empty bedroom, standing near the closet.

Reading about how hateful/disdainful/dismissive PW was to the new fans that DTAS earned them made me realize what a choad he was. Is? Idk

the badness of dtas is extremely overstated. i like that record a lot

What about All Shook Down? That's a real good record.

not a fan!

Since thred is all like ‘how i intersected replacements,’ i was a pretty huge early phase thru Let It Be Fan, i even played shit hits the fans non-boot, til we all died. But i was meh+ on tim and meh with ~fanboy concern~ over ptmm.

I have never heard dtas or anything afterwards that was not on radio. they were somewhere between ‘too emotio-historically ~important~ to me for me to risk, and too obviously putting out some bullshit.

and thats how i break it down to a certain extent.

the making of don't tell a soul as related in the Mehr book is fairly disturbing ... i just ended up thinking: "just make a record, dudes."

The making of every album as told to Mehr is fairly disturing!

The making of every album as told to Mehr is fairly disturing!

Tyler: couldn't agree more. At a certain point in that book, I found the band (one of my favourites) quite tiresome. I felt sorry for all the record-company suits and PR people who were genuinely trying to help them.

The account of the PTMM party at the expensive French restaurant is depressing.

mats have aged the least well for me out of the bomb-burst of new favorites that exploded my head and torso in spring 1985 (black flag, minutemen, meat puppets, huskers, replacements.) black flag not on the menu anymore really either except my war obv. minutemen pups and huskers still completely rule.

At a certain point in that book, I found the band (one of my favourites) quite tiresome.
haha yeah, there's a point where it goes from devil may care rambunctiousness into genuine group psychosis I think.

Agreed, re: the book, and opportunities sabotaged. Went from "I wishwishwish the Replacements would reform and put out another album" to "maybe they've had their day and I'm okay with that".

Am not critical of any of the records. Coming aboard with PTMM, then seeing "I'll Be You" on MTV, have no problems with the sound of DTAS or ASD. If anything, being a wordplay with musical hooks fan, the straightforward pop/rock of those two make them perfect summer albums for me, along with the early PW solo records.

talent show and i won't both own

Now that I have read Trouble Boys, my feelings about this band have changed

interested to hear more about this!!

They suffered from massive low self esteem. Better to self sabotage than fail or be failed. Possibly behind the alcohol use, too.

yeah, the romantic image of the band against the world is dismantled entirely by the book ... just a group of people who were *bad* for each other.

I kinda can't listen to this band anymore because (like Nirvana) it just makes me sad.

the book didn't really ruin the music for me, actually, though it did add a less fun element to the whole thing. and the book is really great, well-written, comprehensive, a lot of amazing stories etc. one of the better rock bios in recent years for sure.

I haven't even read the book! feel like what I already know is bad enough

the book is so great, one of the best new rock books i've read in the past five or so years. but i'm not a huge replacements fan so it couldn't ruin anything for me.

And unlike many reporters Mehr can write.

oh I'll get around to it eventually

It’s well written but super depressing.

The book did not, in any way, ruin my favourite music by them. I thought less of them as people--more so for the way they behaved after Bob Stinson was gone--but the music is the music, and that never changes.

(I mean, not that I especially had any strong feelings about them as people before reading the book. Music is almost always more interesting to me than the people who made the music. Very occasionally, like with Bob Dylan in 1965, I'm immensely interested in both.)

I don't know anything about their personas so all this talk of them being vile human beings is actually kind of intriguing. I'll have to give Let It Be another shot.