A bit of “personal news” as they say. This morning The Replacements and Rhino announced the release DEAD MAN’S POP, the first ever ‘Mats box set. I was lucky enough to have produced the project (along with the estimable and ever diligent Jason Jones of Rhino) and wrote the liner notes. There’s a funny bit of backstory as to how this set came about…which, like the band, started in a basement in South Minneapolis.In late 2014, Slim Dunlap’s wonderful wife Chrissie Dunlap was cleaning out the basement of the couple's house when she came upon a stash of Ampex reels hidden in a cupboard. She realized, based on the songs and dates, that these were Replacements tapes from the “Don’t Tell A Soul” era. After sessions at Cherokee and Capitol in Los Angeles with producer Matt Wallace, the band had finished tracking the record at Prince’s Paisley Park studios in the fall of 1988 – at which time they absconded with a handful of reels, reels that included Wallace’s unreleased "quick mix" of record, and a session the ‘Mats had earlier cut with Tom Waits while in California.
Upon this discovery, Chrissie asked Slim if they should call and alert Warner Bros. to the fact that they had these tapes, to which Slim replied, “No!” Asked why, he said “I don’t want to go to jail!” (as you can see, Slim still has his sense of humor very much intact). Credit really has to go to Slim for saving these tapes rather than, say, tossing them in a large body of water. But he’s always had great foresight -- “Slim’s a smart son of a country lawyer” as Paul Westerberg once told me.
Likely because I have earned my PhD in Replacements studies, I was dispatched by the band’s management to retrieve the tapes in early 2015. I brought them back to Memphis where we had them transferred (fittingly enough) at Ardent Studios.
Listening back to Matt’s original (if admittedly hurried, somewhat incomplete) Paisley Park mix it was clear that a far different version of “Don’t Tell a Soul” actually existed than the one that had been mixed by Chris-Lord Alge and released in 1989.
It’s worth noting here that the released version, the Lord-Alge mix, is a fine LP – and was, quite frankly, the more commercial and radio-geared record that needed to be released in 1989 to keep the band afloat. But, the truth is, it didn’t *sound* much like the album the Replacements had recorded. Over time, I think that fact became clear and the record’s reputation suffered somewhat. In the end, “Don’t Tell A Soul” would become The Replacements’ best-selling album, and also their most divisive. A perfect encomium for a band built on such contradictions.
It also became clear that a new package, built around a version of DTAS the way the band and Matt had wanted it to sound, would be a good idea (this was a desire that Westerberg had expressed many times over the years). But, of course, there was more, including other much discussed but little heard recordings from the era, like the band’s first attempt at making DTAS in Bearsville with Tony Berg, and the Waits session. On top of that there was the Inconcerated live show, from Milwaukee in 1989, of which only five songs had ever been heard previously.
After many fits and starts and lot of legwork, we finally got the okay to push ahead with the box set this year from the band and from the good folks at Rhino Records.
This past May, Matt Wallace finished the job he’d started 31 years earlier, finally completing the mix of the record, which is called, “Don’t Tell a Soul Redux.” As I wrote in the liners, while it’s impossible to unhear a record that’s been around for three decades, this version is the album the band made and intended to release. In addition to Wallace’s mix, "Redux" also restores several crucial elements from the sessions, including original drum tracks, vocal takes and tempos that were altered in post-production and the band’s original sequence of the album. Matt’s new mix finally brings out all the sounds that were committed to tape – along with the Replacements' singular spirit, humor and passion.
The man, the myth, Brian Kehew -- who mixed "Live at Maxwell’s 1986" for us -- was brought back onto the team to help mix the bulk of the material that appears on the disc of rarities, “We Know The Night: Rare & Unreleased.” Brian also did a masterful job mixing “The Complete Inconcerated Live” show – and actually did some heroic salvage work on several tracks that had technical issues. Happily, this is now a sparkling and remarkable sounding set, that’s every bit as important a document of the band’s Slim-era lineup as Maxwell’s was to the original foursome.
The whole package was brought together sonically by Justin Perkins of Mystery Room Mastering. Justin had a truly epic task pulling these various audio sources together and making it all sound right. He did amazing (often tedious cleanup work) so that the listening experience on this box would be perfect. And it truly is.
Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman cut a beautiful vinyl master of "Redux" for us under the supervision of Matt Wallace (when you get your copies of the box, be sure to check the run-out groove on the LP).
The whole package is presented in a 12 x 12 hardcover book – loaded with dozens of rarely seen photos -- and features a detailed history of the "Don’t Tell A Soul" era written by yours truly.
Like all things Replacements, this project was a labor of love (and sometimes hard labor). At the risk of being embarrassingly personal, I was given the opportunity to work on this at a pretty terrible time in my life, following a personal tragedy. Having a creative purpose like this probably saved me. For that, among many other things, I’m eternally grateful to the band and its management (especially Darren Hilll), all the folks at Rhino including my co-conspirator Jason Jones, as well as the Dunlaps, the Jespersons, Michael Hill and all who helped with this project in ways big and small.
Anyway, that’s some of the how and why this came about. I’m sure I’ll share more as things go along and we get closer to release. In the meantime….DEAD MAN’s POP is available for pre-order here (if you get it now you also get a little bonus gift with the box)
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, 22 July 2019 16:57 (six years ago)