The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

this amazing, insanely captivating live band, basically everything that their crosstown rivals The Replacements were not

this is insane.

(re: the Replacements, SA were a great live band)

All the Mpls heads I know who were around back in the day if you asked who was the best live band would say "Soul Asylum", like not even a pause to think, even people I know who hated the 90s SA still talked about them like people talk about James Brown in the 60s

xpost No, I meant that Pleased to Meet Me has the Big Star connection, but not All Shook Down.

And yeah, Soul Asylum (and to an extent the Goo Goo Dolls!) had pretty great live reputations. And Buffalo Tom (who were nicknamed Dinosaur Jr Jr.).

my goodness, james brown?
that seems hyperbolic

buffalo tom's songs were so boring! where is all this hyperbole coming from?

I suppose there's at least one big difference that tilts the scale in favor of the Mats, and it's the songs.

agree. saw both, in Minneapolis, many times. Soul Asylum were amazing. but the Replacements where amazing and had better songs. best live band of the time for me, and not because of the mythologized f-ing up. only saw them go totally off the rails a couple times (along with a couple no shows ("gone fishing," "Tommy hurt himself mowing a lawn")), and a jazz musician friend who was with me at one of those, considers it the best rock show he's every seen.

Soul Asylum were always winning these "best live act" polls, or "best underground live act" polls or whatever. They got so boring (as did Buffalo) that people forget they were ever raucous live acts. Like, look at this Christgau Buffalo Tom review:

Big Red Letter Day [Beggars Banquet, 1993]
In which the purely horrendous Dinosaur Jr. clones of Birdbrain enlist the aid of reputed pop producers to reconfigure themselves as virtually mediocre Soul Asylum drones. Don't despair, children, the attempted J Mascis roar is still with us--augmented, as they say, by jangle, harmony, and the occasional tunelessly rendered tune. Does college radio really believe this is art and Janet Jackson isn't? C

Sure, he doesn't like it, but he even says they used to be Dino Jr clones and then goes on to compare them to SA. They were in that same mix.

Here's his review of the first SA, fwiw:

Made to Be Broken [Twin/Tone, 1986]
Unless the meaning of life is passing me by, Bob Mould's proteges are the latest concept band, admired more for their correct aesthetics than for how they actually sound (or what they actually say). Fast turmoil rools, with hints of metal anthem and country warmth sunk deep enough in the mix that nobody'll cry corny. As a concept, pretty admirable.B

Buffalo Tom love is baffling to me. I remember hearing "Soda Jerk" on the radio a lot, and seeing them on My So-Called Life (were high school kids into Buffalo Tom in 1994?), and figured faceless blandness/bland facelessness was apparently the new vitality.

(But I've only heard "Soda Jerk," so maybe that's not representative of what they do/did?)

I have no idea. I am honestly not sure I've heard them beyond the radio hit. same with sa. I just know they had their fans back in the day.

they are just straight up boring
i was given one of their albums as a gift and found it so dull that upon reflection i got slightly offended that it was given to me as an enlightening gift

it reminds me that i have rarely (never?) actively liked a band that people claim sound like the replacements. or husker du for that matter. i only like the real ones.

Does college radio really believe this is art and Janet Jackson isn't?

Maybe the only Christgau sentence I've ever agreed with.

I remember loving Made To Be Broken at the time, though I haven't listened to it in ages. I didn't keep up with them, and when I heard "Somebody To Shove" on the radio I thought, "Huh, they're still around?" followed immediately by involuntary retching at THE. BIG. 90S. DRUM. SOUND. CAN YOU HEAR THE DRUMS? THERE'S DRUMS ON THIS RECORD. WE'LL HAVE TO TURN THE DRUMS UP SO YOU CAN HEAR THE DRUMS ON THIS RECORD THAT HAS DRUMS ON IT.

Buffalo Tom were very boring. I would never compare them to Dinosaur Jr. More like The Connells with The Connells being much better.

Okay, I was much more of ‘Mats fan then an SA fan, so I wouldn’t say that SA was “better,” but “more consistent,” I guess, and not in a boring sense of consistency.

And lest we forget, the first Goo Goo Dolls song to get radio play was, iirc, "We are the Normal," which was a Westerberg write/co-write.

"muscular drumming" lol

it reminds me that i have rarely (never?) actively liked a band that people claim sound like the replacements. or husker du for that matter. i only like the real ones.

I share this feeling completely. Comparisons to the Replacements are a recipe for disaster.

I've never sought them out before, but here's a BT cut from their first album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT4Hn4ckt5I

Produced by Mascis, with lead guitar by Mascis. It's kinda like ... the Bodeans with fuzz?

"Somebody To Shove" is such a blatant Husker Du ripoff.

But yeah, I stand by my very small sample size of early-mid Soul Asylum live >>>>> early-mid Replacements live.

Buffalo Tom...I saw them open for MBV in 1992. Suffice to say the headliners were not troubled.

it reminds me that i have rarely (never?) actively liked a band that people claim sound like the replacements. or husker du for that matter. i only like the real ones.

xpost But see, the very fact they would even open for MBV reveals how they were perceived at the time.

Don’t think I ever saw any group with Buffalo in the name live, but I believe I preferred the recordings, including live ones, of Grant Lee Buffalo or their leader solo.

Re: Buffalo Tom— I like that Sunflower Suit song

I am now google imaging Dave Pirner's current hair situation.

unshampooed.

i can't imagine the lightning storm of privilege that led to the cheese curds in buffalo tom opening for MBV

And they were the middle band on the bill. The actual opener openers were Yo La Tengo.

I saw Buffalo Tom as one of the openers for The Lemonheads.

my not-liking bands that were compared to the replacements might have started with goo goo dolls!? i went to some radio showcase show my senior year of high school where they played and i was like ok let's see hopefully they're good
nope

yo la tengo and MBV sounds much more appealing

Lemonheads, another boring Boston band that once had a hip reputation!

Buffalo Tom's first couple records are kinda more folky Dino Jr. Jr. I remember playing this one back in the college radio days. I think they played the Bluebird in Bloomington that year but I was not 21 yet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEIb5Xrf81g

Evan Dando's current hair situation...check.

feel like Janovitz has some decent music writing.

whoah wha happen here

going back to my point about All Shook Down and Third/Sister Lovers - I'm not talking about the literal Alex Chilton/Jim Dickinson connections the band had, which were all prior to recording All Shook Down, I'm talking about parallels between how the albums were recorded, their place in the bands' respective catalogs, their overall feel, the state of the bands at the time etc. It's weird to me that, given all the Big Star connections mentioned, no one in the book seems to be aware of this...? Both albums recorded by critical darlings that failed to realize their commercial ambitions, both recorded with the band in disarray/sort of halfway to a "solo album", both helmed by drug-addled self-destructive leaders in the middle of a personal meltdown, both cobbled together from a variety of sessions featuring a variety of musicians, both featuring material that's markedly more depressive and nihilistic than before. Don't get me wrong, I still think All Shook Down is just not that good and that Third/Sister Lovers is incredible but the similarities are pretty pronounced imo.

xps

and of course there's a Velvets connection to both lol

I see that Tommy Stinson was touring with Evan Dando a couple of months ago. xpost to myself

honestly it was the stories of Tommy and Paul shooting speedballs and driving backwards down the street that made me think of Chilton circa 1975. If only Tommy and Paul had been dating twins at the time

Eh Buffalo Tom’s A-sides comp and Let Me Come Over are decent...there’s no real surprises and they’re not as distinct or as interesting as their predecessors but there’s some good songs there imo

I meant that All Shook Down wasn't exactly cobbled together, at least not the way Pleased to Meet Me was, though yeah, it was a sorta solo album in spirit with different dudes playing. I'm not sure, from memory, All Shook Down is markedly more depressive and nihilistic than the band's other stuff, but it is definitely more subdued.

I bought that Buffalo Tom album reviewed by Christgau without previously hearing it. It was shit. I won't hear Lemonheads dissing tho :)

I think you can draw a line between, say, "Sadly Beautiful" and "Holocaust", for one

xp

I feel there’s a million US/UK bands from the late 80s on who are essentially REM/Husker Du/Replacements soundalikes that are best described as Made To Be Compiled; one big comp of this stuff might actually be half decent

Being merely ok is their hallmark.

LL, I never knew about your replacements love. We could be irl friends if we lived close to each other. I'm in a book as the girl who wore a Paul Westerberg rubberband around her wrist. They were one of the first bands I fell hard for too (plus REM, not Husker Du, meh, Sugar was one of the worst live shows I ever saw).

oh man don't poke the Huskers nest around here, oy

I'll stump for the Goo Goo Dolls first two records on Metal Blade (which how weird is that) also Junk Monkey's Five Star Fling as good fake Mats

Yerac! I’d have loved to have known you as a young person! Now too obvs, we could could cook up a storm & lol about evil but my mats love has faded and I’m still a Dü partisan! Lol ❤️💜❤️

Also I really think Mould-haters may enjoy Grant Hart’s solo output more — super melodic, great songwriting about familiar and esoteric topics, varied styles/not formulaic. Esp when compared to the plates of unsalted potato slices who rode on comparisons to other bands.