Tonight I'll be doing pull-ups on the toilet POLL - Artist Poll #104 - THE REPLACEMENTS Voting Thread

ballot should be forthcoming this wk

Rhino may put together a disc of demos or alternates for All Shook Down like they did with Pleased to Meet Me, but I doubt they'll do a brand-new, full-on remix like they did with Dead Man's Pop - that was a special case because not only were they unhappy with the final result, Westerberg and Matt Wallace discussed in detail what a remix would entail many times over a long period of time and they had the original rough mixes as physical foundation. Tommy Stinson actually believes All Shook Down is their best album, so he definitely would not see a need to "fix" it.

Re: the Replacement's imperfect construction of their albums, I agree with this to a limited extent. I wish Bob Stinson hadn't vetoed "You're Getting Married" from Hootenanny, the circulating full-band outtake is a great, lost track, but otherwise there's nothing I'd change about any of the Twin/Tone records, I love them all and would listen to them start-to-finish. Even "If Only You Were Lonely" feels perfect as a left-field B-side gem rather than an album track.

It's only the Sire years where it gets a little frustrating for me, but the reissues have more or less rectified any problems with track selection. On Tim, I swapped out "Dose of Thunder" and "Lay It Down Clown" with "Nowhere Is My Home" and "Can't Hardly Wait" (from All for Nothing/Nothing for All). On Pleased to Meet Me, to avoid redundancy I swapped out the horns-and-strings "Can't Hardly Wait" for "Birthday Gal" (again from All for Nothing/Nothing for All) - I do wish "P.O. Box (Photo)" progressed beyond demo form, that would've been great to add. And thankfully we now have Dead Man's Pop to go with "Portland," "We Know the Night" and "Wake Up," so with some adjustments, those first three Sire albums now hang together for me from end-to-end. Some songs are better than others, but I still find plenty to like about the "lesser" tracks.

It seems particularly insane that the likes of "Portland" and "Wake Up" were discarded circa DTAS. Both of those, plus the aforementioned "Nowhere Is My Home" and "P.O. Box (Photo)" remain on my shortlist...

Yeah, but it sounds like they were scared shitless on what to put out next because their career was very much on the line. If the two prior Sire albums had, say, easily gone gold within a year (i.e. doubled their modest sales), I wonder if that would've taken off enough pressure for them to be much more comfortable with where they wanted to go musically-speaking.

trying to figure out what i think of don't tell a soul and dead man's pop?

i keep going back forth on 'talent show' - again, i hear the springsteen influence and can't tell if it's supposed to be an homage or not (the verse melody of 'dancing in the dark' runs throughout it, and he hums it at times after the choruses)

Solo-wise, will be fun to review what I have (most all of Paul's cd/digital stuff, Tommy's Perfect and first Bash & Pop, though no Chris, Slim or Bob albums). Pretty sure "Good Day" will be my number one. That and "Sunrise Always Listens" have been great cushions over the years.

Reading this thread is a good spur to pre-order the PTMM set.

i liked the Paul & Juliana Hatfield collab album from a few years ago (2016? 2014?) .. released as The I Don’t Cares

the tracks where they harmonize together are the highlights for me

i love Good Day by Tommy! i will def be votong for that

voting even

oooo, first poll that's lured me back in in a while. I will definitely vote. On the solo stuff I need to go back to those Chris Mars albums, haven't listened in a while.

So if I'm reading this right, Chinese Democracy qualifies as a Replacements project, right?

Solo projects was easy for me. I've listened to Westerberg's twin albums Stereo & Mono far, far more than anything else they've done outside of the band, and that was pretty much my list. I still remember when it came out and Westerberg did those in-store appearances (including Virgin in Chicago, where a fan handed him a lyric sheet when he forgot a 'Mats classic mid-song).

Ha, my first off-the-top-of-my-head cull gave me exactly 30 songs. Probably leaving some out tho.

So if I'm reading this right, Chinese Democracy qualifies as a Replacements project, right?

I changed that "central creative or songwriting role" sentence up the top a comical number of times. It initially ended with "(so possibly not G'n'R or Soul Asylum, etc)" or similar. Stinson definitely gets a few songwriting credits on Chinese Democracy so... maybe?! Let your conscience be your guide...

Make sure to give Bash & Pop's first album a spin before you submit a ballot full of Westerberg solo trax.

I kind of have Can't Hardly Wait like this.
1. Horns and Strings PTMM
2. Blistering TSHTF version
3. Tim-acoustic take

14 Songs is for the most part such a dreary affair.

xp

what is TSHTF?

i only knew of the horns and strings PTMM, Tim-acoustic, and Tim-electric

TSHTF = The Shit Hits The Fans, a cassette-only release in 1985. When I was 12, my grandmother took me to the mall one day and said I could pick out one tape to buy. I really wanted TSHTF, but was fairly certain there was no way she'd let me buy it. Now it's fucking $40 on discogs.

cassette-only live release, I should say

haha, that's great. do you remember what you got instead?

Was it Television, The Blow Up?

Or The Buzzcocks, Lest We Forget?

Or maybe even Precise Modern Lovers Order?

"here kid - have this worthless old record that doesn't even have a label on it, just says velvet underground and dolph or something

btw - apologies if this was covered upthread, but will votes for different song versions (e.g., 'can't hardly wait') be combined? replacements seem to have several songs like that with several excellent but very different versions. i'm cool with either way, just wanted to know before voting

"here kid - have this worthless old record that doesn't even have a label on it, just says velvet underground and dolph or something

frick! I forgot to include this in my paul solos. oh well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tAoDUG92n4

Kudos on the poll title! I'm not going to vote, my interest drops precipitously in anything they did once they left Twin/Tone, and I feel like I'd be doing the later albums a disservice by ignoring them. Having just reread Trouble Boys though my interest in reading about those songs is high, greater than actually hearing them.

I suspect the age demographics of ILM will tend to skew voting toward the later albums.

I got on the bus (sans kisses) with Hootenanny and got off after Tim ... before voting I'm going to check out the later albums, some of which I've never heard, but I'm sure my ballot will be Twin/Tone heavy.

I'm not sure how many pre-Let it Be tracks will make my ballot, to be honest. Aside from some scattered moments on Sorry Ma, I never cared much for those.

"Kids Don't Follow" from Stink is like a dream collaboration with the wipers sound from the same exact era, it's blistering

legend has it if you listen really closely to the cops breaking up the party at the beginning, you can hear 11-year-old Winona Horowitz doing a drug

"within your reach" seems like a song that could have been amazing with just like, 2 more hours practice on it

i think it's mainly the one finger one take keyboard part - i'd love to hear a remix that just removes it

but i get that it's part of the hootenanny experience, that's just how it goes at hootenannies

there's one beautiful moment near the end of 'left of the dial' where the bass does a little descending walking line and you want the song to continue like that for at least another minute (like what bruce does in 'thunder road') but it only happens once and then the song ends 10 seconds later.

haha, that's great. do you remember what you got instead?

sorry ma, forgot to take out the trash kind of rules! it's a little inconsistent, but kick your door down, customer, takin' a ride, shutup...

oh god, sorry ma is damn near perfect. let it be is my fave six days a week but at least one day week i can convince myself they were a shining example of a band that started out at their peak and every subsequent album is just a little worse than the one before, no exceptions, until don't tell a soul and all shook down, where they decided to hurry up and get worse that much faster.

shit hits the fans is the best live album in the history of rock prove me wrong

(i mean, yes, i will acknowledge that live at the apollo is better, but otherwise...)

am i crazy for thinking that "i don't know" reminds me a bit of the b-52s?

I’d have liked a B-52s version better!

stink and sorry ma fucking rule so hard

a real "upper mississippi shakedown" if you will

ums I bet when you hear Paul's "go" in "anyway I ain't got nowhere else to go" from Hangin' Downtown, it probably just sounds like a normal "go" to you and not the monophthongal /oʊ/ linguistic curiosity that it actually is

and I for one will not try and prove anyone wrong about Shit Hits the Fans being the best live album of all live albums. if you're in a rock band and there's not a recording of you shambling belligerently through a series of halfway-finished impromptu classic rock piss-takes, are you even really in a rock band?

...but will votes for different song versions (e.g., 'can't hardly wait') be combined?

Yeah, will combine votes. Definitely add a parenthetical note or whatever if you strongly favour a particular version. I've been recording that stuff. Particularly good idea if you wish to highlight a less widely heard take. (Which I guess in most cases means anything other than versions on the original issues of the conventional studio albums.)

if you're in a rock band and there's not a recording of you shambling belligerently through a series of halfway-finished impromptu classic rock piss-takes, are you even really in a rock band?

correct. except about the belligerence. some of those halfway finished piss-takes are acts of pure, unfiltered, unrehearsed love.

oh for sure, I guess I meant more the "belligerent" synonymous with "hammered"

:)

Ballot sent! :D