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

Should have had a top 10 replacements sound alike tracks

that's so meta

*touches nose*

Should have had a top 10 replacements sound alike tracks

or you could just start a goo goo dolls poll

nirvana

goo goo dolls sounded like all shook down and don't tell a soul. nirvana often resembled the twin/tone years, sometimes in their singles but also in the goofier incesticide stuff

or at least, listening to a lot of the twin/tone stuff with fresh ears, that's what i often think

"i'm worse at what i do best" is so westerberg it hurts

haha, yep

also, i truly have no idea how to handle the albums/releases part of this poll. 4-way tie for first?

hearing them play "darlin' one" live before dtas came out, i was convinced it was pretty much the greatest pop song ever written, an epic soft-rock masterpiece that could be played on AM radio and alt-rock radio alike for the rest of time, a signal of a new way forward for a band that would finally, for real this time, have actual hits, or, at the very least, it would be the song i could use to complain for the rest of my life about how the big bad world doesn't recognize real talent. christ was i disappointed when i actually heard it again, on record. there were entire sections of the song in my memory that seemed to have gone missing. hooks that only i remembered, and that i would soon forget. the production was just, oy. there was no sparkle. still a damn good chorus though.

do the alternate mix or live milwaukee '89 version on Dead Man's Pop come close to what you remember?

sadly, no. i've gone thru various versions over the years in search of what i thought i heard and no dice. my rosebud version was from 1987 tour.

*dream sequence*
*terrence malick whispers*

...they said it was the perfect performance...

lol

haha, i know what you mean though. i think i have only one example, though. secret machines opened for trail of dead on the source codes tour (in STL), and they did this AMAZING set, one song, with a huge godspeed-of-that-very-same-era style buildup and release. that's all, and then they were done. i thought they were this new hotshit post-rock band, but then every single release of theirs i've ever heard has been not that song, and nothing like that song. my friends who were there say the exact same thing, though. collective dream sequence

yup, that's a different version of the same exact feeling. trying to decide if "songs you thought you heard but you didn't" should be a thread, an album or a genre.

Make a thread. Or I will. I have one.

opposite feeling: first time i heard "i will dare," the first placemats song i'd ever heard. i felt like i'd heard it a thousand times before even though i ever had. it was like i'd been waiting for that exact album my whole life without knowing it. like i'd already written and recorded the entire album in my dreams and was just waiting for someone else to actualize it.

(xp) make it!

(xp to me) even though i *never* had, d'oh!

Okay, I'll make it official: feel free to submit UP TO 20 SELECTIONS IN THE SOLO/OTHER CATEGORY.

If you already voted, you are very welcome to submit additional tracks.

I'll have word with the one voter who went with an unranked ballot in that category, seeing as that has implications for scoring...

Um, bold would have been better!

UP TO 20 SELECTIONS IN THE SOLO/OTHER CATEGORY

The title “I Will Dare” always seemed to want more of an anthem than the song it’s actually attached to is.

^this
also the rubbishy Peter Buck solo, or "solo" even

goo goo dolls sounded like all shook down and don't tell a soul. nirvana often resembled the twin/tone years, sometimes in their singles but also in the goofier incesticide stuff

― Karl Malone, Thursday, September 24, 2020 3:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

funny you say this, I was listening to the early 'Mats stuff more thoroughly than ever before the other day and even though there were a lot of tunes I really liked, my primary takeaway was that I'd rather be listening to Bleach or Incesticide. Kurt was just a better melodist, and the music just feels more explosive and combustible.

the early Goo Goo Dolls stuff on Metal Blade is way more raw and I think in a lot of ways more indebted to early Soul Asylum than the Mats

https://youtu.be/yUfHVVjGrOQ

also they formed in 86 first album in 87 and had 3 albums before All Shook Down was out

I so often get fixated on outtakes in these things. In that spirit, here's where I say that "Perfectly Lethal" from the LIB era is fine ear-candy (no idea what he's getting at, lyrically) which kinda sorta invents Dinosaur Jr. (Or not. Maybe it's just that I can so easily hear J Mascis singing "no-one toooold youuuuu")

i haven't listened to any of the recent reunion replacements show stuff...until NOW:

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

honestly i'm kind of really impressed! he still looks and sounds great. gonna keep that in mind in case coronavirus ever ends and i go to a rock n roll show again

xp i love 'perfectly lethal', and i had never heard it before last week! it'll definitely be on my ballot (which i hope to submit tonight - i'm narrowing it down now)

SENT and i already feel terrible about my choices

Maybe you should find an outlet for those feelings like, say, trashing an RV.

Fun fact: 16 voters so far; 88 Replacements tracks and 40 'other' tracks have appeared on ballots.

That feels like a fair, er, sample size already. There's still another week to skew the numbers slightly towards your POV, if you've not yet done so...

Er, 50 'other' tracks was what I thought I typed earlier. One day I'll construct a post with no typos in it.

Girlfriend in high school had Don't Tell because her older brother saw them on Lettermen and liked the song. Thought it was a pretty boring record.

The first I bought was Hootenanny, during my Pavement/Guided By Voices/Thinking Fellers college years a bit later, looking for that sloppy/random/classic rock pisstake melange. It was hit or miss but unlike most punk bands trying to be funny I felt the humor was spot on. Smart midwestern kids being dumb. Loved the songs, variety and arrangement choices on Let it Be especially the stiff rhythm of I Will Dare somehow swinging so hard against that modern sounding rhythm guitar riff (like, is the root chord an A7? It feels like it's not resolving) and the over-emotive maxi-minimalism of Androgynous and Answering Machine. Felt Pleased was pretty sub par except for the two songs with the worked over production (Alex Chilton, Can't Hardly Wait) which were both fantastic if suddenly aiming for a completely different vibe and audience than before, like reaching for Elvis Costello and Crowded House fans but still hoping not to lose their old fans by leaving in Shooting Dirty Pool and Red Red Wine - satisfying neither type of fan.

Little enthusiasm to track down Tim for some reason, was getting into weird reissues by that point (Krautrock, Tropicalia, Serge/Yeye, Anthology of Folk, etc) and was starting to feel this band was generic springsteeny/petty-y white schlubs who were only briefly weird enough for me to like. Copied Tim from a library at some point and was really (colored) impressed, it was much better than Pleased, although I think the high points on the latter were still higher. I get what they were trying to do with Alex and Can't and can imagine Hold My Line and Bus being given that sort of high definition bug budget style, although of course it's better that they weren't, the album is much more cohesive as a sort of rockers-n-ballads first-two-big-star-records sounding thing if not quite as good but maybe a tad more rockin'.

The two early punk records never really grabbed me apart from Johnny and If Only You Were Lonely. (Yes Stink is a short album like Slates or Golden Showers, not an EP it's not an extended 7" single.) I read a spirited defense of them by Bob Odenkirk a few years ago that sort of helped them gel - he talked about how songs like God Damned Job just perfectly encapsulated that 80s feeling of being an outsider dreading the idea of a crap career like your dad's. But I never play them, I like lots of super catchy singalong punk from before that era that they remind me a bit of and some hardcore from that era (minor threat, misfits, DKs, huskers) but these sound a bit too generic for me still. I liked that comment above how Kids Don't Follow has a Wipers vibe, that's an interesting thought. Their best hardcore songs from Hoot/Let it Be like Hospital and We're Comin' Out are much more vivid to me than the early ones, I hear some innovation and confidence bordering on mastery creeping in if only on a few songs.

The Don't Tell A Soul remix album was a noble effort and more projects like that (and the sadly quite boring Let It Be Naked) should exist especially where the production lacks teeth that could be brought out a with a little judicious distortion and letting rhythm section have some loud parts - I'm thinking of Talking Heads 77, the 2nd Au Pairs record, Television's Adventure, Undertone's Hypnotised, The Smiths' debut, etc. But who would agree one what and how to meddle in this way. Anyway I couldn't imagine considering these later songs or performances, even quite pretty ones like Achin' to Be, the equal of the better songs from the their classic period.

Wow, good post.

oh yes, fantastic post. i like the early punk ones more than you do, mig, and achin to be less than you do, but that's some super insightful writing. the unlikely swing of i will dare, yes. i'd add i.o.u. as a major song from please to meet me. that's the one where i think they really figured out how to marry their punk roots with their jones for big production. i wish they'd gone further down that particular road.

"I Don't Know" and "Nightclub Jitters" have pretty nifty arrangements too. "Never Mind" is also great.

This is where I seize the excuse to lobby for "Photo (PO Box)" which probably would've made side two stronger. (The Youtube comments agree!)

Why did they abandon "Photo (PO Box)"? They cut at least two takes as a "studio demo," but it doesn't seem to have been recorded during the actual album sessions. A shame, even though it sounds like they weren't quite finished with it yet, it's very close to a great and fully-realized song, they just needed to work on it a little bit more.

Really digging the cruddy tone on Westerberg's "Crackle & Drag". (And the non-cruddy sequel, for that matter.)

** Last days. Everything must go, etc, etc. **

Well, not quite. Plenty of time. But if you can get ballots in by end of Sunday in the very last timezone (between Alaska and New Zealand or wherever) that would be fabulous.

I think we're a whisker under 20 ballots at the moment, and there are a bunch of tied scores around the #40 mark in the main poll. Numbers are pretty tight all round really. Any one vote can still shake things up!

Mine is going to be so boring I almost don't want to bother. Mostly Hootenanny through Tim stuff.

My main problem with putting together a ballot for this is that my Replacements fandom was, for so many years, centred almost entirely around a single album: Pleased to Meet Me. I like most of Tim, some of Sorry Ma and Let It Be and one later single ("I'll Be You"), but I feel like that if I were to really rank their songs according to my level of enthusiasm, I'd have most of PtMM ("Nightclub Jitters" is the only thing on the record that I don't like at all) and then a handful of other songs. This doesn't necessarily have to be a problem--my Hendrix ballot was equally unbalanced in favour of Are You Experienced--but it makes putting a ballot together a bit less fun than it might be for other artists (even with Janet, I had five solid albums and some assorted singles to play with).

i felt a bit intimidated given how deep some of the fandom runs itt but the fun of the ballot & poll is that once you get out of your head, there’s no wrong answers

I feel like I used to be pretty big fan, but I just don’t care enough– just like The Replacements!

It's all good!

Funnily enough, I'm in the habit of running polls where I don't have a complete grasp of the oeuvre in question and have been in the mood for immersion. Don't tell anyone but a whole bunch track titles from even the most acclaimed records were drawing a blank until recently. I'm actually a way bigger fan than I was in, say, July. LOL.

Folks on Twitter pointed out that the Replacements lost ground in the new Rolling Stone 500 albums thingy, suggesting certain types of rock music are broadly falling from favour.

Previously
137 - Tim
241 - Let It Be

Now
156 - Let It Be

I did unranked it’s like picking your children

Here's the one I'm lobbying you all for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgm5GL38FiE