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

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

would like to suggest "One more chance to poll it all wrong" for the results thread title

Noted! :)

I guess THIS helps explain why "Swingin' Party" is easily the most streamed Replacements song, on Spotify at least. I had no idea.

I quite hope the work before LIB isn't ignored. Often ""Color Me Impressed" and "Kids Don't Follow" sound like my favorite songs.

You should definitely submit a ballot with them at #1 and #2 IMHO.

Gotta love the big key change in "Trouble on the Way". And that's Tommy singing apparently?! Soooo much discarded stuff from this era! [xxpost]

I have a ballot ready to go, just need to meditate on it a little longer

I knew I wasn't likely to choose many tracks from Pleased to Meet Me or All Shook Down but I was surprised how much I enjoyed Don't Tell a Soul

none of those albums will be in my top five

"Trouble" - yep, one of Tommy's.

Just remembered that it and the rest of the PtMM re-issue will be out next week!

wait, really?? shit! yeah!

Crypto you should vote, PTMM needs you :)

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

― terminators of endearment (VegemiteGrrl), Tuesday, September 29, 2020 8:41 PM (yesterday)bookmarkflaglink

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

― Erdős-szám 69 (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, September 29, 2020 9:12 PM (yesterday)bookmarkflaglink

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.

― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Tuesday, September 29, 2020 9:35 PM (yesterday)

fwiw i think this is a great thing! when we did the b-52's poll recently, i was only familiar with the first two albums + love shack. but by the end, i felt like i had a solid grasp on just about everything, and when deerhoof slides into the Song for a Future Generation on their recent (and awesome) Love-Lore suite of cover songs, it was so great to immediately recognize it and know it!

music: it's pretty cool sometimes

I'm at 23 on solo tracks and struggling to make a cut, if I send that in what happens to the tracks over 20?

Don't tell anyone but a whole bunch track titles from even the most acclaimed records were drawing a blank until recently.

I can tell. :-p

LOL. That occurred to me just after I posted.

To be fair, I've had all but the final two records around the house in some form for at least a decade. (Might even have been late 90s that I procured PTTM from the Salvation Army.) Casually picked them up and definitely listened to them a good few times. But sometimes at long intervals such that the finer details were a little hazy. :)

Dead Man's Pop piqued my interest anew!

in the weird position of knowing my top two but being at a complete loss at how to rank the other 28 lol

xxxpost re solo/other tracks: I guess I could keep adding tracks beyond 20 with the same weightings as the main poll. Unless someone objects? Anyone? Anyone?

Would happily add amendments if early voters want to join in too.

That side poll arguably needs more votes really so I'm hesitant to say no. LOL. Haven't added as many ballots there this week as I did early on.

I'm going to have to vote on tracks and albums but not on solo tracks, I don't know any of that material

a fun sub-poll might have been Top 5 Covers of Other Artists by the Replacements

I had to do some research to discover that "Run for the Country" is a cover

their worst cover might be "Black Diamond" for being awesome and thus contributing to the misapprehension that Kiss is a good band

I had to do some more research to discover that "Run for the Country" is actually not a cover, my mistake

I love their Black Diamond cover & included it on my ballot. Kiss *are* terrible but they are fun & playing Kiss songs is a rock n roll rite of passage

I agree, and that might make my ballot if I end up getting around to it. Like Brad C. I would leave out solo material since I never got too much out of it or dug to deep and don't feel like doing so now.

ha, i didn't know Black Diamond was a kiss song! it just missed my ballot, i do like their version quite a lot (not sure i've ever heard more than 1 or 2 kiss songs in a row)

James Redd, your characterization upthread of Bob Stinson as an "outside" guitarist is otm and helps me understand why I enjoy tracks like "Black Diamond" and "We're Comin' Out" more in 2020 than I did when the albums were comin' out ... what I used to hear as sloppy and sardonic now sounds more fierce and free

this is why the post-Bob Placemats have never quite done it for me

I think Let It Be by the Replacements would be better if you took off "Black Diamond" and put their cover of "Temptation Eyes" on its place. However, that's perhaps another thread topic.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Sunday, August 15, 2004 2:01 AM

I see what you did there and I like that one as well, but not nearly as much as "Black Diamond."

Sent in my albums/songs ballot last week. Today I’ve begun reviewing all the solo stuff...it surprised me when I realized how many solo Westerberg albums I had actually went to the record store to buy and are still with me. It wasn’t until the 49:00 project (only learned of its existence due to this thread) that he fell off my radar. At this point “Mr. Rabbit” will take 1st place, the rest are all kind of samey.

Talking about PTMM, it’s such an odd duck: big budget production combined with the absence of Bob (R.I.P. king) seemed to have had the effect of turning their 3rd tier rockers (or, filler, kind of) like Valentine and I Don’t Know and Red Red Wine into straight up duds. I feel like those songs’ equivalents on Tim, “Shooting Dirty Pool”, “Lay It Down Clown” highlight this dynamic: gussy them up and remove Bob (or at least, their Bobness via Paul’s imitation of him) and they too would cross over from classic to dud.

“Dose of Thunder” not “Shooting Dirty Pool”. Drugs, and songs about drugs: caramba!

Heck, I got turned away at the door for that secret Maxwell’s show back in the day so maybe I need to vote in this poll after all.

Hell, I love "Valentine." I think Slim himself lobbied heavily to get it on the album (and unbeknown to him, the label was also telling them the album was too short at ten songs under 30 minutes) - it was more or less his sole contribution to Pleased to Meet Me because they were already done recording by the time he joined the band. And I like "I Don't Know" for that matter too, but I have a slight preference for the raw studio demo that was a hidden track on All for Nothing/Nothing for All.

"Red Red Wine" definitely feels like filler, nothing special, but it's still catchy and goes down easy.

I had no idea anyone had anything against "Valentine" until just now. It'll be high up on my ballot.

Yeah "Valentine" is fine IMHO. It feels almost like it's all bridge, building anticipation for transition to the next section. (Or something. I'm no musicologist.)

You know what other vaguely wistful mid-paced track doesn't seem to have come up at all here? "Sixteen Blue". I really should give that more points somehow...

put together most of a ballot from their big three albums but i need to listen to the rest of their discog a few more times, i've never really spent much time with it until now. probably controversially i've found don't tell a soul to be much more enjoyable than its reputation would suggest and have found their pre-let it be stuff to be just too punk for my tastes.

are there any b-sides/outtakes/other non-album stuff that are must listens?

perfectly lethal mentioned upthread, but i like that one a lot too

Oooh. I reckon "Portland", from the DTAS era is pretty great. Amongst actual b-sides, the first one, "If Only You Were Lonely" is memorable. (And not even vaguely related to hardcore.)

Also: the two pre-LIB tracks Alfred mentioned should possibly be on every ballot. (Full disclosure: they're high on my own. LOL)

"Portland" will be on my ballot.

Is there truth to the legend that they/mgmt were trying to get Rod Stewert to record 'Sixteen Blue?'

Is there no love for Replacements For Sale here? I think it's become my favourite Replacements LP.