I hate ILoveMusic, it's got too many POLLS - Artist Poll #104 - THE REPLACEMENTS - RESULTS

"Lovelines" is urgent and key 'Mats, for exactly the reasons fcc describes and that's why I prefer the earlier albums to the later ones. Even the throwaways are thrown away in such a deliberate knife-edge balancing act that the those albums are perfectly lethalimperfect.

https://images2.imgbox.com/72/df/ljRdnAbz_o.jpg

#51
Fuck School
from Stink (1982)
Score: 79
Votes: 4 (1)
Youtube: audio track

Posting wude words on the internet in large typefaces FTW.

Their most eloquent chorus, surely.

What's the matter, buddy?

:)

Alright. That's all I had planned just yet. Might post a mere trickle of entries over the weekend but weekend rollouts are generally not terribly successful.

I just remembered that Jim Dickinson produced some Poi Dog stuff #OneThread

perfectly imperfect

would work as a title for a comp of all the stuff that didn't make the other comps. would work for the other comps, too, come to think of it.

The Poi Dog guys said Dickinson told them he could never get a clean take out of the 'Mats because they were too many sheets to the wind so he had to splice a few takes together #OneThread

The two guitar players freaked out when Dickinson played at SXSW with his kids backing him up and Luther Dickinson was on fire. #OT

Summary so far 
                                                             pts    vts   #1s  
51  Fuck School             Stink (June 1982)                 79      4     1
52  Anywhere's Better Than  Don't Tell a Soul (January 1989)  78      6     0
53  I'll Buy                Tim (October 1985)                73      5     0
54  Don't Ask Why           SMFTTOTT (August 1981)            70      3     0
55  Love Lines              Hootenanny (April 1983)           65      5     0
56  Nowhere Is My Home      Tim era miscellany                61      4     0
57  Kick Your Door Down     SMFTTOTT (August 1981)            58      5     0
58  God Damn Job            Stink (June 1982)                 58      4     0
59  Asking Me Lies          Don't Tell a Soul (January 1989)  58      3     0
60  Buck Hill               Hootenanny (April 1983)           57      6     0

Big respect to whoever voted "fuck school" their #1

51 fuck school
52 fuck here
53 fuck you buying
54 fuck asking why
55 fuck normal ways of finding love
56 fuck homes
57 fuck doors
58 fuck jobs
59 fuck lies
60 buck hill

xp seriously, I wanna know who that is and how much student loan debt they have

That’s a brilliant ranking.

respect

whoever voted it as number one is truly in touch with the spirit of the band

Didn't vote for it because I knew someone else would.

Glad God Damn Job made the cut, it was my no. 31 and hated to cut it.

Red light, red light, cut it!

I didn't vote for "Asking Me Lies," but I actually like it. I used to hate it, but Dead Man's Pop became a good reason to re-evaluate it. The new mix is an improvement - it actually sounds more like the 'Mats proper - but it made a hell of a lot more sense knowing they were big Jackson 5 fans. So the 'Mats do their take of a Jackson 5 number, and I can dig what Westerberg hears in their music because it's pretty much what I hear in a good Jackson 5 number.

I never saw the 'Mats back in the day, but when I saw the "reunion," one of the highlights was when they did "Nowhere Is My Home," and even better a lot of people around me at least knew enough of the words to shout along with the first chorus. Not bad for something that criminally languished as an obscure, out-of-print cut for several decades.

I don't know if the master or multi-track tapes wound up in the river, but it's a shame it only exists as a so-so dub from a vinyl copy. It could really use a better mix to bring out some of the muscle, but it's still a great track, I love it - the guitar riff, the choruses, everything. It really should have made Tim.

if you write the lyric "at a Mexican bar mitzvah for 700 years" then you are good at writing lyrics

Just a couple more to consider at your leisure...

https://images2.imgbox.com/99/16/bg26ZCqE_o.jpg

#50
We'll Inherit the Earth
from Don't Tell a Soul (1989)
Score: 79
Votes: 6 (0)
Youtube: audio track (DTAS)
Youtube: audio track (Matt Wallace mix)

https://images2.imgbox.com/1b/b9/minQTvEg_o.jpg

#49
Nightclub Jitters
from Pleased to Meet Me (1987)
Score: 81
Votes: 6 (0)
Youtube: audio track

Don't mind "Nightclub Jitters" but it didn't make the cut.

Heh, had to go back and check my ballot since for all I know it could've snuck on at the bottom.

“I’ll Buy” didn’t make my ballot because it always reminded me of that Del Fuegos beer commercial which had come out a few months before Tim was released. I always conflate the two in my head.

I voted Asking Me Lies, it's a fun Jackson 5/Lynyrd Skynyrd (another influence) homage, and I love Tommy's backing vocals on it.
This seems like the 'pick your favorite filler' part of the poll, and one man's 'Asking Me Lies' is another's 'I'll Buy'.

Tim was my introduction, listened to the whole album blind, and the “you had me at” moment may very well have been I’ll Buy’s “Movies are for retards like me and Maybelline.” Just absolute perfection in the way it rolls off the tongue.

Lol, campreverb.

I searched for “Del Fuegos beer commercial” and yup, the 2 are definite family. Derivative af but I really don’t care, I just feel exactly how I should feel when I hear it.

oh man "We'll Inherit the Earth" is not filler to me! I listened to the versions on Dead Man's Pop today & I still prefer the original mix, but the demo is excellent as well. I like the Matt Wallace mix less. It's another cosmic-themed song, about life & death stuff, sacred & profane. It's hard to think that Sorry Ma was only eight years earlier, because the lyric sounds like the kind of thing that earlier band would have mocked relentlessly. But this song is relentless too, a pump your fist anthem even though your hands are in your pockets. It reminds me of another would-be anthem from that year, the Jesus & Mary Chain's "Between Planets".

Asking me lies was #13 for me, I love it. It sounds dated in a good way, like happier times... butterfly train never ends, never ends.

I liked "We'll Inherit the Earth" when the album first came out but over time it's kind of faded for me — feels too much like a deliberate sequel to "Bastards of Young," but without its humor and specificity.

"Nightclub Jitters" is the first of my picks to make the rollout. I love that song. It's ersatz cocktail jazz in the same way "Buck Hill" is ersatz surf music and "Waitress in the Sky" is ersatz honky-tonk. Ersatz is one of my favorite Replacements modes, because they're always better than you think they'd be at whatever form they try, but also still sloppy and Replacements-y about. (The loss of that hang-loose make-it-up vibe is what most mars the last two albums for me.)

Plus "Nightclub Jitters" is a catchy tune, a good groove and has some classic Westerberg lines. "They say now don't be stranger/ That really don't matter to me/ I'd be willing to wager/ That it don't matter much if we keep in touch."

Replacements-y about it, that should say.

Do you guys remember what Bruce Springsteen said to The Rock Bottom Remainders?

"Take my Little Steven, please!"

Ha, lol, no. It was something like, "You guys are pretty good. But not too good. But don't get any better, or you'll just be another band."

I love this story.
https://blog.thecurrent.org/2012/09/when-bob-dylan-met-replacements-new-yorker-unearths-priceless-decades-old-anecdote/

Haha! F*#% him if he can’t take a joke.

looooooool

that's amazing. getting burned by dylan in person is still a lifetime achievement imo, especially for performing Like a Rolling Pin

"asking Me lies" always struck me as "uh, the label says the Chili Peppers are doing OK-ish on radio (this being 89), so we'll do our not-even-half-assed version…"

looooooool

that's amazing. getting burned by dylan in person is still a lifetime achievement imo, especially for performing Like a Rolling Pin

"asking Me lies" always struck me as "uh, the label says the Chili Peppers are doing OK-ish on radio (this being 89), so we'll do our not-even-half-assed version…"

Weekends are not really all *that* quiet are they!

I'm thinking (i) leisurely get to 41 before Monday, (ii) 40-21 on Monday, (iii) 20-1 on Tues, if that's agreeable. (USA time; Tues and Wed for antipodeans.)

I'll post a couple more now.

https://images2.imgbox.com/01/f0/5vK8nH80_o.jpg

#48
Sadly Beautiful
from All Shook Down (1990)
Score: 87
Votes: 7 (0)
Youtube: audio track

https://images2.imgbox.com/1b/20/kq2xTFCX_o.jpg

#47
Treatment Bound
from Hootenanny (1983)
Score: 90
Votes: 8 (0)
Youtube: audio track

Didn’t make the cut but I like.

The latter. The former I merely tolerate

Going back a bit: I believe I had "We'll Inherit the Earth" at the bottom of my ballot largely cuz it's dense and hazy in the Matt Wallace mix. Have no particular recollection of hearing it before Dead's Man Pop though, and working backwards to the original album version was a profoundly underwhelming experience. The bare bones of the song are possibly not great, to be honest.