HUSKER DU V. Replacements

for rock bands i hate and reject the whole "i wrote this song thing"...why is a bassline or a drum part not part of the songwriting? that's bullshit, no band i've ever been in ever split songwriting credits even if someone brought in a majority of the main changes, etc

R.E.M. had the right idea, splitting all songwriting/publishing 4 ways, regardless of who contributed what.

There's an awesome bit in the Dixie Chicks doc where they're recording with Rick Rubin and his hacks, including RHCP drummer Chad Smith. At some point Smith notes that the band splits songwriting royalties four ways and the Dixie Chicks look at him like he's a martian.

Didn't the semisonic dude write that dixie chicks song anyway?

Semisonic dude has written everything.

loved this one off grant's last https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTH4Zu8gleA

That was the first album they'd written most of the material for, though. The issue hadn't come up before; only 2-3 songs total on their previous records were written by them.

And yep, Dan Wilson is credited as co-writer.

xxp

xp - oh yeah i love that one too!! that whole album is top notch imo. would listen to 100x over anything mould or westerberg has done in the last 5 years.

(sorry guys)

for rock bands i hate and reject the whole "i wrote this song thing"...why is a bassline or a drum part not part of the songwriting? that's bullshit, no band i've ever been in ever split songwriting credits even if someone brought in a majority of the main changes, etc
Yup. Levon Helm complained about Robbie Robertson taking claim for songs that all members of The Band had a hand in creating. Robertson gets full writing credit for "Chest Fever," even though it's Garth Hudson that everyone hears.

If Bob was indeed replacing Greg's bass parts (I've never seen mention of this -- who is playing bass then?) I guess I can sorta see his reluctance to share writing credit. Although, man, the dude's still 1/3 of your band. The conflicting stories/bad blood are the main reason I don't see them EVER reuniting for anything.

Procol Harum organist Matthew Fisher is now co-credited with "A Whiter Shade of Pale" from his lawsuit a few years ago. I thought/hoped that would open the door for many more such suits, but apparently not (or not yet).

xp

for rock bands i hate and reject the whole "i wrote this song thing"...why is a bassline or a drum part not part of the songwriting? that's bullshit, no band i've ever been in ever split songwriting credits even if someone brought in a majority of the main changes, etc

― Mississippi Butt Hurt (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, April 19, 2012 11:36 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

R.E.M. had the right idea, splitting all songwriting/publishing 4 ways, regardless of who contributed what.

― Waterloo? Oh, we've sunsetted that. (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, April 19, 2012 11:41 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, if you generate your songs by jamming (as i assume RHCP did, esp when starting out), that's probably the coolest and most honorable way to go about it. i'm just saying that if you expect a chunk of the songwriting credit/money, it's sort of on you to make sure that the people you're playing with see eye-to-eye about it.

i mean the whole argument is kind of -god stop me - rockist because it's privileging things like chord changes and vocal melodies over rhythm. creating a drum beat is *writing music* every bit as much as throwing together some major chords and strumming them is.

U2 has always been a four way split, too, right?

Wow, from that Magnet piece:

Buck: As far as I could tell, Bob went his entire career with the Replacements without knowing the names of any of the songs. He didn’t know what key they were playing in when the song started and didn’t know what key they were in when the song ended, but he sure could play some great stuff in the middle.

That's hilarious.

upper mississippi OTM

what if you tell the drummer exactly what to play

xp

Buck: As far as I could tell, Bob went his entire career with the Replacements without knowing the names of any of the songs. He didn’t know what key they were playing in when the song started and didn’t know what key they were in when the song ended, but he sure could play some great stuff in the middle.

that's junkies for ya

what if you tell the drummer exactly what to play

xp

― Jilly Boel and the Eltones (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, April 19, 2012 2:12 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

drum hitler gets full publishing!

i mean the whole argument is kind of -god stop me - rockist because it's privileging things like chord changes and vocal melodies over rhythm. creating a drum beat is *writing music* every bit as much as throwing together some major chords and strumming them is.

Totally agree. Also, there's tons of songs where the most famous part wasn't even written by the "main" songwriter ("Light My Fire" comes to mind).

Al Kooper would have found it absurd for Dylan to give him credit for the organ hook in "Like a Rolling Stone." He said once in an interview -- well, that's my job! That's what I was hired for!

i see a difference between being a sideman and being in a band, dylan's played with jeez 100s of ppl? a band is a band IMO.

If you open it up to other areas of music, you'd have to wonder why the hour-long version of "My Favorite Things" on Coltrane Live In Japan is only credited to Rodgers and Hammerstein. Pretty sure they didn't have any input into much of what went on there.

haha yeah or David S. Ware's "cover" of "The Way We Were"

well, covers/interpretations without the original author's involvement are a whole other kettle of fish. i kind of discourage any band i'm in from playing covers, partly because i know i'd get so into doing an original arrangement that i'd be like fuck it, i'm going to take my ideas and write a whole new song with them.

my band is opening for a Replacements documentary next month. excited, but I just found out we're supposed to play an entire set of Mats tunes and we know zero at this point.

the guy who did the mat documentary is doing one on grant hart now bringing things around to this thread

we're supposed to play an entire set of Mats tunes and we know zero at this point.

― Darin, Thursday, April 19, 2012 8:58 PM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha actually sounds like you're perfectly prepared to do a Mats set

That seems appropriate in a way
(xp)

I can honestly say I've never heard Grant's bass on a Husker Du record.

― Waterloo? Oh, we've sunsetted that. (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, April 19, 2012 1:11 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like the weirdest thing i've ever heard

....because Grant played drums.

no, no, aside from the typo

I have argued exactly this in regard to New Day Rising somewhere around here, against complaints that it sounds terrible. It doesn't sound terrible. It's a genuinely great record, and so is Zen Arcade, but Husker Du never really got the production they deserved. IMO, everything they did could be productively remastered, perhaps even remixed to advantage. "The band" might have wanted Grant's bass to disappear in the mix, but I seriously doubt that Grant did. And the wall of screaming cymbal/guitar hiss, however bracing it might be, could definitely use a bit more differentiation.

― yuppie bullshit chocolate blogbait (contenderizer), Thursday, April 19, 2012 12:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I can honestly say I've never heard Grant's bass on a Husker Du record.

― Waterloo? Oh, we've sunsetted that. (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, April 19, 2012 12:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Drawing attention to the typo?

Maybe he thinks by bass somebody means bass drum

well in any event *greg's* bass playing is maybe my favorite thing abt husker du

i loved grant's handlebar mustache

this is like the weirdest thing i've ever heard

i figured Tarfumes was tweaking my nose cuz grant/greg brain spaz

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/252/6697223.jpg

to the barbershop born

Just listened to "New Day Rising" and can confirm that there is indeed a bass on that track, but it doesn't come in until late in the song, and I had to wear headphones to be sure. Once it does show up it sticks around for "The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill" and presumably the rest of the album.

Grants the best most natural pop songwriter of these guys by a mile

― Mississippi Butt Hurt (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, April 19, 2012 8:17 AM (13 hours ago)

How is this intended? His inclination is more naturally toward a pop idiom? He has more natural ability in this area?

Yeah just natural at great hooks and melodies....like grant seems so effortless in his songwriting, even the best of his new stuff......like I'm not expressing myself well but mould and westerberg are very ”try hard” to me...but grant just seems like he just taps into something natural in the way he is

Yeah, I don't see at all why someone like Mould would be singled out for that criticism. If it's valid to level that at Mould, I wouldn't know where you would begin or end with making the same criticism of others.

"Diane" is a song that's all about Greg Norton's bassline.

I was wondering, wrt to the discussion upthread about the late 80s shift away from hardcore to that 70s sound, whether the Replacements might in some way be progenitors of that. Not that they ever sounded like Sabbath. But they certainly had no shame in liking and playing 70s hard rock and classic rock in an era when it was distinctly unfashionable in the underground. Must have been noted by other alternative scene musicians.

i remember evan dando back in melody maker circa shame about ray identifying dinosaur jr as the band that lifted the veil of shame from the 70s hard rock stuff for him and his contempos... lee ranaldo told me something similar, wrt you're living all over me, reclaiming uncool reference points and influences for the post-hardcore age. they ref'd the 70s hard rock stuff with a little less archness than the 'mats, say, rewriting 'cat scratch fever' as a tune about a dude getting a boner.

Makes sense. I guess Replacements were actually in the hardcore age, and odd ones out, rather than blazing a new trail after that scene faded.

the mats' take on hardcore, though, was so much looser than the drill-tight thrash of minor threat or the brawny malevolence of flag - you could hear a lot of, y'know, rock'n'roll within 'sorry ma forget to take out the trash' (which is a wonderful, wonderful album), a looseness and lightness that certainly owes more to, say, the faces than husker du.

Course. That's accepted within saying they were odd ones out. Love that old PW line about songwriting - he would only play things with melody, Bob would only play things that rocked. Hence the sound.

the mats' take on hardcore, though, was so much looser than the drill-tight thrash of minor threat or the brawny malevolence of flag

That's one place in Mould's book where he does single out Grant for praise - he refers to Minor Threat and similar hardcore bands as "oom-pah hardcore" because of their fast polka-like drumbeats, and compliments Hart for being able to give the Huskers some variety and swing.

hells yeah... 'land speed record' is like an album full of cro-magnon two-chord riffs sent skyward by grant's crazed dervish drumming and bob's speed-fuelled soloing.

i guess the thing about the mats, re: hardcore, is it was always obvious from even their earliest days that pw could write, y'know, actual songs. you wouldn't necessarily think, listening to 'land speed', that bob would end up writing stuff like 'if i can't change your mind'

i figured Tarfumes was tweaking my nose cuz grant/greg brain spaz

I was indeed. fwiw, not only can I hear Greg's bass playing loud and clear, but it's always impressive.