The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

Classic, so ya know. (though Dan's got me doubting some songs on Tim if not Let It Be, which IS perfect - the best rock album evah, goddamnit).

I usually never tell people I like em - statements like "If you never liked the 'Mats (GOD I hate that name) you never liked rock'n'roll" piss me off too - but I adore the seemingly (genuinely?) tossed-off feel of those records, their goofy, un-self-conscious humanity. Let It Be is like a classic Howard Hawks film, or an old issue of Spiderman, or a great Fitzgerald short story: both shallow and strangely deep, timelessly rewarding in a very mysterious way, and very American.

The Black Diamond cover is HI-larious and great IMO. But Let It Be is simply my fave album ever, so I'm kinda biased.

-- Anthony Miccio (anthonymicci...), June 15th, 2003.

You are quite obviously a man with marvelous taste. I only prefer The Clash's s/t and Funhouse to the glorious Let It Be.

Clash and Fun House both make my top ten, Francis, but I think the Mat's side 2 is stronger than the Stooges, and some of Mick Jones's songs on the Clash keep them from upstaging the Mats.

In the movie, two Replacements songs are used by the prom band..

I had this to ask on the ILE thread (no answer yet..)

I was wondering if Michael Stipe used that [Replacements song] because for 20 years he may have been saying that the Replacements were the ultimate teen movie prom band. .. Or was it just that they were looking for some music and decided that "Inherit the Earth" was a good song to use. I'm choosing the former because they used "Skyway" also.

Is this the first ILM hive mind accusation? (Not that I haven't made similar comments from time to time.)

but, um, stipe didn't direct the movie, so he may have had nothing to do with it. or maybe he just suggested it to the director, who was also the writer, who did the writing before stipe had anything to do with it.

but then again the movie really sucked, and the idea of the christian prom band playing "we'll inherit the earth" was one of the only things about it that got even a half-smile out of me.

Yeah that album sounds like shit even though there are some good songs on it. I don't know if they got Huey Lewis to produce it or anything, but it should not be anywhere near anyone's canon. (x-post)

Also I find sorry ma...the trash to be classic. Better than any Ramones album to me, even.

And and and...but hell, I was a white suburban American teenage male in the mid-1980s, my judgment is hopelessly skewed...

Totally. 'sorry ma' was my first placemats album, purchased at Big Star Records, a second hand place that opened in Wimbledon just as i hit 15 or so. The place sold me my first Dinosaur and Husker Du albums too, just as the rise of Grunge piqued my interest in these bands, and got me into OBSESSING about Stevie Wonder and Funkadelic, as opposed to merely being aware that they existed.

But 'sorry ma' is killer. i was 17 or so when i got it, and had the time on my hands to completely immerse myself in it. and, yes, it is 'power trash', a messy speedjag of a record, but there's so much heart to it as well. 'don't ask why' is an *amazing* love/break-up song, while the sense of pig-headed youthful frustration that pervades the album is so killer; and 'johnny's gonna die' is a perfect slice of nihilistic melancholy...

still prefer 'let it be' now, though.

The worship that surrounds them also smacks of the worst sort of Beatles fan, the type of stuff that makes me wanna just sit down and listen to the records by my own damn self, with my own damn thoughts, without any Greatest Of All Time mythos. "Mats," indeed.

Fave story about these guys: My friend Carol (R.I.P.) and I once watched them from a staircase beside the stage at a place called Going Bananas under an ice cream shop in Richmond, Va. Tommy's bass strap broke a few minutes into the show and he called for a shoelace. Carol pulled one of hers out, and he tied everything up after handing her some crumpled ones from his pocket. He sought her out after the show, and they traded back.

TS: 'The Shit Hits the Fans' v. 'Like Flies on Sherbert.'

"The worship that surrounds them also smacks of the worst sort of Beatles fan, the type of stuff that makes me wanna just sit down and listen to the records by my own damn self, with my own damn thoughts, without any Greatest Of All Time mythos. "Mats," indeed."

PHHHHHHHFFFTTT.

The 'Mats were about as classic as classic gets. Their best stuff was so brilliant, so much better than so many other bands of the same genre that they more than made up for their own mediocre stuff.

Take the hatuhz outside in the backyard and let them have their own darn thread!

Totally fucking classic.

Classic even when they sucked.

Classic even when they put out shit.

neverending source of funny stories, too.

Dont trust anyone who doesnt get the Replacements.