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

sorry ma, forgot to take out the trash kind of rules! it's a little inconsistent, but kick your door down, customer, takin' a ride, shutup...

i am not a replacements live footage connoisseur, but i thought this video was great too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHBE7o_WWsI

there's a second set, too

Seeing as I didn't explain it very well up top in English, the proposed scoring in is now in the spreadsheet in the second post. Just to the right of the tracks list. And I changed the side-project weights such that they follow the same basic pattern as the main tracks poll.

Clemenza: just confirming, the total points in a ranked list of twenty is 452, so take that as your total if you want go with bespoke weightings.

Sent mine in earlier--20 songs, 452 points.

Some of the Sorry Ma tracks that stick with longest after listening are ones that depart a little from the, er, formula. "Kick Your Door Down", "Johnny's Gonna Die", "Otto", etc. And "Go" on Stink... which is kinda amazing. The wimpy tracks, probably, LOL.

Oh, *three* ballots in already, in fact. Nice. Wasn't going to bother checking that mailbox for a few days yet.

Go" on Stink... which is kinda amazing.

so far, "go" has been my biggest "discovery" of this poll, it is fantastic.

also, i've always thought of pleased to meet me as a step down from tim and let it be, but i'm really loving it this morning. "the ledge" sounds like a guest spot from kurt cobain, at times

another connection/influence i didn't pick up on until recently was fogerty/CCR, down to sometimes pronouncing r's as w's. it seems like an overt nod at some times ("huwwy up! huwwy up!" in can't hardly wait) but other times, in live shows and stuff, it seems to bleed through as part of his dna.

i dunno, i might be overreading all that

“Go” is incredible, and PTMM might be — some days — my favourite ‘Mats record.

Stoked for this poll!

i think the slightly slicked up production on PTMM used to bother me a little more. even today, i think i like the rougher alternate version of Can't Hardly Wait on the expanded PTMM better than the album version (i like the slowed down acoustic version on the expanded Tim most of all).

but for the most part, especially the first side and the last couple on the other, it's so good!

for some reason it was "i don't know" that slapped me on the head, this morning. i didn't even remember that song. i can't figure out if it's an extremely simple song or if it's actually very strange - it makes me feel like an aggressive 1930s detective on amphetamines, and i'm not even sure what that means.

I was going to submit an album list--I could rank their albums compared to each other--but the truth is, I don't care for at least a third to a half of every one of them. The one album of theirs I almost uniformly love is the Rhino compilation, Don't You Know Who I Think I Was?. 20 songs, just like my ballot, and the overlap is 13 songs.

I don't think they were very good at telling great from good from mediocre--or, more likely, they just didn't care. And I totally realize that that was intrinsic to why they were so great. They didn't fuss a lot trying to make a Perfect Album.

Please! I say these things as a huge fan (one of my ten favourite bands for sure--not top five). I'm not trying to be a downer on this thread. Picking out my 15 favourite songs took approximately a minute, those songs are so good.

I didn’t get into The Replacements until the last 10 years or so. I knew Paul’s solo songs from the Singles soundtrack which I liked, but never dug any deeper or even came across any Replacements through friends or radio

Which is a weird regret I have, just in terms of knowing how much I would have dug them if I had come across them in high school or college, they are just so completely my bag as far as lyrics/music goes.

Confession: playing/singing “Alex Chilton” on Rockband was when the floodgates opened & I bought their whole discography in like a week

Can one vote for the All Shook Down demos in the album category? They were released on the 2008 expanded edition but never on their own, afaict. It's a toss-up between that and Dead Man's Pop for the #5 slot, for me.

Confession: playing/singing “Alex Chilton” on Rockband was when the floodgates opened & I bought their whole discography in like a week

same deal with me and steely dan's "do it again" on guitar hero. as i was learning the solo and hearing it over and over (and drinking heavily), i gained a new appreciation for the vibe of the song that i never understood before

Can one vote for the All Shook Down demos in the album category?

This is tricky. I'm inclined to say no, given they weren't packaged as a standalone entity. Dead Man's Pop seems way less problematic. Seems slightly unfortunate for the ASD material: if they did transform it into a Dead Man's Pop-like package a year from now I guess I would be saying it was eligible. :(

Somewhat related: any objections to Stink being treated as an album for these purposes?

Wait, someone doesn’t consider Stink an album?!

Haha. It's just that it's *checks* 14:24 minutes long and frequently listed as an EP. Thought I best raise it now to eliminate any possibility of "wait, we were allowed to vote Stink?" during the rollout. I may even vote for it myself!

Fun fact: 7 ballots so far. 72 distinct Replacements tracks and 30 solo/side-project tracks have appeared.

I knuckled down & did some homework this weekend; now have 30 tracks locked & loaded...

ballot should be forthcoming this wk

Rhino may put together a disc of demos or alternates for All Shook Down like they did with Pleased to Meet Me, but I doubt they'll do a brand-new, full-on remix like they did with Dead Man's Pop - that was a special case because not only were they unhappy with the final result, Westerberg and Matt Wallace discussed in detail what a remix would entail many times over a long period of time and they had the original rough mixes as physical foundation. Tommy Stinson actually believes All Shook Down is their best album, so he definitely would not see a need to "fix" it.

Re: the Replacement's imperfect construction of their albums, I agree with this to a limited extent. I wish Bob Stinson hadn't vetoed "You're Getting Married" from Hootenanny, the circulating full-band outtake is a great, lost track, but otherwise there's nothing I'd change about any of the Twin/Tone records, I love them all and would listen to them start-to-finish. Even "If Only You Were Lonely" feels perfect as a left-field B-side gem rather than an album track.

It's only the Sire years where it gets a little frustrating for me, but the reissues have more or less rectified any problems with track selection. On Tim, I swapped out "Dose of Thunder" and "Lay It Down Clown" with "Nowhere Is My Home" and "Can't Hardly Wait" (from All for Nothing/Nothing for All). On Pleased to Meet Me, to avoid redundancy I swapped out the horns-and-strings "Can't Hardly Wait" for "Birthday Gal" (again from All for Nothing/Nothing for All) - I do wish "P.O. Box (Photo)" progressed beyond demo form, that would've been great to add. And thankfully we now have Dead Man's Pop to go with "Portland," "We Know the Night" and "Wake Up," so with some adjustments, those first three Sire albums now hang together for me from end-to-end. Some songs are better than others, but I still find plenty to like about the "lesser" tracks.

It seems particularly insane that the likes of "Portland" and "Wake Up" were discarded circa DTAS. Both of those, plus the aforementioned "Nowhere Is My Home" and "P.O. Box (Photo)" remain on my shortlist...

Yeah, but it sounds like they were scared shitless on what to put out next because their career was very much on the line. If the two prior Sire albums had, say, easily gone gold within a year (i.e. doubled their modest sales), I wonder if that would've taken off enough pressure for them to be much more comfortable with where they wanted to go musically-speaking.

trying to figure out what i think of don't tell a soul and dead man's pop?

i keep going back forth on 'talent show' - again, i hear the springsteen influence and can't tell if it's supposed to be an homage or not (the verse melody of 'dancing in the dark' runs throughout it, and he hums it at times after the choruses)

Solo-wise, will be fun to review what I have (most all of Paul's cd/digital stuff, Tommy's Perfect and first Bash & Pop, though no Chris, Slim or Bob albums). Pretty sure "Good Day" will be my number one. That and "Sunrise Always Listens" have been great cushions over the years.

Reading this thread is a good spur to pre-order the PTMM set.

i liked the Paul & Juliana Hatfield collab album from a few years ago (2016? 2014?) .. released as The I Don’t Cares

the tracks where they harmonize together are the highlights for me

i love Good Day by Tommy! i will def be votong for that

voting even

oooo, first poll that's lured me back in in a while. I will definitely vote. On the solo stuff I need to go back to those Chris Mars albums, haven't listened in a while.

So if I'm reading this right, Chinese Democracy qualifies as a Replacements project, right?

Solo projects was easy for me. I've listened to Westerberg's twin albums Stereo & Mono far, far more than anything else they've done outside of the band, and that was pretty much my list. I still remember when it came out and Westerberg did those in-store appearances (including Virgin in Chicago, where a fan handed him a lyric sheet when he forgot a 'Mats classic mid-song).

Ha, my first off-the-top-of-my-head cull gave me exactly 30 songs. Probably leaving some out tho.

So if I'm reading this right, Chinese Democracy qualifies as a Replacements project, right?

I changed that "central creative or songwriting role" sentence up the top a comical number of times. It initially ended with "(so possibly not G'n'R or Soul Asylum, etc)" or similar. Stinson definitely gets a few songwriting credits on Chinese Democracy so... maybe?! Let your conscience be your guide...

Make sure to give Bash & Pop's first album a spin before you submit a ballot full of Westerberg solo trax.

I kind of have Can't Hardly Wait like this.
1. Horns and Strings PTMM
2. Blistering TSHTF version
3. Tim-acoustic take

14 Songs is for the most part such a dreary affair.

xp

what is TSHTF?

i only knew of the horns and strings PTMM, Tim-acoustic, and Tim-electric

TSHTF = The Shit Hits The Fans, a cassette-only release in 1985. When I was 12, my grandmother took me to the mall one day and said I could pick out one tape to buy. I really wanted TSHTF, but was fairly certain there was no way she'd let me buy it. Now it's fucking $40 on discogs.

cassette-only live release, I should say

haha, that's great. do you remember what you got instead?

Was it Television, The Blow Up?

Or The Buzzcocks, Lest We Forget?

Or maybe even Precise Modern Lovers Order?

"here kid - have this worthless old record that doesn't even have a label on it, just says velvet underground and dolph or something

btw - apologies if this was covered upthread, but will votes for different song versions (e.g., 'can't hardly wait') be combined? replacements seem to have several songs like that with several excellent but very different versions. i'm cool with either way, just wanted to know before voting

"here kid - have this worthless old record that doesn't even have a label on it, just says velvet underground and dolph or something

frick! I forgot to include this in my paul solos. oh well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tAoDUG92n4

Kudos on the poll title! I'm not going to vote, my interest drops precipitously in anything they did once they left Twin/Tone, and I feel like I'd be doing the later albums a disservice by ignoring them. Having just reread Trouble Boys though my interest in reading about those songs is high, greater than actually hearing them.

I suspect the age demographics of ILM will tend to skew voting toward the later albums.

I got on the bus (sans kisses) with Hootenanny and got off after Tim ... before voting I'm going to check out the later albums, some of which I've never heard, but I'm sure my ballot will be Twin/Tone heavy.

I'm not sure how many pre-Let it Be tracks will make my ballot, to be honest. Aside from some scattered moments on Sorry Ma, I never cared much for those.

"Kids Don't Follow" from Stink is like a dream collaboration with the wipers sound from the same exact era, it's blistering

legend has it if you listen really closely to the cops breaking up the party at the beginning, you can hear 11-year-old Winona Horowitz doing a drug

wow, almost exactly 10 hours later!!

tbh, such punctuality seems at odds with the spirit of the replacements, but still, i'm here for it

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