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

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.

Was just listening to Jeff Tweedy’s ‘Ballad of the Opening Band’ and probably should have had a Slim track on the solo ballot. Songs for Slim is pretty fun.

"treatment bound" is an alltime fave band-on-the-road song though i've always been confused by the implication that twin/tone records wanted a hit or even knew what a hit was. "yesterday's trash/too bored to thrash" is them in a nutshell.

i like that the top row of songs on the hootenanny cover have all now placed in the poll. next up: take me down to the hospital, run it and mr. whirly, none of which i voted for, all of which would make me smile.

the first time "we'll inherit the earth" made sense to me was when a christian rock band played it in the mediocre christian high school satire "saved" starring a 20something macaulay culkin. it's a good christian rock high school band song.

Love Treatment Bound so much. “Duluth to Madison!”

I missed this poll entirely — it’s for the best, I do not need to revisit my Replacements-loving years — but looking at this thread makes me realize I know their songs backward/forward/upside down because I listened to them so much.

I haven’t followed the rollout but I hope “Shiftless When Idle” places high — I still feel that one in a real and visceral and FUN way (compared to most of their songs)

Looks like I'm going to have to see "Saved"!

i like that the top row of songs on the hootenanny cover have all now placed in the poll. next up: take me down to the hospital, run it and mr. whirly, none of which i voted for, all of which would make me smile.

Still not sure if I prefer Love Lines or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgYXBmFH6Vk

Here, have another one.

https://images2.imgbox.com/f2/14/4MET6eXk_o.jpg

#46
I'm in Trouble
from Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (1981)
Score: 94
Votes: 6 (0)
Youtube: audio track

One of my all time fave Mats tracks, always makes me want to pogo.

That one I had at 11.

I just noticed that my list was missing a 19 because I placed 2 songs at 18. Flip a coin to break the tie, Nag!?

Ha! I was going to say that they would have been allocated scores according to their position in the list regardless. But I see your list was in a fairly, er, unconventional format. Maybe I just fed it in with scores in the order they happened to assume when I'd made a ordered, vertical list out of it, as there was only a one point difference at that level and it was already taking ages. :) The 1981 track got 14 points and the 1989 track got 13. The opposite scoring would not have changed the aggregate rankings, you'll be relieved to know!

That’s confusing to me but it sounds like you’ve got it worked out. Sorry to add to your troubles. This has been a welcome distraction from...stuff going on here in Trumpland.

Very welcome distraction, thanks Nag.

XP: It couldn't have been unduly troublesome or I would have remembered it more clearly. Just guessing really. :)

"Sadly Beautiful" was on my long list, didn't make my ballot but it's a fine sturdy song. Maybe a little too sturdy, Westerberg got more deliberate about his songwriting as he went.

Deliberate is a good way to put it

Many xposts to LL

i am flying the flag for Shiftless When Idle, it ranked high in my ballot!!

With 60 songs drawn from 7 albums, an EP and some rarities, I’m thinking we’ll see plenty of tracks from most of the albums. I will be shocked if Shiftless When Idle doesn’t make it.

"Sadly Beautiful" and "Treatment Bound" both made my ballot.

"Treatment Bound" is essential, one of the great autobiographical tracks in rock, and it's perfect that a more "polished," better sounding studio master turned out to be inferior to the lo-fi basement recording that was rightfully chosen for the LP. It hits the right balance of half-assness where too much would test one's patience and not enough would lose too much charm.

"Sadly Beautiful" is one of the few tracks where I can understand Tommy's argument on why All Shook Down was their best album. When I first heard it was inspired by Marianne Faithfull, I mistakenly thought it was a song about her, and without paying close attention to the lyrics, I thought "okay, a pretty song, very nice." But when I listened to it again and paid more attention to the words, I had to question who was this really to, and then eventually who was really singing it - so it became a sentimental father-to-daughter song, then a song from the point-of-view of an older woman. None of this is an innovation, far from it. But Westerberg's performance turns it into another stunning display of empathy (for me, a key strength that always set him apart from his peers). I don't even think he put that much thought into it, it probably just came to him naturally. I found out later that he wrote the song for Faithfull because Sire's A&R dept. contacted him and asked him to write one for her. He chose as the subject someone he knew - a simple, logical idea, but using something that personal as a starting point may have made an enormous difference. When Faithfull didn't take it, he said he "realized it was too powerful to throw away" and rather than make any obvious adjustments (i.e. make it from a father's POV), I think he decided to keep it as is without dwelling on it too much and just perform it honestly as if he was that character singing the song. Brilliant and I guess underrated.

Beyond that, John Cale's viola is marvelous. I think the world of Cale and Westerberg's work, but it's especially pleasing that his contribution works so well because they don't strike me as two artists who'd collaborate that often.