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

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.

According to Trouble Boys, it was totally accidental. They were overdubbing in NYC, and somebody mused it be great if they get a viola player in, someone "who sounded like John Cale in the VU", and Scott Litt told them, "Well, why don't we call him?". Cale was there in the studio ready to play within two hours. He told Westerberg the song reminded him of Nico.

I had no idea about the Faithfull business.

Seeing it was summoned a little earlier, here's one more off-peak poll result...

https://images2.imgbox.com/fb/ea/m2kfTrh2_o.jpg

#45
Run It
from Hootenanny (1983)
Score: 99
Votes: 7 (0)
Youtube: audio track

I didn't vote for "Run It," but I have nothing against it, quite the opposite. It's just that Hootenanny feels more like a collage pasted together from great bits and pieces, some of which can stand on their own as great singles. But otherwise it's mostly great fragments that add up to a much greater whole. This even extends to individual tracks themselves: "Mr. Whirly" is built from chunks of Beatle covers and "Lovelines" is lyrically cut together from personal ads. Even the LP cover (a take-off of an old folk record) actually reflects this visually if not overtly. The album made my top 5 easy, but most of the tracks were never in the running pretty much for this reason alone.

is there another debut single in rock history that sums up a band's entire career as perfectly as "i'm in trouble" b/w "if only you were lonely"?

not voting for "run it" is a mistake i have already lived to regret. the struggle and ambition and confusion of the replacements is captured in like the first 15 seconds of this one. "red light red light run it" is standard punk band thrashing about in basement, then when it gets to the third line, where paul names the intersection, he figures maybe there should be a melody, only to quickly decide maybe not.

LOL

fcc otm x 2

I had “Run It” at 21, but it couldn’t easily have been higher.

A couple more before I disappear for absolutely ages...

https://images2.imgbox.com/45/4a/KNzIwRks_o.png

#44
Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out
from Let It Be (1984)
Score: 99
Votes: 8 (0)
Youtube: audio track

https://images2.imgbox.com/46/1f/7lpANTGD_o.jpg

#43
Customer
from Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (1981)
Score: 100
Votes: 6 (0)
Youtube: audio track

Tommy missed the cut, Customer my #15.

open wide, Tommy!

Other songs like “Customer”: “Checking Out the Checkout Girl,” by Wazmo Nariz (not quite as good) and “The New Teller,” by Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers (on the same level).

WHERE ARE THE TWINKIES?!?

i like to think the doctor with his cadillac running is just a grown up version of the little snot who was running red lights one album ago, probably in a used chevy, and that he's now reacting to the horror and confusion of seeing his old self in the little snot whose tonsils he now has to remove. though i have a feeling my analysis wouldn't stand up to close examination, or any examination. classic either way.

(alternatively, the song could be about young tommy, under the influence of anesthesia, which is probably not mixing well with whatever else is in his system, confronting the ghost of normie future.)

POLL
While you can

(Before he takes his place as a regular)

Was it an intentional mastermind kind of deal where the last track on Tim includes the line “all I know is that I’m sick of everything that my money can buy” acts as a kind of rebuttal/response to “I’ll Buy”?
Nah, my money’s on “dumb luck.”

This is not a knock on anyone else's ballot--everyone has their favourites. But the countdown so far, a mix of songs I'm not big on and things I've forgotten, underscores my fandom, which is both intense and narrow. (Also that I expect almost my whole ballot of 20 to fall in the Top 30 or so.)

https://images2.imgbox.com/bf/5e/Eioeb1B8_o.jpg

#42
Hayday
from Hootenanny (1983)
Score: 101
Votes: 7 (1)
Youtube: audio track

Only the second first-place vote.

Hmm, never noticed how that was spelled. I don't see how the countdown could have been any other way, clemenza, because ILM, because not-so-big turnout, and because Replacements.

I know, I know--the ragtag first part of the countdown is exactly what some (probably most) people love about them.

Anyway, as I say that, "Hayday" is my first pick to show up.

Yeah. But it's not just them, there was a similar effect on some other POLL some of us participated in, Euler and I, to name two. Those being the Elvis Presley POLL and the Burt Bacharach POLL.