The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

Ha! re: "Mr. Whirly"

BUT...was it directly inspired by the Beatles? Or by Tomorrow (featuring Bob's fave guitarist, Steve Howe)?

Compare the intros:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6gqN9HSa7U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TBwM6oz3Bg

This was posted elsewhere by Jason Jones at Rhino but apparently we shouldn't expect a Hootenanny box set due to lack of material. Bummer.

Unexpectedly, "The Twisted Art of Chris Mars"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lmaw2DDeCQc

(Side note: Horseshoes and Hand Grenades is better than any Paul Westerberg album.)

Juxtapoz magazine did a lovely profile on Mars which focused solely on his incredible art at least 20 years ago. His pieces can sell for $25kUSD+, and I’m sure he’s made far more from them than he ever did in The Replacements

…

This ranking is pretty good imo but I'd move Hootenanny up from 6 to 4.

https://www.spin.com/2023/09/every-replacements-album-ranked/

I need to spend more time with Hootenanny. For some reason my brain classifies it as an EP and then I'm surprised when I see how many songs are on it. I only have it on vinyl and I got it after my big Replacements phase, so I haven't given it the attention it deserves.

There's a dude on the Hoffman Forums that works with Rhino on the new box sets, it might be Bob Mehr. But he was saying that there likely be some sort of a Hootenanny special release, it just won't be a big box set because he doesn't think there's enough stuff to justify that. But it sounds like an expanded release is in the cards.

There’s so many Mats threads I probably should have revived the one Bob Mehr recently showed up on.

Xpost Stink should be above DTAS

This ranking is pretty good imo but I'd move Hootenanny up from 6 to 4.

Same here. It's a really good album with some of their greatest tracks.

Clemenza's Real Life Top 10: I heard "Unsatisfied" in the car today, but just the slow build at the beginning (same part used so brilliantly in Adventureland--bumper music for a talk show on the Zoomer station here. Bizarre; this is a station for plus-50s, which makes sense in terms of timeline, but this is not a station meant for plus-50s who bought Replacements albums.

(missing end bracket there after Adventureland)

really dislike Adventureland for its revisionist history soundtrack. no disrespect to the YLT score.

We couldn't be farther apart there: love "Unsatisfied" and Husker Du especially.

LOOK ME IN THE EYE AND TELL ME

Bob Mehr's the best. His Mats book is one of the greatest music biogs I've ever read.

Yeah, I read it recently and it was great. It would have been really easy for the book to come across like a laundry list of fuck-ups, but it manages to avoid that.

Out of interest, does the book specifically talk about their major 1987 London show I attended where Paul was so fucked up he couldn't even stand, let alone sing or play? Or was that just par for the course at that time and not worth its own mention?

No, nothing specific about that show. There were more details about the prior euro tour because it was their first time overseas. The 87 shows were noted as being more of the same with rowdy London shows but low turnout outside of that.

Hootenany is my favorite but it might suffer from the bias of being the first Replacements record I bought

I have it as high as 3rd on some days. YMMV, but the thrash rockers add to the overall album for me, rather than, I dunno Red Red Wine or whatever.

November 15, 1987 @ Orpheum, Minneapolis. "Notes: during ‘Never Mind’ Paul falls off the stage. You can hear a thump in the recording. ‘Dude Looks Like A Lady’ (Aerosmith) is inserted during ‘Gary’s Got A Boner.’

I know it's been discussed here and elsewhere, but the reported relative lack of traction the Replacements had/have outside of America ... that's totally linked to the fact that the band's fucked up-ed-ness is fundamentally, even foundationally American, right? I can't think of a better metaphor for this country than a self-destructive, simultaneously effortlessly brilliant and accidentally brilliant band as apt to rip your heart out as fall off the stage, or offer galvanizing, generation-defining anthems alongside nods to late-era Aerosmith in the middle of a song about boners.

I think it's that particular mix of decadence and unpretentiousness, though even by that standard there's not really anyone else like them in America, either.

we're comin to your town
we're gonna fall right down
we're an American band