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The Replacements - I'll Be You
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3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Label: Twin/Tone Records – TTR 8228
Format: Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Mini-Album
Country: US
Released: Jun 1982
Genre: Rock
Style: Garage Rock, Punk, Indie Rock
I like this from Wikipedia: By that time, the Replacements had grown tired of playing loud and fast exclusively; Westerberg said, "Now we're softening a little where we can do something that's a little more sincere without being afraid that someone's not going to like it or the punks aren't going to be able to dance to it."
The thought of punks not being able to "dance to it" makes me laugh.
Left of the Dial (Ed Stasium Mix)
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-replacements-tim-let-it-bleed-edition/
By late 1984, the Replacements were transforming from a shoddy Minneapolis barroom punk band into the biggest prospect in the underground alternative rock scene. They had just released their third album, Let It Be, a title that both paid homage to and took the piss out of the Beatles, which, you could say, basically summed up the Replacements’ whole thing. Whereas the Mats always hated things like parents and school and loved things like beer and getting fucked up, Let It Be offered a wider range of dynamics, tempos, and chord progressions in its nuanced songs about gender, longing, and frustration. (This was amid the joke songs about tonsils and boners.) The perfect “I Will Dare” adopted the jangle-pop shuffle coming out of the UK, the smokey “Androgynous” is glam rock without the stomp, and the spare coda, “Answering Machine,” is a yearning electric folk song, essentially the first solo Paul Westerberg track ever recorded under the banner of the Replacements.
Except for rock purist Steve Albini, who loved their snotty lo-fi records but soon found the Replacements “irrevocably lost in the maudlin cabaret of Westerberg’s folk music blatherings,” critics adored Let It Be, ranking it No. 4 in that year’s Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll. It sold well, attracted offers from major labels, and has long been regarded as, if not the best Mats album, then the most authentic Mats album. It was the pivotal moment before they “went pop” and signed to Sire, before unhinged guitarist Bob Stinson was drastically sidelined, before Westerberg took the reins of the Mats and set out to launder the strains of traditional pop through his drunken band of losers. Let It Be was a live wire, the product of four childhood friends who never graduated high school or got driver’s licenses, whose innate talent was matched only by two things: their fear of success and their desire to drown that fear in a case of Schlitz.
In comes this essential reissue of the Mats’ fourth album, 1985’s Tim, to trouble the entire narrative. The toast of this box set—which, like Let It Be, also cribs its name from a far more successful album—is an unbelievable new remix of Tim that doesn’t just challenge the notion that Let It Be was the Replacements at their peak, but usurps it to become the best and most definitive album in their catalog. Helmed by famed Ramones engineer Ed Stasium, the remix is jaw-dropping: Gone is Tim’s muddy sound, the tinny reverb on Chris Mars’ drums, and the thin low-end that masked Tommy Stinson’s bass. Every instrument is louder and closer, the mix is much more spread out, Westerberg’s sneakily complicated rhythm playing and chord voicing comes into sharp focus, and there are even a few extra Bob solos. If the previous treatments of Pleased to Meet Me and Don’t Tell a Soul were welcome surprises, this is the holy grail that fans have dreamt of. Finally, no more of the obligatory caveats about production that have plagued the album for almost four decades.
It’s now abundantly clear, both in sound and performance, that Tim is really among the best albums ever recorded…ex post facto. It’s the apex of the Mats, how they should have sounded, how they did sound, how they should be remembered sounding. As diverse as it is dynamic, Tim is full of diamond-sharp songs about the mess of young love, old love, loneliness, dead-end jobs, amphetamines, and alcohol. Rarely does a remix raise a crucial epistemological question about a small Midwestern rock band who would stumble through a bunch of pop and country covers if the audience asked them to play their “pussy set,” but here we are: Should this new remix be considered the real and definitive version of Tim?
Like the CIA one day revealing who really and definitively killed Kennedy, I’d argue it’s complicated. Here is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the Replacements: They were drunks and losers because their press releases said they were drunks and losers. So they wore the mask, played the clowns, and became lost in the version of themselves that got banned from SNL, didn’t play ball with the label, showed up wrecked to gigs, put out a mix of Tim that the band themselves didn’t much like, sabotaged their career at every turn, and by the late ’80s softly melted into a Westerberg solo project. Even if Westerberg thought he could be as big as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones—or even contemporaries who caught major label deals like R.E.M.—there was always some Midwestern fatalism dragging him down. He led a band caught in a perpetual cycle of fear, self-loathing, drinking, and destruction that amassed a cult fan base who loved them precisely because of this cycle. If you saw a Mats show, you knew they weren’t ever going to be superstars, but a part of you knew that the Mats were right and everyone else was wrong.
snip
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-replacements-tim-let-it-bleed-edition/
By late 1984, the Replacements were transforming from a shoddy Minneapolis barroom punk band into the biggest prospect in the underground alternative rock scene. They had just released their third album, Let It Be, a title that both paid homage to and took the piss out of the Beatles, which, you could say, basically summed up the Replacements’ whole thing. Whereas the Mats always hated things like parents and school and loved things like beer and getting fucked up, Let It Be offered a wider range of dynamics, tempos, and chord progressions in its nuanced songs about gender, longing, and frustration. (This was amid the joke songs about tonsils and boners.) The perfect “I Will Dare” adopted the jangle-pop shuffle coming out of the UK, the smokey “Androgynous” is glam rock without the stomp, and the spare coda, “Answering Machine,” is a yearning electric folk song, essentially the first solo Paul Westerberg track ever recorded under the banner of the Replacements.
Except for rock purist Steve Albini, who loved their snotty lo-fi records but soon found the Replacements “irrevocably lost in the maudlin cabaret of Westerberg’s folk music blatherings,” critics adored Let It Be, ranking it No. 4 in that year’s Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll. It sold well, attracted offers from major labels, and has long been regarded as, if not the best Mats album, then the most authentic Mats album. It was the pivotal moment before they “went pop” and signed to Sire, before unhinged guitarist Bob Stinson was drastically sidelined, before Westerberg took the reins of the Mats and set out to launder the strains of traditional pop through his drunken band of losers. Let It Be was a live wire, the product of four childhood friends who never graduated high school or got driver’s licenses, whose innate talent was matched only by two things: their fear of success and their desire to drown that fear in a case of Schlitz.
In comes this essential reissue of the Mats’ fourth album, 1985’s Tim, to trouble the entire narrative. The toast of this box set—which, like Let It Be, also cribs its name from a far more successful album—is an unbelievable new remix of Tim that doesn’t just challenge the notion that Let It Be was the Replacements at their peak, but usurps it to become the best and most definitive album in their catalog. Helmed by famed Ramones engineer Ed Stasium, the remix is jaw-dropping: Gone is Tim’s muddy sound, the tinny reverb on Chris Mars’ drums, and the thin low-end that masked Tommy Stinson’s bass. Every instrument is louder and closer, the mix is much more spread out, Westerberg’s sneakily complicated rhythm playing and chord voicing comes into sharp focus, and there are even a few extra Bob solos. If the previous treatments of Pleased to Meet Me and Don’t Tell a Soul were welcome surprises, this is the holy grail that fans have dreamt of. Finally, no more of the obligatory caveats about production that have plagued the album for almost four decades.
It’s now abundantly clear, both in sound and performance, that Tim is really among the best albums ever recorded…ex post facto. It’s the apex of the Mats, how they should have sounded, how they did sound, how they should be remembered sounding. As diverse as it is dynamic, Tim is full of diamond-sharp songs about the mess of young love, old love, loneliness, dead-end jobs, amphetamines, and alcohol. Rarely does a remix raise a crucial epistemological question about a small Midwestern rock band who would stumble through a bunch of pop and country covers if the audience asked them to play their “pussy set,” but here we are: Should this new remix be considered the real and definitive version of Tim?
Like the CIA one day revealing who really and definitively killed Kennedy, I’d argue it’s complicated. Here is the self-fulfilling prophecy of the Replacements: They were drunks and losers because their press releases said they were drunks and losers. So they wore the mask, played the clowns, and became lost in the version of themselves that got banned from SNL, didn’t play ball with the label, showed up wrecked to gigs, put out a mix of Tim that the band themselves didn’t much like, sabotaged their career at every turn, and by the late ’80s softly melted into a Westerberg solo project. Even if Westerberg thought he could be as big as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones—or even contemporaries who caught major label deals like R.E.M.—there was always some Midwestern fatalism dragging him down. He led a band caught in a perpetual cycle of fear, self-loathing, drinking, and destruction that amassed a cult fan base who loved them precisely because of this cycle. If you saw a Mats show, you knew they weren’t ever going to be superstars, but a part of you knew that the Mats were right and everyone else was wrong.
snip