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Post by Otto Jr. on Mar 2, 2016 0:11:59 GMT -5
I'm only on like Chapter 7 but one thing I didn't know is the Stinson's moved right after Paul joined the band and all the "listening at the window while 'Dog Breath' rehearsed in the basement" WASN'T the same house as the "Let it Be" house. SHOCKING!!! lol
Not to mention the Stinson family drama but kudos to them for being willing to put all that out there. That is some harrowing stuff.
Edit: And all Paul's birth defects that affected his playing. I actually think I have the same thing with my pinky fingers. They kinda curve in and messed with my guitar "shredding"!
And LOL @ Paul getting hit in the head so much when he was little. I love all those near tragic but looking back funny stories. I have a lot of those with my older brother but he denies them to this day. Fucking liar! lol
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Post by Otto Jr. on Mar 6, 2016 1:55:55 GMT -5
Paul isn't the guy smoking and kicking the speaker in the video for "Bastards".
It's some fucking art director or some shit. Or, an intern...something. lol
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Post by TomT on Mar 6, 2016 8:54:14 GMT -5
I like this thresd but kinda don't want to give out spoilers. I'm at the recording for PTMM sessions in the book and really hard to put the book down. I haven't got much done around the house in the last week.
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bside
Star Scout
Posts: 356
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Post by bside on Mar 7, 2016 13:40:14 GMT -5
One thing I learned, or I felt was fleshed out, was Paul's disillusionment with drummers. As recently as the Peter Wolf interview, and I remember a review around Suicaine where Paul said there are no good drummers under 25. I knew there were some swipes at Chris around PTMM, and obviously the Musician Magazine story that caused him to ultimately leave the band.
In demoing DTAS, Paul preferred the steady, unaltered time-keeping of a drum machine, and even at one time wanted DTAS to be an acoustic album. He resisted the transition of the groove from the locked-in demos to a living rhythm section (I can totally hear that on the album). I knew ADS had different drummers on it, but I never made the connection that some songs simply kept a drum machine on the final tracks.
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Post by jimmyrock on Mar 8, 2016 13:16:28 GMT -5
Bob helped Slim figure out some of the guitar parts. That's cool
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Post by anarkissed on Mar 9, 2016 21:06:12 GMT -5
That even after what I thought was, at least, relatively moderate success on that sorta underground/college radio/proto-alternative circuit, somebody like Tommy would have to take a job as a telemarketer to bring in some ready cash...Elsewhere, I think I made a point that this book "wasn't a depressing read"...Yeah, well, that part was...'Cause I worked a couple of those jobs, and it was pretty depressing...Except once, I was telemarketing for a company that took orders for those "As-Seen-On-TV" products...People would call in, I'd answer, and a little script would pop up on my computer screen that I was supposed to follow...One time, some girl (who sounds really young) calls in to order this sort of soft-porn "Girls Gone Wild"-like video that I think featured college students getting drunk and naked and doing mildly nasty things to each other...I have to read this script to her that implies pretty salacious and provocative things (without being too explicit) and I can hear mild heavy breathing over the other end of the line...I have to ask her a few questions regarding the order, and her answers come in short gasps...It was pretty cool...I only quit a few weeks later because one time I needed to pee really bad, and they told me I wasn't due for "a break" for another two hours....Heh...
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Post by twicks1 on Mar 10, 2016 11:38:19 GMT -5
I never figured Paul for a "girl in every port" type lothario...although it makes total sense now.
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Post by FreeRider on Mar 11, 2016 14:40:58 GMT -5
I had no idea that Paul did a solo acoustic gig opening for one of my all time fave guitarists, Jorma Kaukonen! Jorma is a really gifted finger style guitar player and I'd have been intimidated too to be opening for him doing a solo acoustic gig. But the book doesn't even mention if Paul had any clue as to Jorma's history or background. Or if he even cared about Jorma, since it seemed like Paul was too nervous about his solo gig to even think straight.
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Freddy
First Class Scout
Posts: 200
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Post by Freddy on Mar 12, 2016 14:32:18 GMT -5
The book really filled in some gaps for me. I think most of us knew the outline of the band from beginning to end, but the meat of the book is in the particulars. From PTMM through ASD, there were some things I could have gone on without knowing about. I knew they were "self-sabotagers", but the levels they went to were ridiculous and they treated a lot of people that really liked them and wanted to help them very, very poorly.
That said, it hasn't diminished my love for the band. I just bought the Twin Tone years on vinyl and have been spinning that all week and even put on All Shook Down the other night.
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Post by twicks1 on Mar 12, 2016 15:29:31 GMT -5
I knew they were "self-sabotagers", but the levels they went to were ridiculous and they treated a lot of people that really liked them and wanted to help them very, very poorly. In some ways, the book makes their (relative) commercial failure easier to understand and stomach...turns out they weren't cruelly mistreated or lacking support in any real way. They just couldn't stop biting the hand, and eventually it stopped feeding... |
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Post by hudson99 on Mar 12, 2016 20:57:21 GMT -5
I knew they were "self-sabotagers", but the levels they went to were ridiculous and they treated a lot of people that really liked them and wanted to help them very, very poorly. In some ways, the book makes their (relative) commercial failure easier to understand and stomach...turns out they weren't cruelly mistreated or lacking support in any real way. They just couldn't stop biting the hand, and eventually it stopped feeding... In some respects you're correct, but most of their support came from people with little power. The young hip publicity people, the regional promotional departments, etc. Sure, Seymour Stein signed them because he loved them, but they never had much support from the true big wigs at Warners. |
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Post by twicks1 on Mar 12, 2016 21:45:40 GMT -5
In some ways, the book makes their (relative) commercial failure easier to understand and stomach...turns out they weren't cruelly mistreated or lacking support in any real way. They just couldn't stop biting the hand, and eventually it stopped feeding... In some respects you're correct, but most of their support came from people with little power. The young hip publicity people, the regional promotional departments, etc. Sure, Seymour Stein signed them because he loved them, but they never had much support from the true big wigs at Warners. What about Paul turning down Mo Ostin's mall appearance request?  |
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Post by teddinard on Mar 12, 2016 22:23:29 GMT -5
In some respects you're correct, but most of their support came from people with little power. The young hip publicity people, the regional promotional departments, etc. Sure, Seymour Stein signed them because he loved them, but they never had much support from the true big wigs at Warners. What about Paul turning down Mo Ostin's mall appearance request? I'm glad they bit that hand. Fuck 'em. Replacements don't do shopping malls. |
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Post by anarkissed on Mar 12, 2016 23:44:41 GMT -5
Heh...The whole thing is, they wouldn't really be the same band if they'd done things differently, right? We kinda counted on them to deliberately fuck up at key moments of their career, then put on a brilliant show the next night before fifteen people at some dive bar in Des Moines...It was obvious commercial suicide, but, you know, some band like fucking Hootie & The Blowfish had a couple of multi-platinum albums, and I'll bet you could do a poll now, and ask people: "Did you ever buy a Hootie & The Blowfish album? How did they impact your life?" And 95% of those would deny ever buying a "Hootie & The Blowfish" album (70% just because they didn't want to admit it, the other 25% just because they forgot)...And I assume only Darius Rucker, and maybe his mother, would say it impacted their lives...I support every stupid, dumbass, deliberately asshole decision, or lack or decision, they ever made...Because to posit otherwise would be to assume we can change the course of history (What if Julius Caesar hadn't been stabbed? What if the Confederacy had an air force in the Civil War? What if we'd nuked North Korea when China crossed the 38th parallel? What if Led Zeppelin had recruited Cozy Powell or Carl Palmer after John Bonham died, and made another album?
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patty
Second Class Scout
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Post by patty on Mar 13, 2016 3:39:49 GMT -5
I guess after reading it '23 Years Ago' was written about the girl named Kim Chapman in the book, the one he dumped before getting married
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Post by FreeRider on Mar 13, 2016 15:09:34 GMT -5
What about Paul turning down Mo Ostin's mall appearance request? I'm glad they bit that hand. Fuck 'em. Replacements don't do shopping malls. I agree too in principle, but the sad thing is, Paul put himself in that position with his bad decision making. When you're just a peon pushing the bureaucracy, the Bureaucracy can push back a lot harder. And he and the others burned bridges. And if Mo Ostin wanted to do a power play and force his hand, well, Paul has no one but himself to blame. I'm not unsympathetic with being in that position, but he never should've put himself in that spot to begin with. That was culmination of all the bad choices he and the band made. And I'm sure that Ostin did that as a power move, to fuck with Paul and and humiliate him a little. |
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Jer
Beagle Scout
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Post by Jer on Mar 13, 2016 18:32:55 GMT -5
In some ways, the book makes their (relative) commercial failure easier to understand and stomach...turns out they weren't cruelly mistreated or lacking support in any real way. They just couldn't stop biting the hand, and eventually it stopped feeding... In some respects you're correct, but most of their support came from people with little power. The young hip publicity people, the regional promotional departments, etc. Sure, Seymour Stein signed them because he loved them, but they never had much support from the true big wigs at Warners. They were the mistreaters, not the mistreated. They never had that support because every time they had the opportunity to earn it, they pissed it away. Over and over they had opportunities to impress important people, and over and over they bent over backwards to suck as hard as possible or destroy something that someone else had to pay for. It hurts to say it, but they deserved to lose every chance they blew.
"They just couldn't stop biting the hand, and eventually it stopped feeding..." - well put. |
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Post by gowhileucan on Mar 13, 2016 19:06:49 GMT -5
To me the opportunities they pissed away are the very source of their appeal in the sense that the songs and their behavior are integrated as one. That was part of the whole deal with them - it's the exact thing that made them special and made those songs ring true and extend as something beyond songs. It's the symbolic element of the band and what was appealing about them.
They didn't need to have a different kind of success and honestly if they had gotten it, they may wouldn't have known what to do with it anyway.
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Post by teddinard on Mar 13, 2016 19:32:13 GMT -5
To me the opportunities they pissed away are the very source of their appeal in the sense that the songs and their behavior are integrated as one. That was part of the whole deal with them - it's the exact thing that made them special and made those songs ring true and extend as something beyond songs. It's the symbolic element of the band and what was appealing about them. They didn't need to have a different kind of success and honestly if they had gotten it, they may wouldn't have known what to do with it anyway. Very much agreed. I'm somewhat surprised that diehard Replacements fans are a) shocked and frustrated by these stories of self-sabotage, and b) so disapproving. Yes they were dicks. They were messed-up people. We knew that. I lived through the crap of 1980s. Did I really really want to hear, coming out of my FM radio, "Hey guys! Here comes that ol' regular, Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, on Rockin' WXYZ! Stay tuned for the coolest, kick-ass rock and roll!" No I did NOT want to hear that. I would have shot myself in the head had that ever greeted my ears. The music industry sucked, MTV sucked, the bands that played those bullshit games sucked, and the Replacements did NOT suck. And they did their rebellion more organically, as it were, than a lot of the indie ideologues like Steve Albini or Jello Biafra, who would stand up make their little speeches about the evils of the Culture Industry. The Replacements were simply unassimilable to the Culture Industry. They were great but they just didn't fit. They were of course ambivalent about it. Anybody who steps out onto a stage and sings songs for an audience and puts their records on the market has already admitted to wanting the culture's attention--a fact that the stern indie purists never very fully appreciated. So the Replacements were stuck. They wanted it and couldn't stand it. I respect that, all the way. Thank god they weren't Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. |
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Post by FreeRider on Mar 13, 2016 20:08:50 GMT -5
I don't think the fans knew the extent of the self destruction and the full stories behind these incidents. I dunno if it's so much disapproval as it is puzzlement, at least for me, as to what drove the self destruction. I don't buy it was just full rebellion against the corporate music industry, it couldn't have been solely that. I did too, but you still listened to mainstream AOR radio?  Ha, I stopped listening about 1982 or '83!  But your assumption is that the Mats songs would've sucked too had they gotten more radio play. I dunno if we can really say that had they played it straight for a bit that the band would suck like everything else. Maybe they could've influenced the prevailing culture then had they gotten more exposure. Who knows? Agreed, thankfully they didn't turn into a play-it-like-on-the-record band like Petty. But if they knew they didn't fit, why did they stick around? I kind of think they just didn't know what the hell they wanted but they knew they hated that corporate stuff. But they were too scared to walk away from it Paul was right when he says they were too early for their time. If they had come around when the internet was around, they certainly would not have to worry about labels and distribution. |
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Ha, I stopped listening about 1982 or '83! 