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Post by anarkissed on Sept 15, 2010 10:12:11 GMT -5
I always kind of had the feeling that Paul couldn't say anything positive about Nirvana just because he felt like it was beneath him to comment on what, to him, must have looked like just some snot-nosed kids. And that Kurt couldn't say anything positive about Paul because he'd look like he was just kissing up to some old has-been...I've finally decided, though, that actually, neither one really liked the other guy's music...
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Post by anarkissed on Sept 12, 2010 17:20:51 GMT -5
>>I met Mark Arm years ago when Mudhoney played in Melbourne and I asked him what he thought of the Replacements and I clearly remember him telling me he wasn't into them.<< Mudhoney sucked...
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Post by anarkissed on Sept 1, 2010 19:45:25 GMT -5
>>I don't really agree with this. I was running a record store at this time, and the buzz was indeed starting with Bleach. At that time, though, Sub Pop didn't have the type of distribution that would get their releases into the major chains or onto MTV. Even with this minor buzz, though, Geffen initially didn't believe that Nevermind would sell any more copies than Sonic Youth. There was little promotion in those first couple of months, and word of mouth was the main reason that the Teen Spirit video was rush released when the song started to get noticed. Once the album started to outsell the dumb Michael Jackson album that was supposed to dominate the Christmas season, Geffen's publicity department then started pumping tons of dollars to keep it at the top of the charts.<< The jump Nirvana made from where they were at the time of "Bleach" to "Nevermind" just didn't represent something that happened as a result of several years of toiling on the club circuit and gradually building a fanbase through several independently released albums. It didn't happen nearly that quickly or dramatically for someone like R.E.M., and never really happened for the Replacements or Husker Du.
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 31, 2010 20:10:03 GMT -5
I think the connection between the two bands has generally been made by pundits commenting on changes in the music industry from the early 80’s to the early 90’s. The theory seems to be that bands like R.E.M., the Replacements, and Husker Du (and it always seems to be those particular “big three” that are referenced) proved that a band could build a loyal and significant following through independent releases, constant touring on the club level, and perhaps college radio. Further, a savvy major label could then build upon that base to turn those bands into mainstream stars. Nirvana was supposed to be the first “alternative” band to follow this formula to such a wide level of success. There might be some validity to this idea, but Nirvana’s leap in visibility from something like “Bleach” to “Nevermind” was much more dramatic than anything that happened to R.E.M. or the Replacements, and was probably due more to having a massive single and a popular video than a lot of grass-roots indie work.
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 30, 2010 14:58:09 GMT -5
>>I dunno if that's an act to piss people off or what<< Yeah, I think it's an act...He just says intentionally outrageous things to get a rise out of people. One, because he seems like the kind of guy who would find that funny, and two, because it gets people talking about him again, since nobody pays any attention to his music anymore, at least not after Damn Yankees...I would find it hard to believe that any real hunter and woodsman wouldn't have some conservationist in them (I hope...) Let me take this opportunity to apologize for initiating a discussion about the merits of Ted Nugent...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 29, 2010 18:14:50 GMT -5
This thread led me to read some of Laurie Lindeen's earlier writing on her blog. She seems really cool. Kind of wonder how this works with Paul's well-known aversion to the internet age, though. Does she say "Hey, Honey, got a new piece on my blog I'd like you to check out..." and he replies "Eh, not really into computers..." Then he says "Hey, I wrote this new thing..." and she says "I'll listen to it when it's available for download..."
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 28, 2010 20:13:41 GMT -5
>>great songs trump production values<< Yeah, I think so. I'll listen to something crappy sonically if the song is good enough. I come across a lot of people, though, who won't give something ten seconds if the recording doesn't seem quality enough...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 28, 2010 20:07:37 GMT -5
>>Nugent, cool?<< Oh, I'm sure he's quite the dick...But I was expressing that as a young teen, I quite enjoyed the musical subleties of epics like "Great White Buffalo" and "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang"...As a political commentator, I find him simply stupid, but I suspect that he brings the same approach to public discourse that he always brought to his music: a hyper-masculine, super-adrenalized posturing that leaps over the line into self-parody...Additionally, his anti-drug rants always kind of irritated me since I was, ah, not so anti-drug...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 27, 2010 19:29:16 GMT -5
>>I don't think I ever thought these guys were particularly cool...more of a quilty pleasure, really...<< Oh, when I was 12 or 13, it was hard to imagine anybody cooler; it wasn't until later on that I realized I was supposed to be embarrassed by them, and only later after that did I realize I didn't have to care anymore...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 27, 2010 19:24:39 GMT -5
I've always seemed to be in the minority, but I thought the production on PTMM was just about perfect: loud but clean, powerful but clear...I love the guitar tone on "Valentine". I love the drum sound; the snare sounds really deep and live. I never got that criticism that it had "an 80's sound" because if you compare it to a lot of that period's new wave or, say, Prince records, it sounds nothing like that. I love that whole production on "I Don't Know", with the off-key zombie chorus and that manic sax solo. love the part of "Shooting Dirty Pool" where "why don't you get a haircut, sister?" seques into that bottle being broken over someone's head and that ridiculous Eddie Van Halen parody solo...Love that amp buzz at the beginning of "Red, Red Wine"...Yeah, those rawer, stripped-down versions of "CHW" are really cool, but that song lent itself to those strings and Stax/Volt horns pretty well, and I'll always be glad that we can hear that song in all those versions. "Tim" just sounds murky to me. The performances seem to be really great, but it sounds like someone recorded a live playback of the album from a television onto a boombox. You can't really quibble with the early albums up through "Hootenany"; I can't imagine those sounding any way other that how they sound. I'll concede that LIB was probably the best all-around, if only because nobody ever seems to complain about it. I don't even want to try "DTAS" and "ASD" anymore - spent several years trying to defend those albums in vain...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 26, 2010 13:36:46 GMT -5
I've always theorized that it may have something to do with the closeness of our ages (he was born in December of '59 and I was born in June of '61)...Old enough to remember the Beatles but young enough that they were over before they could really be the defining band our of lifetimes...Old enough to think that Kiss and Alice Cooper and Ted Nugent were pretty cool, but young enough to admit that maybe punks had a point when they bitched about too many guitar solos...Young enough to think that maybe the Sex Pistols and the Ramones really were going to change the world, but old enough to realize that maybe that was expecting too much...Young enough to be really excited when bands like Husker Du and the Mats seemed to be doing something entirely new, but old enough to understand that didn't mean everything in the previous forty years of popular music had all been crap, either...Young enough to be utterly serious about life, music, and the world around us; old enough to think it was pretty damn funny, too...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 25, 2010 20:00:47 GMT -5
Sorry...this is kind of addicting:
"Shake, Rattle & Roll" - Bill Haley "Some Velvet Morning" - Nancy Sinatra with Lee Hazlewood (Guess this has to be a duet...) "Have Love Will Travel" - The Sonics "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" - Spinal Tap "Substitute" - The Who
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 24, 2010 21:03:34 GMT -5
"You Wear It Well" - Rod Stewart "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" - Boyce & Hart Medley - "Back in the Saddle Again" - Gene Autrey/"Back in the Saddle" - Aerosmith "Laugh At Me" - Sonny Bono "Life on Mars?" - David Bowie "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" - Belinda Carlisle "Desperados Waiting For A Train" - Guy Clark "No More Mr. Nice Guy" - Alice Cooper "Falling in Love Again" - Marlene Dietrich "Couldn't I Just Tell You" - Todd Rundgren
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 24, 2010 19:38:15 GMT -5
I loved DTAS when it came out, both because I thought it had some really great songs and because of the sound of the production...I certainly don't think of it as being "obsolete", but if I heard that album now with no prior knowledge of it, I'd probably think "this must have been made in the 80's". I don't think I'd tie any other Mats album that specifically to a time period. Most of the Sun Records singles say "50's" to me, "The Times They Are A-Changin' says Kennedy, and "Rumours" sounds very 1977...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 24, 2010 9:37:01 GMT -5
So, when you had a chance to meet Paul or any of the Replacements, what'd you say? What did they say? I went to one of those in-store record signings in Austin a few hours before the Mats were to play that night at Liberty Lunch in Austin during the PTMM tour. Frankly, Slim kind of scared me, and Chris intimidated me a little, too...I mumbled something to Tommy about how great the new album was, and he mumbled back "Thanks"...I gushed to Paul something really insightful like "Your songwriting is just the best...You're, uh, you're kicking ass..." He, too, only said "Thanks", but actually seemed quite sincere...Talked to Paul during the "Eventually" tour, when he apparently was regularly meeting fans by his bus after shows...More prepared this time, I said "Your songwriting is not only on a level of like a Dylan, or a Lennon/McCartney, but on a level with Gershwin, or Rodgers and Hammerstein"...He seemed somewhat intriqued, and responded "Wow, that's deep...Yeah, I like to use to those kind of chords..." I related how'd I'd been trying to write a song in tribute to him, similar to what he'd done for Alex Chilton, for about ten years now. "Ten years?" he said incredulously, "it should take about ten minutes..." I was never sure if he was actually giving me some advice about trusting your instincts, or just being self-deprecating...My (now-ex) wife said "You seemed kinda surprised that the audience immediately recognized the old Replacements' songs. Paul laughed and said "I was acting..."
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 24, 2010 8:37:28 GMT -5
I'd read about them - probably the same review of LIB in RS that someone mentioned - before hearing them...I subsequently had a dream that I was reading this same review, only it was written by Matthew Broderick in the character of Ferris Bueller, and I was simultaneously watching this as a film...In the dream, there were six members of the Replacements (Texaco, Lexico, Mexico, Sunny, Bunny, and Joe) and they all dressed in silver lame' jumpsuits and dark sunglasses...Later that week, I went to the beach with my friend Phil to meet two girls...He had a homemade cassette of "Tim", and the first songs I remember hearing were "Swinging Party" and "Here Comes A Regular"...We listened to it all weekend; I fell in love with the tape and the girl I had met...PTMM came out soon after...I never saw the girl again.
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 23, 2010 21:13:45 GMT -5
Yup, missed it completely...But it's always kind of cool to have something you can still look for and never quite find...Better than knowing that's all there is, and there ain't gonna be no more...
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Post by anarkissed on Aug 16, 2010 16:37:17 GMT -5
I don't think Paul has ever really liked playing live, though I've seen him give some incredible performances, and sometimes even seem to enjoy it...I really get the feeling that Chris is completely through with music, certainly past the point of ever committing to something like an extended tour...Tommy seems like the only one who would readily do it...I wouldn't have a problem with a Paul and Tommy tour going under the Mats name...
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