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Post by teddinard on Jul 7, 2018 15:49:15 GMT -5
In honor of Wimbledon: point goes to Teddi. 15-love. wit as in clever sure yes, wit as in funny was I dont see as required which was what I took from the context of the comment "Did Guns and Roses have a sense of humor? And Westerberg is a witty and sophisticated writer" I agree. Sense of humor, wit, and sophistication are all distinct things. They are often linked, though. There are often all three in the Replacements' lyrics, sometimes just two or one out of the three. So "Gary's Got a Boner" isn't sophisticated, but it's humorous in a juvenile sort of way. The line "Gary's got a soft-on" isn't exactly witty either, but it does show in rudimentary form Westerberg's love of playing with language, saying something unexpected. Whatever else their virtues, you don't hear that kind of thing much in Guns and Roses songs. I'm not saying, I repeat, that all good songs must have it. But it can be a good thing, and it's part of why I have a lot of respect for Westerberg and why his songs affect me. Also, Westerberg never (or only very rarely) strikes me as trying to be clever for cleverness's sake. I hope this comment doesn't irritate anybody, but often the wordplay in Elvis Costello's songs comes across that way to me. With Westerberg, the play with words almost always comes deep from within the motivation of the song. It's not just an ornament. If I had to name the one thing that makes him a great lyricist, it's that.
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Post by teddinard on Jul 7, 2018 8:34:28 GMT -5
Yeah it's interesting to think about the really big "historic" records of my lifetime. They'd include Frampton Comes Alive, Rumours, Hotel California, Thriller, Appetite for Destruction, Nevermind, etc. I must be forgetting some. l like some of these more than others, of course. But they've never meant as much to me as much "smaller" records. I'm sure it's some kind of personality flaw of mine. Do you think we just get tired of them as was previously mentioned? I think thats the case for me. I was distant from them--not "tired" exactly--even while they were happening. They were so big, it was like you couldn't really hear them for what they were. I remember when Thriller was out, and it was coming out of every car, every dorm window, every boom box. It's not easy to feel intimate with something like that. It's like trying to look at the Mona Lisa as just an excellent portrait. Or listening to Beethoven's 5th symphony in a fresh way as if you've never heard it before. Anyway I agree with most of what's been said. There are a million kinds of great song. AC/DC songs are funny and have a blunt wit about them. Chuck Berry has great lyrics that come out so easily that you hardly notice how well done they are. And I think of somebody who is the peak of rock and roll to me like Little Richard. Are his songs witty or sophisticated? In most ways, no. But there is humor there. Or the Ramones. Their lyrics are often minimalist but they are quite sophisticated. They're almost like an art project--you have to think about what kind of comment they're making. I put songs like "Gary's Got a Boner," "God Damn Job," etc. in that Ramones category, with their own Westerberg twist.
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Post by teddinard on Jul 6, 2018 23:27:50 GMT -5
Yeah it's interesting to think about the really big "historic" records of my lifetime.
They'd include Frampton Comes Alive, Rumours, Hotel California, Thriller, Appetite for Destruction, Nevermind, etc. I must be forgetting some.
l like some of these more than others, of course. But they've never meant as much to me as much "smaller" records. I'm sure it's some kind of personality flaw of mine.
But the Replacements records were pretty much designed for people like me (us). They never were going to be big in that way.
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Post by teddinard on Jul 6, 2018 21:04:26 GMT -5
Yeah it's not very illuminating to compare a song obviously meant as a goof to a full-on anthem. But it does raise an interesting question. Did Guns and Roses have a sense of humor? And Westerberg is a witty and sophisticated writer. If we're looking for a "vs." here, this aspect would be a big point of differentiation between the groups. which? That Paul is a witty and sophisticated writer or that GnR didnt display a sense of humor? Wit and humor Replacements, lack thereof Guns and Roses. And yeah, lyrics of the Replacements are much more sophisticated than those of Guns and Roses, notwithstanding "Gary's Got a Boner." As to whether wit etc. is "required," as you say in your other post, I'm not even sure what that would mean. Cole Porter's great songs are witty--it's hard to imagine an unwitty Cole Porter. Many of the Great American Songbook songs would be lifeless without the subtlety and energy of the lyrics. And other celebrated songwriters--Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Leonard Cohen, the list goes on and on--are both witty and sophisticated. Of course there are great songs without that layer. But Replacements' songs happen to have it, and Guns and Roses songs don't. So if we're into contrasts, that is one, regardless of whether or not it means much to you. It's definitely something I value in Westerberg's songs. It makes them much more emotionally powerful to me than Guns and Roses songs.
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Post by teddinard on Jul 6, 2018 8:33:10 GMT -5
Yeah it's not very illuminating to compare a song obviously meant as a goof to a full-on anthem.
But it does raise an interesting question. Did Guns and Roses have a sense of humor?
It's sincere because I don't really know their catalog. They've never meant much to me, and I only know what you can't avoid hearing on the radio.
But they seem to take themselves deathly seriously. At least Axl Rose does. Is there anything funny about Guns and Roses? (Unintentionally funny doesn't count.) Is there anything in their songs that counts as wit or irony? Really I'm asking out of ignorance--but they don't go down that road in their hits.
With the Replacements of course, not taking themselves too seriously (or you could say, seriously not taking themselves seriously) is a defining thing about them. And Westerberg is a witty and sophisticated writer. I don't get that with Guns and Roses at all.
If we're looking for a "vs." here, this aspect would be a big point of differentiation between the groups.
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Post by teddinard on Jun 2, 2018 9:03:03 GMT -5
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Post by teddinard on Apr 5, 2018 7:21:09 GMT -5
...
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Post by teddinard on Mar 26, 2018 21:15:08 GMT -5
"You make want to vomit/And I promise/I want you 'til the day I die"...Everybody has some clumkers... I actually kind of like that!
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Post by teddinard on Mar 26, 2018 20:58:50 GMT -5
Strange to think of someone being a Westerberg fan,but not care for Bobby D. I agree. I have always said, even back in college in the 80s when I was first a Mats fan, that I did not trust one's musical instincts if they had a dislike for Dylan. I can live with that. But I know a lot of music lovers who don't like him. Again, not for the mundane, trivial reason of disliking his voice. I hear extravagant praise for songs like "Tangled Up in Blue" and just shrug. I must admit I felt a little uneasy When she bent down to tie the laces Of my shoe... I mean, come on. Every single word in that is wrong. "I must admit"? WFT? "A little uneasy"? It's just forced, pointless eccentricity. When I was a kid, I was very impressed by stuff like that. I loved Bob Dylan when I was about fourteen. You know, I figured it doesn't make much sense, so it must be deep, right? Um, no. I suppose at least shoe rhymes with blue. I could keep up the rant but I'm not going to convince anybody, so I'll stop. There are plenty of people I've met with untrustworthy instincts who agree with me.
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Post by teddinard on Mar 25, 2018 10:44:15 GMT -5
plus: "you like frosting...you just bought the cake" Another line that perfectly expresses the genius of PW. Not to get into literary criticism, but it's brilliant the how obvious contrast between the nouns (frosting/cake) is backed up by the more subtle one between the verbs (like/bought). And the fact that the metaphor (buy the cake = get married) could be literal. Maybe she really did have to lay out the money for the cake. A bad sign about this guy she's marrying. I really don't find these kinds of effects anywhere else in songwriting, not Cole Porter, not Bob Dylan, certainly not Lennon-McCartney. At least this song proves he's right there with those guys (as many other PW songs prove too). One other thing, how do you interpret the end? Lyrics sites have: Yeah you're still in love with nobody Nobody, nobody And I used to be nobody Nobody, nobody [Not] anymore (I put "not" in brackets because I don't really hear it on the record, though the sense requires it) Do you take it that he's saying she's still in love with him? Or that she was in love with him only when he was nobody (not a rock star)? Or that she's in love with nobody, i.e. she's never been in love with anybody, and still isn't, and PW just fit the bill in the past because she saw him as not anybody special?
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Post by teddinard on Mar 24, 2018 13:25:40 GMT -5
Strange to think of someone being a Westerberg fan,but not care for Bobby D. I see all the songwriters of a certain caliber as drawing their creativity from the same well,or tapping into the same thing within themselves.That's what I'm drawn to,that wellspring,it's what makes the music timeless. What can I say? I find Bob Dylan songs to be impressive without liking them very much. I have no problem with his voice, or voices (because they changed). Fake or not. I think he sings fine. I just don't like his firehose approach. His images and commentary just keep unspooling, line after line. Some hit, some miss. I feel like his attitude is "if verse 3 doesn't get you, then verse 14 will." To say I prefer Westerberg's tautness and economy would be a massive understatement.
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Post by teddinard on Mar 21, 2018 6:46:09 GMT -5
Like it better than the original.
Seriously. A lot of the "great" Bob Dylan songs are about him dressing down and mocking somebody who is down, inferior to him, etc. I guess we're supposed to think the person deserves it. But it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Westerberg changes the lyrics to reverse all that--so that he is the loser, or at least no better than the person attacked ("threw the Mats a dime," "you used to laugh a lot, I used to laugh a lot," and so on).
This may be instinctive on PW's part. He probably didn't think a lot about it.
He may have a rotten personality in many respects, but one thing about him, he never puts on an air of superiority over other people (in his songs, anyway), at least that I can think of. He's down there on an equal footing with the losers. Not like Bob Dylan, who seems to love lording it over other people.
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Post by teddinard on Feb 26, 2018 18:50:04 GMT -5
Not quite a "tough times" song, but I find "I'll Be You," of all things, helps me out quite a lot.
The mix of boredom, defeated ambition, who gives a shit, and overall self-absorption is uniquely Mats/PW.
And then the way he deals with it is to reach out to another person--"if it's just a game / then let's hold hands just the same."
And then the total switch, "you be me for a while / and I'll be you," makes the need for a connection with somebody else seem almost like a joke. But not really.
My life in a nutshell.
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Post by teddinard on Jan 11, 2018 10:22:55 GMT -5
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Post by teddinard on Dec 6, 2017 8:13:43 GMT -5
Lyrics sites, incl. "Skyway," have "in some fuckin' land," which sounds wrong to me, in addition to ridiculous.
The line is "it's so fuckin' lame."
Am I right?
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Post by teddinard on Dec 2, 2017 15:20:12 GMT -5
I was at the gym today with my "complete Replacements" shuffle on, and a lot of For Sale tracks came up. It must have been my lucky day, or maybe I was just in a good mood, because several of them just seemed better--in some cases a lot better--than the studio versions.
1. "Dose of Thunder" tops the list for me. On Tim, it's passable to average filler, but the For Sale version makes it an excellent and maybe great song, raw, loose, and powerful, with strong lyrics and a lot of attitude.
It's almost painful to listen to because it makes me wonder how much greater Tim might have been had Tommy Erdelyi not made a hash of the sound. And Tim's my favorite record as it is.
2. "Bastards of Young." I have always rated the song highly. It's a top ten, or at least top 15 Mats song for me. But the For Sale version is so much stronger. I can get completely behind it, like every other fan.
And here the flubs with the lyrics actually add depth. PW sings "Unwillingness to name us / You got no war to claim us" (reversing claim/name on the studio cut). The For Sale version's a bit darker i.e. the older generation doesn't even want to give us a name, and "war to claim us" means "war to kill us," as if it would be preferable to the older generation to get rid of us by sending us all off to some 1980s version of Vietnam. Works beautifully.
3. "Color Me Impressed." I love the Hootenanny version with the whistle etc. But this one seems looser and much more driving. And some more fortuitous lyrical changes: "Giving out my word / Because that's all that I won't keep" instead of "Their word.../ they" on the studio cut. I always like it when PW includes himself in the rot. Otherwise song risks being just a smug satire of hipsters.
4. "Go." Just a fuller and more emotionally immediate version.
Of course there are ones on For Sale that are far worse than the studio cuts such as "Left of the Dial." But the above and others are not just better versions, they make the songs better.
I'm not a big collector of bootlegs, so this is a revelation for me.
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Post by teddinard on Nov 29, 2017 7:56:10 GMT -5
I'd never seen these photos before... anybody know the context of these? Also, was Chris' Hootenanny jacket a merch item back in the day?? Rad! Happy Thanksgiving! They both appear in Jim Walsh's book, The Replacements: Waxed Up Hair and Painted Shoes: The Photographic History.
The first is on p. 6 with a caption that says "Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, September 1980." Very early! The second is on p. 51. The caption reads "Hoboken, New Jersey, April 1983." That's a fun book to have. I enjoyed flipping through it again to find these. You should buy it for yourself for Christmas.
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Post by teddinard on Nov 5, 2017 14:20:24 GMT -5
I think a lot of it was just fear. This is a topic that I have contributed to before. Sorry if I repeat myself. I doubt want to quarrel about it. Everybody has his own interpretation. But I think "fear" is an oversimplification (as you probably do, too). I think their attitude toward success, especially Westerberg's, is extremely complicated, with a lot of ingredients. Yes, some of it was the idea that if you didn't do your best, nobody could reject the "real you." Mehr says it's fear like that, in the clip FreeRider just posted. But he goes on to say it's a lot more, including unwillingness to glad-hand record execs, and other things. Here's a list based on quotations. "The sweet smell you adore / Well I think I'd rather smother." Success of a certain kind, and competing for it, are odious. "I can't act like I mean it every night." A kind of dishonesty is necessary for some kinds of success. "No one can run downhill / Fast as a thoroughbred." You can take a kind of pride in being a fuckup, perverse though it may be. "We stopped at nothing at our first chance." You can be uncompromising (stop at nothing) at giving up (stopping for no reason). There's camaraderie in thumbing your nose at success. "You've learned to quit, it's a stunning trait / And every loser knows this." There's an art to being a loser (Elizabeth Bishop wrote a poem about it). And often it's more fun to be with losers than (god help us) "winners." There are dozens more quotations. Being disaffected from and ambivalent about success is more than just fear. Maybe it includes fear, but if it's all fear, then that implies only a fearful person could doubt that success is a wonderful thing. Which is not true.
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Post by teddinard on Oct 28, 2017 9:36:47 GMT -5
It's funny when people on the internet say they "can't offer any critique" after they already have. I suppose they take disagreement as censorship. Some people are sensitive. I think one of these bands is great and the other isn't any good. What do you want me to say? I know. Maybe I'll go over to a Tom Petty fan site and tell them he's very one-dimensional. Then get hurt when people disagree with me. But no. That would be stupid. well I think my comment about the hearbreakers losing thier swing after Stan left to be an excellent thread to start discussion over at pettyfanboys.com, why not? my feelings arent hurt. that one dimension happens to be westerberg which is pretty great. On reflection a less combatitive approach for me to take would be to inquire if there was a preference of the various incanations of the replacements, like does Josh Freeze playing these songs change/improve/degrade the experince of the live band? hypothetically if you were seeing the old vs the new on the same night which would you prefer? OK thanks for that. This approach is more productive. I expect most fans would agree that the original lineup was the best live band (when they were on, and Bob wasn't wandering around in the crowd or playing pinball). But there were great shows with Slim too. Most would probably also agree that the reunion shows with just two of the original members were a gift, but not in the same category. Most fans also think Chris Mars is a great drummer for the band. I do. There are numerous fills in the studio albums--e.g. in "Favorite Thing"-- that give me chills. When he moves to the floor tom in "Can't Hardly Wait" after "I'll be home when I'm sleeping," I get a lump my throat. It's memorable and perfect for the song, and in general he's perfect for the band. And I don't think Jim Dickinson was being sarcastic when he said "nobody plays eighth notes like Tommy Stinson." There's an exuberance in his playing that again is perfect for the band, even in the earliest punk stuff (like what I said about "I Hate Music"). So it's pretty clear (what you already know) that Replacements fans think they're a great band, not just a backing band for Westerberg's great songs. When people go on about how they were the greatest band on the planet on a good night, they mean it. They don't just mean the band backed Westerberg really well. And as for "Fox on the Run" etc., those are moments of light fooling around and unpredictability. Fans like that about them. Those moments are not supposed to be towering climaxes. It's always been central to the band's appeal that they mix seriousness and goofing around (and other things, including ornery-ness). That's why "Gary's Got a Boner" and "Unsatisfied" are on the same record. To me, it's a kind of statement about life. Perfection and following the script are boring. If you don't like that, and would rather have a Tom Petty concert, there are going to be parts of the Replacements' appeal that won't reach you. But there are still other things to enjoy about them, as you know.
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Post by teddinard on Oct 27, 2017 17:53:12 GMT -5
It's funny when people on the internet say they "can't offer any critique" after they already have. I suppose they take disagreement as censorship. Some people are sensitive.
I think one of these bands is great and the other isn't any good. What do you want me to say?
I know. Maybe I'll go over to a Tom Petty fan site and tell them he's very one-dimensional. Then get hurt when people disagree with me.
But no. That would be stupid.
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