Post by Seth's Mom on Dec 2, 2004 11:04:29 GMT -5
'Pleased to Meet Me' a classic rock gem
By JOHN WENZ / Daily Nebraskan
December 02, 2004
Not everybody can be Paul Westerberg, though many can and will try.
Not everyone can reach his heights of loud guitars, passionate vocals, great hooks and brilliant melodies.
Not just any songwriting can make you remember why you fell in love with music in the first place.
And to me, one of the finest examples of Westerberg’s song craft was back in the time when he was the man behind The Replacements, the rock brats of the 1980s.
When going into The Replacements realm, there is a triumvirate of great albums from the band that forever cemented their reputation in alternative rock history.
These three were “Let it Be,” their final independent album; “Tim,” their first album on Sire Records; and “Pleased to Meet Me,” their last truly great album before the band descended into self-destruction.
While “Let it Be” and “Tim” had their share of absolute guitar-rock gems, “Pleased to Meet Me” found a balance of song craft, production and loud volume the band would never find on their subsequent albums, “Don’t Tell a Soul” and “All Shook Down.”
The first Replacements album without guitarist Bob Stinson, the band took daring steps that they pulled off just right. With more polished recording and production, along with the addition of a horn section on the song “Can’t Hardly Wait,” there was definite potential for the band to become an album-oriented-rock joke.
Instead, these new elements merely perfectly complemented the music, and showed that Westerberg, Chris Mars and Tommy Stinson could go on without Bob.
The album is quick to get to the balls-out rock, unlike its predecessor “Tim.” “I.O.U.,” the opening track, leads perfectly into “Alex Chilton,” quite possibly the greatest love song ever.
But it’s not a love song about a boy and a girl; a boy and a boy; a girl and a girl or even a boy and a whore. It’s a song about falling in love with music, about finding that one artist whose music makes your life feel just that much better.
In the case of this song, as the title would suggest, it’s about Westerberg’s love of Big Star and Box Tops front man Alex Chilton, who nearly invented the power-pop sub-genre that the Replacements helped carry the banner of through the 1980s.
And of course, Westerberg recruited his hero to do a little guitar work on the album, making the song just that much more memorable.
From there, the album goes into “I Don’t Know,” sails on to “Nightclub Jitters” and contemplates the means to an end of it all in “The Ledge.”
It builds to a climax, going through such classics as “Never Mind,” “Shooting Dirty Pool” and “Skyway” before driving it all home with “Can’t Hardly Wait.”
Rarely does guitar driven power-pop feel so heart felt. Rarely does a song about falling in love with music make you fall in love with music as much as “Alex Chilton.”
And it is all these factors that let “Pleased to Meet Me” stand as a virtual Rosetta stone on how to translate the music just right and create brilliant power pop.
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