Post by allshookup on May 30, 2006 10:43:16 GMT -5
The REPLACEMENTS AMG Discography
Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash
Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash is a slight but enjoyable debut album from the Replacements, capturing the quartet halfway between the loud, fast punk rock of the Ramones and Hüsker Dü and the classic rock raunch of the Rolling Stones. Most of the record speeds by in a flurry of ragged guitars, rushed rhythms, and hoarse vocals -- it's about the sound, not the songs. However, there are a handful of songs that indicate the Replacements are capable of depth, including the bluesy Johnny Thunder tribute "Johnny's Gonna Die," the tongue-in-cheek "I Hate Music," and the near-anthemic "Shiftless When Idle."
- Johnny’s Gonna Die
This is how bad off former New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders was during his last decade of life: perpetually drunk Minneapolis teenager Paul Westerberg wrote "Johnny's Gonna Die" about the proto-punk legend a full ten years before he actually did die of his accumulated excesses. When a member of the Replacements, the most celebrated wastoids of the American punk underground, is worried about you, that's a clue that things have gone too far. "Johnny's Gonna Die" was an early clue that the Replacements, and Westerberg in particular, were ones to keep an eye on; in the midst of the competent but not particularly original hardcore on the group's ramshackle debut album, "Johnny's Gonna Die" adds an unexpected element of uncertainty and - dare it be said? - maturity to an otherwise recklessly diffident album. It's also an early sighting of the distance between Westerberg's reality and his band's cheerfully drunken mythology that would eventually help destroy the band.
- Shiftless When Idle
Paul Westerberg has said that the first song that turned his head around when he was a little kid was the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," and even in the Replacements' earliest hardcore days, they still owed more to the Stones than the Sex Pistols. "Shiftless When Idle," the musical high point of 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, has a two-guitar rhythm-and-lead part that's pretty far removed from the standard hardcore unison riffs; even more impressively, it has an actual bridge! Well, OK, the bridge consists of Westerberg singing nonsense "na-na-na" syllables over a slightly different version of the song's main riff, modulated up a half step before it goes into a weirdly Bachman-Turner Overdrive-like solo, but still, how many hardcore bands were doing stuff like that in 1981? It even fades out instead of crashing to the traditional punk-style clattering close, making it just about as close as American punk rock got to classic rock song structures at this point in its history.
- Somethin To Du
"Somethin to Du" is either a sideswipe or an homage to one of the Replacements' main competitors on the Minneapolis hardcore scene, a deadpan mimicking of Hüsker Dü's trademark blend of pop hooks (the repetition of the title line in the chorus is pure Bob Mould) and punk momentum. While the line "Stand around and sweat/Girls? You bet!" shows a certain naïveté about the personal lives of two-thirds of Hüsker Dü, the rest of the song's gleeful run-through of the perks of stardom ("Half-price drugs! Stolen guitars!") is right on target. Only the muttered line "Break the Mould" at the end suggests that Paul Westerberg isn't just a starry-eyed fanboy out to follow in the footsteps of his local idols, but a kid out to muscle his own way onto those stages.
Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash
Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash is a slight but enjoyable debut album from the Replacements, capturing the quartet halfway between the loud, fast punk rock of the Ramones and Hüsker Dü and the classic rock raunch of the Rolling Stones. Most of the record speeds by in a flurry of ragged guitars, rushed rhythms, and hoarse vocals -- it's about the sound, not the songs. However, there are a handful of songs that indicate the Replacements are capable of depth, including the bluesy Johnny Thunder tribute "Johnny's Gonna Die," the tongue-in-cheek "I Hate Music," and the near-anthemic "Shiftless When Idle."
- Johnny’s Gonna Die
This is how bad off former New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders was during his last decade of life: perpetually drunk Minneapolis teenager Paul Westerberg wrote "Johnny's Gonna Die" about the proto-punk legend a full ten years before he actually did die of his accumulated excesses. When a member of the Replacements, the most celebrated wastoids of the American punk underground, is worried about you, that's a clue that things have gone too far. "Johnny's Gonna Die" was an early clue that the Replacements, and Westerberg in particular, were ones to keep an eye on; in the midst of the competent but not particularly original hardcore on the group's ramshackle debut album, "Johnny's Gonna Die" adds an unexpected element of uncertainty and - dare it be said? - maturity to an otherwise recklessly diffident album. It's also an early sighting of the distance between Westerberg's reality and his band's cheerfully drunken mythology that would eventually help destroy the band.
- Shiftless When Idle
Paul Westerberg has said that the first song that turned his head around when he was a little kid was the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," and even in the Replacements' earliest hardcore days, they still owed more to the Stones than the Sex Pistols. "Shiftless When Idle," the musical high point of 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, has a two-guitar rhythm-and-lead part that's pretty far removed from the standard hardcore unison riffs; even more impressively, it has an actual bridge! Well, OK, the bridge consists of Westerberg singing nonsense "na-na-na" syllables over a slightly different version of the song's main riff, modulated up a half step before it goes into a weirdly Bachman-Turner Overdrive-like solo, but still, how many hardcore bands were doing stuff like that in 1981? It even fades out instead of crashing to the traditional punk-style clattering close, making it just about as close as American punk rock got to classic rock song structures at this point in its history.
- Somethin To Du
"Somethin to Du" is either a sideswipe or an homage to one of the Replacements' main competitors on the Minneapolis hardcore scene, a deadpan mimicking of Hüsker Dü's trademark blend of pop hooks (the repetition of the title line in the chorus is pure Bob Mould) and punk momentum. While the line "Stand around and sweat/Girls? You bet!" shows a certain naïveté about the personal lives of two-thirds of Hüsker Dü, the rest of the song's gleeful run-through of the perks of stardom ("Half-price drugs! Stolen guitars!") is right on target. Only the muttered line "Break the Mould" at the end suggests that Paul Westerberg isn't just a starry-eyed fanboy out to follow in the footsteps of his local idols, but a kid out to muscle his own way onto those stages.