Post by allshookup on May 30, 2006 10:44:30 GMT -5
The REPLACEMENTS AMG Discography
Stink
Following quick on the heels of the group's debut, the Stink EP takes the loud-hard-fast attitude of Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take out the Trash to the extreme, mistakenly giving the impression that the Replacements were a hardcore band. Even though the EP isn't much more than clamor, it's better clamor than before -- the band doesn't sound tighter, but their noise is more galvanizing and a handful of songs ("Kids Don't Follow," "F*ck School," "God Damn Job") suggest Paul Westerberg is improving as a songwriter.
- Kids Don’t Follow
The Replacements' Stink EP was basically just a slightly extended 12" single, with the rather brilliant "Kids Don't Follow" followed by a few lesser tunes. The track was certainly meant to be seen as a local hardcore scene anthem, starting as it does with a live field recording of the Minneapolis police breaking up a house party and threatening the crowd with arrest. Although one would expect a Black Flag-style 90-second hardcore rave-up from an opening like that, Paul Westerberg has already leapfrogged beyond simple two-chord thrash by this point in his brief career. "Kids Don't Follow" is the first of the Replacements' many brilliant straight-up pop songs, sounding like nothing quite so much as the mid-'60s Rolling Stones or Pretty Things ramped up to about 120 mph on a combination of cheap beer and semi-articulate teenage angst, set to a dead-simple but perfectly realized Bob Stinson guitar riff. The Replacements would refine and perfect this personal style over the following four years, but "Kids Don't Follow" shows that Westerberg and crew were already mixing their catchy hooks with their hardcore purity.
- F*ck School
One simply assumes that co-producer/label head Peter Jesperson heard Paul Westerberg's "Kids Don't Follow" and quickly herded his band into Minneapolis' Blackberry Way Studios to release it as a speedy follow-up to 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, because much of the rest of the single-session EP Stink consists of ultra-brief hardcore blurts so chaotic and shapeless that it sounds like they were barely written before the recording light went on. The one highlight is the barely 90-second "F*ck School," which is about as lyrically brilliant as one would imagine from the title. But, y'know, one doesn't expect brilliance from hardcore lyrics, and the gleeful crudity of Westerberg's anti-education rant feels about 1,000 times more real than Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2." The song also has the second-best chorus on the EP, somehow made even better by the fact that the song is being played so fast that Westerberg can't even sing it without getting winded and losing his place nearly every time, an oddly sweet bit of audio vérité that was smart to leave in, because it shows how close the song is to spinning apart entirely.
Stink
Following quick on the heels of the group's debut, the Stink EP takes the loud-hard-fast attitude of Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take out the Trash to the extreme, mistakenly giving the impression that the Replacements were a hardcore band. Even though the EP isn't much more than clamor, it's better clamor than before -- the band doesn't sound tighter, but their noise is more galvanizing and a handful of songs ("Kids Don't Follow," "F*ck School," "God Damn Job") suggest Paul Westerberg is improving as a songwriter.
- Kids Don’t Follow
The Replacements' Stink EP was basically just a slightly extended 12" single, with the rather brilliant "Kids Don't Follow" followed by a few lesser tunes. The track was certainly meant to be seen as a local hardcore scene anthem, starting as it does with a live field recording of the Minneapolis police breaking up a house party and threatening the crowd with arrest. Although one would expect a Black Flag-style 90-second hardcore rave-up from an opening like that, Paul Westerberg has already leapfrogged beyond simple two-chord thrash by this point in his brief career. "Kids Don't Follow" is the first of the Replacements' many brilliant straight-up pop songs, sounding like nothing quite so much as the mid-'60s Rolling Stones or Pretty Things ramped up to about 120 mph on a combination of cheap beer and semi-articulate teenage angst, set to a dead-simple but perfectly realized Bob Stinson guitar riff. The Replacements would refine and perfect this personal style over the following four years, but "Kids Don't Follow" shows that Westerberg and crew were already mixing their catchy hooks with their hardcore purity.
- F*ck School
One simply assumes that co-producer/label head Peter Jesperson heard Paul Westerberg's "Kids Don't Follow" and quickly herded his band into Minneapolis' Blackberry Way Studios to release it as a speedy follow-up to 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, because much of the rest of the single-session EP Stink consists of ultra-brief hardcore blurts so chaotic and shapeless that it sounds like they were barely written before the recording light went on. The one highlight is the barely 90-second "F*ck School," which is about as lyrically brilliant as one would imagine from the title. But, y'know, one doesn't expect brilliance from hardcore lyrics, and the gleeful crudity of Westerberg's anti-education rant feels about 1,000 times more real than Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2." The song also has the second-best chorus on the EP, somehow made even better by the fact that the song is being played so fast that Westerberg can't even sing it without getting winded and losing his place nearly every time, an oddly sweet bit of audio vérité that was smart to leave in, because it shows how close the song is to spinning apart entirely.