Post by headlightbeams on Jul 18, 2006 1:30:59 GMT -5
This is from the issue with, you guessed it, Tom Petty on the cover.
Nice reproduction on the sofa/train tracks photo.
www.harpmagazine.com/reviews/cd_reviews/detail.cfm?article_id=4536
The Replacements
Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? - The Best of The ReplacementsRhino
The Zen of Baseball argues that the greatest hitters don’t try and connect with the ball, they simply hit it—which is an apt metaphor for the Replacements’ approach to rock ’n’ roll as well. That both the Babe and the ’Mats imbibed veritable oceans of lager while pursuing their glories only underscores the point.
But “glory” was about the farthest thing from the minds of misfits Paul Westerberg , the Stinson brothers and Chris Mars, when they found each other noisily pursuing their obsessions in the same Minneapolis suburb at the ass end of the seventies. Yet they’re now dutifully—if somewhat ironically—ensconced in a single disc greatest hits package, despite a lifetime commercial batting average that rivaled Bob Uecker’s.
Westerberg and company were alternative rock icons before “Alternative Rock” became oxymoronic, patron saints to losers and rock critics alike (if indeed there’s a difference). Culling their shaggy glory down to 18 tracks and a couple of fine, albeit bittersweet, new reunion tracks by the survivors (the elegiac “Message to the Boys” the gritty “Pool & Dive”) ostensibly seems as artistically shrewd as a Falco box set. Yet the wrong end of the telescope somehow straightens their unguided missile of a career arc into something more akin to Greek tragedy.
Early cuts from Sorry Ma… and Stink offer promising gobs of snotty thrash-—yet hardly different from what scores of bands were serving up in the early ’80s. But it’s precisely that context that makes Hootenanny’s “Color Me Impressed” and “Within Your Reach” stand as something special, a dollop of human vulnerability in the midst of the spit ’n’ slam.
A pundit would argue ’84s Let It Be cystallized Westerberg’s songwriting and his band’s focus; the songwriter simply seems to have focused his boredom and disaffection more acutely via “I Will Dare” and the Mats’ first great anthem, “Unsatisfied.” Tim showed how unconsciously similar anthems flowed from Westerberg’s besotted soul—indeed, he seemed to need “Here Comes A Regular” and the ragged, defiant glory of “Bastards of Young” as much as the fans who adopted them, while the pop radio valentine “Left of the Dial” forcefully made a case for unlikely nostalgia.
That fragile need and self-identification powers Pleased to Meet Me’s “Alex Chilton” and the gorgeous “Skyway” even farther into rarified air—and straight away from the grab-bag of familiar cliches alt.rock was quickly devolving into. The defiant charm of “I’ll Be You” and pop-smart “Merry Go Round” showed how Westerberg could still rise to the occasion, even as his ship was clearly taking on water at the end of the decade—and sadly, his band’s career.
By Jerry McCulley
First printed in Jul/Aug 2006
Nice reproduction on the sofa/train tracks photo.
www.harpmagazine.com/reviews/cd_reviews/detail.cfm?article_id=4536
The Replacements
Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? - The Best of The ReplacementsRhino
The Zen of Baseball argues that the greatest hitters don’t try and connect with the ball, they simply hit it—which is an apt metaphor for the Replacements’ approach to rock ’n’ roll as well. That both the Babe and the ’Mats imbibed veritable oceans of lager while pursuing their glories only underscores the point.
But “glory” was about the farthest thing from the minds of misfits Paul Westerberg , the Stinson brothers and Chris Mars, when they found each other noisily pursuing their obsessions in the same Minneapolis suburb at the ass end of the seventies. Yet they’re now dutifully—if somewhat ironically—ensconced in a single disc greatest hits package, despite a lifetime commercial batting average that rivaled Bob Uecker’s.
Westerberg and company were alternative rock icons before “Alternative Rock” became oxymoronic, patron saints to losers and rock critics alike (if indeed there’s a difference). Culling their shaggy glory down to 18 tracks and a couple of fine, albeit bittersweet, new reunion tracks by the survivors (the elegiac “Message to the Boys” the gritty “Pool & Dive”) ostensibly seems as artistically shrewd as a Falco box set. Yet the wrong end of the telescope somehow straightens their unguided missile of a career arc into something more akin to Greek tragedy.
Early cuts from Sorry Ma… and Stink offer promising gobs of snotty thrash-—yet hardly different from what scores of bands were serving up in the early ’80s. But it’s precisely that context that makes Hootenanny’s “Color Me Impressed” and “Within Your Reach” stand as something special, a dollop of human vulnerability in the midst of the spit ’n’ slam.
A pundit would argue ’84s Let It Be cystallized Westerberg’s songwriting and his band’s focus; the songwriter simply seems to have focused his boredom and disaffection more acutely via “I Will Dare” and the Mats’ first great anthem, “Unsatisfied.” Tim showed how unconsciously similar anthems flowed from Westerberg’s besotted soul—indeed, he seemed to need “Here Comes A Regular” and the ragged, defiant glory of “Bastards of Young” as much as the fans who adopted them, while the pop radio valentine “Left of the Dial” forcefully made a case for unlikely nostalgia.
That fragile need and self-identification powers Pleased to Meet Me’s “Alex Chilton” and the gorgeous “Skyway” even farther into rarified air—and straight away from the grab-bag of familiar cliches alt.rock was quickly devolving into. The defiant charm of “I’ll Be You” and pop-smart “Merry Go Round” showed how Westerberg could still rise to the occasion, even as his ship was clearly taking on water at the end of the decade—and sadly, his band’s career.
By Jerry McCulley
First printed in Jul/Aug 2006