The Replacements - "Tim": Classic or Dud?

I don't see how an album with "Bastards of Young", "Left of the Dial" or "Here Comes A Regular" could be that dissapointing to someone who liked The Replacements.

I could perhaps see a parallel between some of Westerberg's and Fogerty's solo albums, but not in Tim.

It probably doesn't take much to get in an arguement with a Replacment's fan after a six pack or so, considering I think being a minor trifled embittered drunk seems to be a somewhat of a membership card (probably myself included).

But "Bastards of Young" felt false then and still does, plus it's not much of a melody and doesn't even rock--so much for pleasing Tommy. "Waitress in the Sky" was a punchline in search of a joke, still is. "Here Comes a Regular" seemed overblown. But at least that wore well, and so did the rest, despite the production. "Kiss Me on the Bus" is a weak tune but genuinely sweet. This album was a lot of people's first Replacements album, and it sure sounded better than anything else in this vein a few years later...

Like me, e.g. I've always had a soft spot for it. I was 15 and I listened to "Hold My Life" over and over and over. Song for song, I understand the nods given to Let It Be and Pleased to Meet Me. But I prefer to think of them as kind of a trilogy -- the second book always sags a little, but it's where a lot of the character development happens. Or something like that. It took me about three months to get the gallows joke in "Swinging Party", which seemed like genius to me at the time (did I mention I was 15?).

I Hate Music
Kids Don't Follow
Within Your Reach
Mr. Whirly
Treatment Bound
Hold My Life
Swinging Party
Little Mascara
Here Comes a Regular
I'll Be You

I love the cover! Robert Longo is the 80s, and I could never quite believe they roped him in to do it.

I'm not sure what the problems are with the production either.

And Longo wasn't the 80's .. Nagle was. Duran Duran. (gag.)

"If Only You Were Lonely"
"Buck Hill"
"Fuck School"
"Stuck in the Middle"
"Go"
"Kiss Me on the Bus"
"Bastards of Young" (awkward title notwithstanding)
"Left of the Dial"
"Someone Take the Wheel"

The production on Tim is nowhere near as bad as the production on PTMM. The production RUINS that record!

TESTIFY, brother Sterling! CAN I GET AN 'AMEN'?

Amateurist: Tommy Ramone produced Tim and co-produced PMM, but the latter was largely produced by Jim Dickinson and engineered by John Hampton and Joe Hardy at Ardent Studios in Memphis. When I (briefly) worked at Ardent, I was sometimes tasked with giving studio tours, and the highlight of the experience, given the right group of tourons, was pointing out where Paul Westerberg had allegedly vomited in his hands and then thrown it up onto the carpeted wall of Studio B. In retrospect, that was one of the best things about working there, in fact.

Compared to live versions I've heard from the same period, yes.

Hootenanny and Let It Be were the pinnacle for me and Tim was the inevitable letdown. I love the former two for the personal, localized feel of the songs -- Midwestern brats lamenting and celebrating (at the same time) they're sorry-ass lives. Tim loses the local flavor, and it doesn't rock as much. It sounds like a deliberate switch to try to be something bigger, to start writing songs for a generation. They're less personal, they're more bitter (I hear more lamenting and less celebrating on Tim), and, well, "Here Comes a Regular" is no "Treatment Bound."

Along with Husker Du & The Minutemen, they are the reason I started to play music, so for that alone they are special to me. There was an article when Tim came out in RS called something like "The Gospel According To Paul" that had advice for someone starting wanting to start a band with the advice of have some friends, get some instruments and give it a go, so we did.

It's not a matter of value on a "DIY-to-glossy" scale, it's when the whole thing is compressed too much and the guitars hardly sound different from the bass and the drums and the vocal and the big dramatic build ups are scarcely any louder than the rest of the song. Production isn't some "other" value to be placed beside melody, lyrics, etc.--it's how the whole thing sounds. And while I can hear some good songs and committed singing, and enjoy the music for those reasons, Tim and Pleased to Meet Me sound awful--worse than anything else in my collection, very nearly. I'm willing to grant that much of this has to do with poor cassette and CD masters. But that doesn't help me.

Mats Bible

ok, Let It Be is better (and this one couildve been a perfect e.p if 4-5 songs were cut off), but man - "hold my life" what a song.

Yeah, Let It Be trumps all but this one is great, too. I'll have to pull it out cause it's been too long. As I understand it, this and Pleased To Meet Me will get the reissue treatment later this year (along with Don't Tell A Soul & All Shook Down, but to be honest I never bought those in the first place).

Don't Tell A Soul is boring in a ghastly way. Like, Bowie's Tonight boring.

Alfred otm about DTAS. However, I've never minded All Shook Down so much. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for swan songs.

"I'll Be You = "Blue Jean," I guess.

I blame the Lord-Alge bros for the horror that is DTAS.

I actually prefer this album to Let It Be -- and I prefer Pleased to Meet Me to both of 'em.

I prefer all of Westerberg's solo stuff by far. The more Joanna the better.

Joanna? Rhyming slang for "piano"?

I rememeber a live boot with them doing Kansas City Star and Hey Good Lookin' that was pretty great.

Just picked the Rhino reissue up and was tickled pink to see a reproduction of the poster for the 1986 Replacements/Reducers/Neutral Nation/That'll Learn Ya show in Providence. Not only was it the greatest show I've ever seen (their next show at the same venue later that year was probably the worst), a buddy of mine played bass for That'll Learn Ya that night and hung out with them backstage. Said they were cool and shared their beer and food.

Oh dear- I think I must have been on some early booze above about three back , or trying and failing to be really cleverly sarky - Tim is a classic. Sorry to bore ya but 'Let It Be' is THE classic though

"Waitress in the Sky" makes my heart sing (though my girlfriend thinks it's somewhat sexist and classist-- she's probably right, but I don't give a shit).

oh, and I really dig the bass parts for "Swinging Party Down the Line." Brilliant, Tommy!

"left of the dial", "hold my life", "bastards of young" "swingin' party", "here comes the regular" - stronger songs than anything on "let it be" and the strongest Replacements songs ever imo, but the rest is kinda mediocre ot plain bad. "let it be" is more constant.

Love the version of "Can't Hardly Wait" on the bonus tracks. Would have put the album up a notch had it been included originally.

how does this sound compared to the old CD?

love Tim, but always thought it sounded a little flat, but maybe that's just how it was recorded...heard that tommy ramones ears were shot by time they did this....

yeah i'm curious about that too -- there was always something off about Tim's production/mix to my ears ...

it's just kinda dingy sounding. probably my fav album, still, but yeah i wish it was recorded like the earlier ones

tinny -- hüskers tü

i've come to accept the fact that the very specific way in which the huskers records sound like shit is actually a plus aesthetically...that weird shrill tinny layer of noise, horrible compressed midrange guitar/vocal roar over essentially poppy punk songs is actually what make them work as a weird art/pop thing for me....

like if they sounded better they would be worse records

The alternative is, of course, the production of Don't Tell a Soul and the other one. Could the Mats afford anything else -- financially or aesthetically?

on some hüskers thread i said i wished their records had been produced the way the sugar records were. i think alfred gave me shit, but I WILL NOT BLINK.

i can't actually think of another example of hating a record's production...

"Waitress in the Sky" makes my heart sing (though my girlfriend thinks it's somewhat sexist and classist-- she's probably right, but I don't give a shit).

In the remaster's liner notes, Westerberg says he wrote it for his sister, a lifelong flight attendant. Supposed to be from the point of the view of an asshat flyer.

Supposed to be from the point of the view of an asshat flyer.

That sort of surprises me because the lyrics don't make the flyer sound like a total dick.

'paid my fare / don't want to complain / you get to me you're always out of champagne'
'don't treat me special / don't kiss my ass'

I always got the impression that it was just some mildly indignant dude who's tired of being condescended to by the flight attendant.

damn, i'd like to read those liner notes. :(

'don't treat me special / don't kiss my ass'

Followed by "Treat me like the way you treat 'em up in first class," right?

I listened to the new discs at work on my Harmon/Kardon speakers that look like jellyfish, and have a hole in the midrange. Haven't had a chance to hear and compare at home yet. Those liner notes are illuminating. I was always bothered by the drum sound on Pleased To Meet Me, and sure enough, the band fought some battles with the producer or engineer who wanted to use some new technology. The compromise was to use the new tech for the drums. And sure enough, the drums sound dated as hell.

And, in fact, they are gated as hell.

Tim = 80s digital reverb slathered over everything

PTTM = the above, now gated!

DTAS = all of the above, plus...you made Chris Mars play to a fucking click-track?!

ASD = finally gets the production right (I'd argue that it's the only major-label 'mats album that doesn't sound dated, production-wise) just in time for their worst album.

yeah ASD sounds the best and has the weakest material. its sad.

I'm glad I had no opinions about production when I loved these albums.

(opinions or standards, that is)

I've been wanting to read a defense of All Shook Down. Not like it's a risk: I always see used copies for 69 cents.

yeah ASD sounds the best and has the weakest material. its sad.

Its sadly beautiful maybe!

I love All Shook Down. It's ten times better than Don't Tell A Soul, that's for damned sure.

How's this????

All Shook Down: not as bad as Don't Tell a Soul

haha xposts

You know it's funny: When I started this thread five years ago, I hadn't even ever listened to "Let It Be." I just listened to "Let It Be" and "Tim" back to back, and now it's hard for me to read this thread, because geez, honestly, "Let It Be" kind of sucks. I don't think I'd give any of the songs on that album a second listen except for "Answering Machine," "Unsatisfied," and maybe "Androgynous." Meanwhile, Tim has Bastards of Young, Hold My Life, Here Comes a Regular, Swingin' Party and the criminally underrated Little Mascara. Yes, there are a few weak songs on there, but seriously, what the living hell is so great about "Let It Be"?

what part of "gary's got a boner" dont u understand?

don't tell a soul = +1 for not having the chick from concrete blonde on it

don't tell a soul = -1 for "achin to be" possibly being about Natalie Merchant.

don't tell a soul = +1 for talent show the last really great replacements song

sometimes i think the cover of "black diamond" on let it be is better than any kiss song OR replacements song

I listened to "Nothing For All" again the other day, and I still like "Portland" better than "Talent Show".

And I would vote "Bent Out of Shape" as the last really great Mats song.

i'd like to hear a paired down "all killer no filler" version of all shook down, like cut off about 1/2 the songs, that might be super awesome.

I might rather listen to Tim - and I'm perfectly fine with DTAS' hair-metal-era big-hook radio bid - but Let It Be is a moment in time that you can't really recapture - there's less pretension/self-aware artyness than in the more anthemic later songs, plus more beauty in its jangliness.

i more and more love the first two albums the most - stink and sorry ma.

i don't think westerberg really understood what made the replacements great.

I love "Talent Show" so much, still gives me chills. And I agree about "Black Diamond" being a highlight too.

whoever called the replacements "spotty" upthread wins. some great songs, but way too much clutter on each and every album. they're ripe for a CD80 but asking for much more than that is a bit much.
― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:20 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

they are spotty, and if I was investigating them now instead of in high school, I wouldn't have given them enough time to realize that they fucking rule.

(and doesn't anyone like "Anywhere's Better Than Here" off Don't Tell a Soul?)

Tim is ultra classic except for Dose of Thunder and Lay It Down Clown, always feel like skipping those, the rest is golden

The production on Tim is nowhere near as bad as the production on PTMM. The production RUINS that record!

^^^^^
this truth endures. HATE.

yeah, i find PTMM kinda unlistenable

Complaining about how these Minneapolis bands were produced at this point is churlish; when their low budget attempt at eighties big bam boom obscures terrible songs (as on DTAS), that's when the problems begin.

The hate for Don't Tell A Soul on this board continues to amaze me.

It was the first Replacements record I got so that may color my view.

PTMM is the best one fuck the haterz

ive never heard anything after pttm, other than singles that saturated the indiesphere so ok

xpost.

and no.

I wish every Mats albums sounded like Sugar's, but hey.

The reissues have revealed a whole bunch of things to me.

- Demo take of Kiss Me on the Bus is amazing- as horny as the album version is sweet. The revved up riffing totally transforms the lyric for me.
- Demo take of Waitress in the Sky, with it's choogling strums makes me realize it's nearly a parody of Spirit in the Sky.
- I always despised the bit in "We'll Inherit the Earth" where someone whispers "don't tell a soul..." Just so corny, such a bid for being anthemic. I now see that this hatred has lived on in the way the Mazda "zoom zoom" commercials make me shudder.

i more and more love the first two albums the most - stink and sorry ma. i don't think westerberg really understood what made the replacements great.

YES!

I love the "don't tell a soul" whisper in "We'll Inherit The Earth"! But I couldn't defend it, it's a very personal thing; there's nothing "objectively" great about it.

Replacements = American Kinks?

I love Tim to death, but I guess that see-saw between drunken anarchy and the calm sedateness of later albums never really balanced out. I hated how critics at the time of PTMM called it their "grown up" album and how they got serious by tossing out Bob. They couldn't have continued with him, but that mystery X-factor that made the Replacements worth being a fanatic about wasn't there. Slim = Kenny Jones?

Slim = Kenny Jones?
yeah kinda!

bob said something in an article once, it was later day real sad bob, just drinking his way around minneapolis...but anyway he said something i thought was telling, was like "you know...a lot of paul's songs were more about ME than they were about paul"

I remember reading that Tommy Stinson thought "I'll Be You" was the greatest song ever written or something. Weird, I think that song totally sucks.

I disagree. "I'll Be You" is classic example of great song on shit album. As an AOR hit (a #1 AOR hit!) it sounded like nothing else in spring '89, even if the drums, click track, and synth sparkles did. That opening line -- "If (guitar lick) it's a temp-o-rary lull" -- still catches my ear.

Slim = Kenny Jones?

Hmmm...does that mean PTMM is the Mats' Face Dances? All Shook Down is certainly their It's Hard.

"Attitude" is my pick for the last great Mats' song, and in fact is one of only two on ASD with Mars, Westerberg, Dunlap and Stinson on it. It's like a grizzled, mournful shrug.

I'm glad I had no opinions about production when I loved these albums.

At the time, I didn't notice the production at all. It wasn't real easy to see in 1987 or 1989 that contemporary production styles would sound embarrassingly dated 20 years later.

um all "contemporary" production styles sound dated 20 years later. the most interesting stuff is usually that which either eschews contemporary production styles altogether or embraces them in the biggest, dumbest, most enthusiastic way possible.

Right, dated. Embarrassingly dated is a bit harder to predict.

When critics say "dated," they almost always refer to the eighties. For some reason the seventies studio sound doesn't rate "dated."

I remember friends complaining about the "big drum sound" back in the 80s. I don't think we knew what a gate was, but it sure sounded different from indie productions. Seventies sound is pretty much the baseline- fidelity gets about as high as it can be for ordinary people to be able to distinguish, 16+ tracks becomes standard, but instruments were still recorded in a straightforward, non-processed manner. When effects were used, it was more like special effects than about transforming every element in a track.

Cocteau Twins would be a good example of embracing the day's gimmicks in the biggest, dumbest, most enthusiastic way possible and coming up with art.

I disagree. "I'll Be You" is classic example of great song on shit album. As an AOR hit (a #1 AOR hit!) it sounded like nothing else in spring '89

Was it really a #1 AOR hit?? Cuz it does really sound like it would come out of an office secretary's soft rock radio station.

"I'll Be You" was the lead single from The Replacements' seventh studio album Don't Tell a Soul in 1989 and was written by lead singer Paul Westerberg. It became the band's first and only Billboard Hot 100 hit, peaking at #51 and reaching the top of both the modern rock and mainstream rock charts.

Was it really a #1 AOR hit?? Cuz it does really sound like it would come out of an office secretary's soft rock radio station.

Two different things.

Oh yeah, my mistake. Which one does Crowded Houses' "Don't Dream it's Over" count as?

still need closure on this:

Which one does Crowded Houses' "Don't Dream it's Over" count as?

When critics say "dated," they almost always refer to the eighties. For some reason the seventies studio sound doesn't rate "dated."

It did in the '80s

sometimes i wish the replacements had done more ballads. i've been playing this album a lot in the car lately and the softer stuff sticks with me a lot longer than the rest of it -- 'waitress in the sky,' 'kiss me on the bus,' and 'swingin party' are all so gorgeous.

i still love this album but i wish it was just a bit more consistent. when the band's 'on,' their harder stuff is great ('i'll buy,' 'left of the dial'), but so often they sound like they just don't give a shit, which sounds great if you're reading about this legendary rock'n'roll band that didn't give a shit, but isn't always great to actually listen to.

"Left of the Dial" is incredible, but I'm kinda sad it won't make sense to anyone born in this millenium.

I disagree. "I'll Be You" is classic example of great song on shit album. As an AOR hit (a #1 AOR hit!) it sounded like nothing else in spring '89

Was it really a #1 AOR hit?? Cuz it does really sound like it would come out of an office secretary's soft rock radio station.

― Shushtari (res), Wednesday, October 1, 2008 9:09 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

boo @ attempted insult to "office secretaries"

production job is not great, but on the whole i like the songs on 'tim' better.

Tim was an important album to me at the time, but I'd be less inclined to play it today than two or three others. I agree with J.D. that they left behind some great ballads, but I'm not that big on the three he singles out--I much prefer "Within Your Reach," "Unsatisfied," "Skyway," and (harder-edged) "Go."

OTM

Reading Trouble Boys, at the Tim recording/release part of the book. I checked in on spotify because I recalled they had some deluxe editions with odds n sods I'd not heard for all the albums. Surprised to see that "Swingin Party" is the number one Replacements song.
I think when I got Tim, which at the time was their new album, and I had only read/heard about them, I was most struck by this tune, since I was navigating punk at the time.

reason for Swingin Party = covered by Lorde

Why does no one ever mention "I'll Buy" ? Totally one of my favourite Replacements songs full stop, let alone on the album.

https://img.apmcdn.org/fa179548a8b1da90522a386566cd5494b8ecafaf/uncropped/64819e-20130822-tim-the-replacements.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/TZTioOp.png

:o

I think I was too harsh on Tim for a long time, and if "Can't Hardly Wait" had been included, it really would be their best record.

del g, was this before your time?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdIsB5FINDg

I think I was too harsh on Tim for a long time, and if "Can't Hardly Wait" had been included, it really would be their best record.

It's been said so many times that "Dose of Thunder" and "Lay It Down Clown" were the weakest tracks, and that "Nowhere Is My Home" and "Can't Hardly Wait" should have made the album - it's even printed right there in the liner notes for the Rhino reissue.

Anyway, I made my own copy based on that conventional wisdom, swapping out "Dose of Thunder" for "Nowhere Is My Home" and "Lay It Down Clown" for "Can't Hardly Wait" from the All For Nothing/Nothing For All bonus disc (better than the two versions used for the Rhino reissue), and that's version I've listened to for quite a few years now. It does feel like their best album in that configuration.

Totally agree birdistheword.

Rewatching the vid I posted 10 months ago^^^ that drummer is a beast, right before the 2 minute mark he starts these machine gun rolls and then absolutely smashing the ride cymbal at every opportunity.

(Josh Freese)

I do the same lineup change as you, except my go-to 'Can't Hardly Wait' is the acoustic demo Alex Chilton produced - something about the barebones arrangement and the original lyrics just works for me so much more than the subsequent electric versions.

Can't keep track of those three versions- yet. My goto version is the one from Live at Maxwell's. Also seems like Justin Townes Earle had taken some kind of ownership of this song.

However you slice it, the official PTMM version is pretty obviously the worst.

Or is it? Maybe it is finally time for me, myself and the Blecchs to finally make peace with it

I didn't mind it right now listening to it between the other versions. But the song always had an unpolished or even unfinished edge to it, like they had the riff and some of the lyrics but not all, some of the lyrics were still placeholders. The attempt to polish it up for Hitsville purposes seemed to kill a good bit of the magic.

Craziest Josh Freese story (I've seen him play with the Mats, Weezer, Devo, btw, maybe NIN, too!) was that he played on "Chinese Democracy," replacing whatever drummer Axl had first used. Like, literally: Axl had him reproduce the entire album's drums, hit for hit and crash for crash, because Axl liked the drums exactly as they were but didn't want to give the other drummer credit.

.

otm

There were actually two Pleased to Meet Me-era versions released in 1987, and both will be on the upcoming box set. One's on the album, the other was on a single remixed by Jimmy Iovine in the hope that it would get more airplay. (Same basic parts, but it's worse than the album version.)

Had Pleased to Meet Me's version been an outtake, one that was never intended for the album but just an experiment for a different approach, it would be charming. ("We've never tried horns before..." "How about strings or even synth strings? It could be like Alex Chilton's stuff with the Box Tops." "Sounds dubious, but try it on some old stuff. We'll see how it sounds, then we'll think about it.")

I always liked the SNL performance of Westerberg doing "Can't Hardly Wait" with only the addition of horns. It's not my favorite version, but it's a good version and the horns feel organic.

Oh, never saw that before, I don't think, thanks!

I didn’t know people don’t like the album version, I love it. The horns are right for the riff.

That record’s the one time they actually had a producer capable of making them sound good - in the we-fit-neatly-on-pop-radio-without-compromsing-who-we-are sense - rather than just endearingly scrappy, and Jim Dickinson’s version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” is the prime example imo. Just the switchup on the instrumental after “I’ll be home when I’m sleeping” should be enough to drive home how good his instincts for this material were.
That said I mainlined the entire Replacements discography by playing the pertinent bits as I read through Trouble Boys, so I’ll own up to the fact that my experience with this music is drastically different than it would be for someone who’s spent years internalizing Bob Stinson’s departure as a major pivot point for the band they love.

I didn’t know people don’t like the album version, I love it. The horns are right for the riff.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra),

I agree. I wasn't around at the time.

Same

Then you'll never know, will you?

Rhino's next Replacements box set will be for Tim - will be out in the fall.

Official announcement hasn't been made yet, but Tommy spilled the beans in a recent Sirius interview with Lisa Loeb.

Hopefully one of the discs will be a DVD/Blu-Ray with their SNL performance.

I remember friends complaining about the "big drum sound" back in the 80s. I don't think we knew what a gate was, but it sure sounded different from indie productions. Seventies sound is pretty much the baseline- fidelity gets about as high as it can be for ordinary people to be able to distinguish, 16+ tracks becomes standard, but instruments were still recorded in a straightforward, non-processed manner. When effects were used, it was more like special effects than about transforming every element in a track.

Cocteau Twins would be a good example of embracing the day's gimmicks in the biggest, dumbest, most enthusiastic way possible and coming up with art.

For sure Guthrie talked about using effects as a way to disguise his own modest skills, which any amateur guitarist can appreciate. Some years ago I was playing guitar (I suck) and trying out some pedal. Someone walked in and exclaimed, wow, was that all you? And I was like, yes ... and no.

Major label minded producers, though, I think they often saw new gadgets and gimmicks as a way to correct perceived flaws, or at least allow for greater degrees of control. I recently learned, for example, that some of the drum sounds on the first Fugazi EPs were actually triggered samples! Because that's what the (totally competent but ultimately wrong for Fugazi) producer wanted. And of course "Pleased to Meet Me" was apparently constructed with a lot of help from a Fairlight. For Tommy Ramone/Erdelyi, the no-brainer approach would have to simply record the Replacements like the first Ramomes albums (or Let It Be), but WB probably had different ideas about it and (this) Tommy was playing with toys he never had before, not to mention dealing with a band that notoriously didn't have a lot of usable takes in them.

xxp I do too but Bob Mehr said their own internal research shows that most people rarely watch DVD’s packaged with box sets so they’re very reluctant to include them anymore.

Yeah, I can definitely see that -- a vinyl copy of the record included with box is surely more of a selling point than a DVD (and I can see Lorne Michaels being a dick about licensing the footage). But it's frustrating when a box with an obvious visual component comes out without that component (the Dylan Rolling Thunder thing without Renaldo & Clara, Prince Sign O' The Times box without the movie, etc.)

I think the difference I know now compared to then is I realize that probably the biggest reason these Replacement albums production is kinda shitty is that they were a bunch of drunken knuckleheads with producers like trying to herd buzzed cats into making the albums.

Go read Matt Wallace’s account of working with them in Tape Op for a taste. He pretty much had to manually stitch the record together. It was such an awful experience for all, he was surprised when he got called a few years later to do Westerburgs solo record which was much more of a traditional session by comparison.

https://tapeop.com/interviews/134/restoring-the-replacements-dont-tell-a-soul-with-matt-wallace/

Interesting read. Thanks (although still not wild about all the cuts on this album)

I love "Don't Tell a Soul" is all its formats/versions, but despite my love for Faith No More, fwiw Matt Wallace has produced almost as much garbage as Jerry Harrison:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Wallace

lol

I only like the Dead Man’s Pop version. I hated the earlier version and listened to it so infrequently and so inattentively that it was only just now that I noticed that “don’t tell a soul” is a lyric from “We’ll Inherit the Earth.”

Same here. Dead Man's Pop at least sounds like the 'Mats without any meddling and comes off like a genuine progression (or rather "maturation") as the band got older and wearier. Also the bonus tracks really do help - more than I personally listen to on a regular basis, but "Portland," "Wake Up," "We Know the Night" and "Date to Church" are great additions and make up for the lesser material like "Back to Back."

I listened to DTAS constantly upon release, and mostly loved it at the time. But the great thing about Dead Man’s Pop is that, in addition to being far more fully realized, it still somehow reminds me of early 1989, despite it sounding dramatically different.

And yeah, it definitely comes off as a better progression than DTAS, but in ‘88-‘89 they needed (and wanted) a hit. Dead Man’s Pop wouldn’t have delivered on that score, unless the Chris Lord-Alge mix of “I’ll Be You” was limited to the single and didn’t appear on the album.

“I’ll Be You” seems to be the only Replacements song available for “real” karaoke. Trying to remember how much of a hit it actually was.

Peaked at 51.

It got decent rotation on MTV, and I heard it fairly regularly on WXRT in Chicago, but they always played Replacements stuff.

Thing II read said Westerberg noticing a doubling of attendance at their shows, but that people would leave after the played the song.

Thing I&I read

Was mentioned somewhere - interview? book? - that the disappointing numbers sold by "Don't Tell a Soul" were somewhere north of 250,000, which is kind of bonkers, by today's standards.

And that was double Tim’s sales, iirc.

And yeah, it definitely comes off as a better progression than DTAS, but in ‘88-‘89 they needed (and wanted) a hit. Dead Man’s Pop wouldn’t have delivered on that score, unless the Chris Lord-Alge mix of “I’ll Be You” was limited to the single and didn’t appear on the album.

Wallace does say that was the path they should have taken in that interview upthread, and both he and Bob Mehr also have gone on record saying it wouldn't have been an unusual move - not only was it done with a lot of artists at the time (Chris's brother, Tom, even remixed Steve Winwood's singles after completing a different set of mixes for the album release), the Replacements already did that with "Can't Hardly Wait," getting Jimmy Iovine to remix the single release.

Regardless, I'm not sure the CLA mixes did much for the Replacements - as mentioned upthread, "I'll Be There" wasn't much of a hit, peaking at 51, which to be fair wasn't a bad remix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l3GE-Onzro

As pointed out upthread, "I'll Be You" was a #1 "modern rock" and AOR hit.

I know the landscape was different in 1994, but that goddamn Rusted Root song topped out at #72, and I heard it many, many more times on the radio at the time of its release than “I’ll Be You.”

Hmm. The algorithm just pointed me at this PTMM outtake that I never heard before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuqYTQyl5mM

From Bob Mehr’s Trouble Boys:

In spite of the Replacements’ conflicted promotional efforts, “I’ll Be You” began to gain serious momentum; that spring it was on top of both the modern rock and AOR charts—a number-one song in two different formats. With that, Warner Bros.’s radio chieftain Russ Thyret green-lit the single’s promotion to pop radio. Soon after, Russ Rieger got the call from Linehan: “Breaker! Breaker!”—the trade magazine Radio & Records had given the song “Breaker” status: it was making significant chart movement, quickly moving into the “Hot 100,” it apparently was headed for the top 40. “That was the first time I really allowed myself to buy in: ‘This could go all the way,’” said Rieger. The developing hit yielded immediate results: the Replacements watched as their fan base got bigger and younger almost overnight. “I remember being in some store and the song was playing and a group of little girls were singing along,” said Gary Hobbib. Yet the band took little enjoyment in their sudden new popularity—and on some level they resented it. “We were noticing the audience was doubling at our shows, and all of them came because they heard ‘I’ll Be You.’ And a couple of nights, in our own fashion, we forgot to even play the damn thing,” said Westerberg. “Once we started to get hip to it, we would play it right off the bat and half the people would leave.” Dunlap watched as Westerberg began to chafe against this new fan base: “It was: ‘Here’s your fucking hit—fuck you.’” More problematic than Westerberg’s attitude was that “I’ll Be You” sounded little like the rest of the Replacements’ music. “People heard this nice poppy little song, and then ‘The Ledge’ comes on next,” said Dunlap. “It was such a downturn.”

lol

It's a lot better than "Achin'....to BE."

I sort of like that one despite its cheesiness, but yeah.

Go read Matt Wallace’s account of working with them in Tape Op for a taste. He pretty much had to manually stitch the record together. It was such an awful experience for all, he was surprised when he got called a few years later to do Westerburgs solo record which was much more of a traditional session by comparison.

― The Artist formerly known as Earlnash, Saturday, May 13, 2023 12:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

great interview and they come off like bullies and assholes

“I’ll Be You” seems to be the only Replacements song available for “real” karaoke. Trying to remember how much of a hit it actually was.

― Cosmo’s Hacienda (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, May 14, 2023 3:02 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Peaked at 51.

― Cosmo’s Hacienda (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, May 14, 2023 3:15 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i think the influence of MTV makes it hard to quantify a song like that as merely #51, i remember seeing it a lot and i know SO many people (myself included, who's first Mats album was DTAS as a result), but i'd say it was a big 51 not a small 51 in terms of being a hit

The 'mats thread on the Steve Hoffman forum has input from one "Jason" at Rhino, who offered the following re: Bob and a possible Tim remix:

I wouldn't say he mailed in anything from what I've heard. There's a lot of amazing/jaw-dropping guitar parts that were lost in the mix or left out of the original mix. The fact that he was only there for a few days of the sessions has re-established the myth that he was M.I.A. from the sessions, which isn't 100% true.

I stand by my formulation that Bob Stinson is Bob Quine without the law degree and philosopher uncle.

That OGWT “Kiss Me on the Bus” that was posted on that thread also showed up on my feed yesterday.

xxp That's Jason Jones - good guy, he's been heavily involved in all of Rhino's super deluxe 'Mats releases (he's obviously a huge fan) and he's also producing their Little Feat reissues.

One thing I've enjoyed about these Rhino super deluxe reissues is seeing all these long-time fans (both in the business and just outside of it) coming together decades later and discussing this stuff in detail. I didn't get into the band until college, and for years I only knew ONE other person who was into them (a relative who I actually took to see them at their reunion show in St. Paul), so just seeing other fans who were there back in the day feels pretty cool to me. (When Rhino did their first set of reissues in 2008, with pretty much a completely different crew working on them, I don't think marketing reissues via YouTube and podcasts had really taken off yet.) Jason and Bob Mehr obviously have discussed the 'Mats a LOT in various places, but sometimes you'll have something like Matt Wallace and Tony Berg talking about the band in the same room. Amusingly, both men didn't know each other when they were producing them (with Wallace replacing Berg), but years later they wound up as neighbors living next door to each other - what are the odds? They obviously became friends as one gets the impression that they've both become very familiar with each other's stories re: Don't Tell a Soul.

That's Jason Jones - good guy

He’s very responsive and patient on the forums, and always forthcoming with any new info. And yeah, you can definitely tell he’s a fan.

I'm glad that he's forthcoming about releases that won't happen, as disappointing as the news may be. IIRC he's said that a Hootenanny box set won't happen because there's very little material that would make a box set feasible. Also Stink! obviously won't be a box set (i.e. "we're not making a box set of an EP"), and The Shit Hits the Fans isn't a feasible release because 1) at least one member of the band HATES that album and 2) none the cover songs were ever cleared and given how many there are and what they covered, that's an insurmountable problem.

A deluxe release of Shit Hits the Fans would be hilarious, but I understand why it's not likely. But I don't get the thing about clearing songs -- you can release a cover version if you want, right? Those royalties would just go to the songwriters.

not really sure how SHTF could see a deluxe release given that the Mats roadie simply stole the cassette from the guy taping the show. Their roadie tells the story here (on page 52 of the PDF):

https://www.angelfire.com/mac/replacementsbible/The_Replacements_Bible_v1.4.pdf

also, am not gonna get my hopes up that the box set for Tim is gonna sound great. Am hoping it has a lot of demos/alt versions that come from actual studio sources instead of the shitty tinny versions that have been floating around for like 20 years

Rediscovered 1994 interview with Bob:

https://birminghamland.org/bob-stinson-1994/

Wow! Hopefully can watch later.

New mix of “Left of the Dial” lands at midnight!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwLr-8YWhMs

Nice!

Sounds great!

Like those (now) audible vocal doodles at the end.

Tracklist (and the Cabaret Metro show was a week before they were on SNL):

DISC 1
1. Hold My Life (Ed Stasium Mix)
2. I'll Buy (Ed Stasium Mix)
3. Kiss Me On The Bus (Ed Stasium Mix)
4. Dose Of Thunder (Ed Stasium Mix)
5. Waitress In The Sky (Ed Stasium Mix)
6. Swingin' Party (Ed Stasium Mix)
7. Bastards Of Young (Ed Stasium Mix)
8. Lay It Down Clown (Ed Stasium Mix)
9. Left Of The Dial (Ed Stasium Mix)
10. Little Mascara (Ed Stasium Mix)
11. Here Comes A Regular (Ed Stasium Mix)

DISC 2
1. Hold My Life (2023 Remaster)
2. I'll Buy (2023 Remaster)
3. Kiss Me On The Bus (2023 Remaster)
4. Dose Of Thunder (2023 Remaster)
5. Waitress In The Sky (2023 Remaster)
6. Swingin' Party (2023 Remaster)
7. Bastards Of Young (2023 Remaster)
8. Lay It Down Clown (2023 Remaster)
9. Left Of The Dial (2023 Remaster)
10. Little Mascara (2023 Remaster)
11. Here Comes A Regular (2023 Remaster)

DISC 3
1. Can't Hardly Wait (Acoustic Demo)
2. Nowhere Is My Home (Alternate Mix)
3. Can't Hardly Wait (Electric Demo) [Alternate Mix]
4. Left Of The Dial (Alternate Version)
5. Nowhere Is My Home (Alternate Version)
6. Can't Hardly Wait (Cello Version)
7. Kiss Me On The Bus (Studio Demo)
8. Little Mascara (Studio Demo)
9. Bastards Of Young (Alternate Version)
10. Hold My Life (Alternate Version)
11. Having Fun
12. Waitress In The Sky (Alternate Version)
13. Can't Hardly Wait (The "Tim" Version) [Alternate Mix]
14. Swingin' Party (Alternate Version)
15. Here Comes A Regular (Alternate Version)

DISC 4
1. Gary's Got A Boner (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
2. Love You Till Friday (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
3. Bastards Of Young (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
4. Can't Hardly Wait (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
5. Answering Machine (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
6. Little Mascara (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
7. Color Me Impressed (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
8. Kiss Me On The Bus (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
9. Favorite Thing (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
10. Mr. Whirly (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
11. Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
12. I Will Dare (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
13. Johnny's Gonna Die (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
14. Dose Of Thunder (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
15. Takin A Ride (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
16. Hitchin' a Ride (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
17. Trouble Boys (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
18. Unsatisfied (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
19. Black Diamond (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
20. Jumpin' Jack Flash (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
21. Customer (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
22. Borstal Breakout (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
23. Take Me Down To The Hospital (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
24. Kids Don't Follow (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
25. Nowhere Man (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
26. The Crusher (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
27. I'm In Trouble (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)
28. Go (Live at the Cabaret Metro, Chicago, IL, 1/11/86)

Wow.

It sounds great.

Of all the bands I might have thought would benefit from a deep cleaning and remixing, the Replacements was not one that ever come to mind. But this sounds great.

I taped Tim off of a much-played vinyl record onto one of those good black-and-gold Maxell cassettes. Listened to it most often on a 1991 Chevrolet Cavalier's factory AC Delco player. So hearing this mix as I'm pushing 50 while working at an ad agency, now I know why all the Boomers were tearing up listening to Pet Sounds on CD 35 years ago.

That said, I'm still going to miss that skip in the intro of "Dose of Thunder".

looks radical ... so is the "ed stasium mix" a new thing or something that was done in the 80s?

New. The 'Mats realized part way through the original sessions that they mistakenly hired Tommy Erdelyi because they learned what they really liked about his productions was Stasium's engineering.

I read Tommy's ears were pretty shot by that point

though I have to say I'm pretty used to that gray, muffled aspect of Tim

I kind of hate Tim Classic because of the burying of Bob.

i've gone back and forth on the OG Tim mix — these days I kind of like how chaotic and weird it is. What other record sounds like it? But I'm definitely down to hear it from a different perspective.

XPS Tommy Stinson also mentioned that they used their bashed-up road gear in the studio without even considering maybe renting/borrowing/stealing some new amps and/or instruments for the sessions.

I always thought the instruments themselves sounded good, with the possible exception of Tommy Stinson's Rickenbacker bass, an instrument that doesn't have enough low end (for my tastes). The mix always struck me as somewhat shrill and piercing, and it tracks that Erdelyi mixed it that way, given his hearing damage; the high frequencies are usually the first to go, so he may have been overcompensating. It probably sounded fine to him.

was listening on qobuz, which has both the 08 remaster and the original CD version, pretty interesting.

the new one definitely feels open and bigger, moreso than the 08 but WAY more than the original CD master

i've definitely made out a few lyrics i've been never been able to figure

it's a good mix in that it doesn't really feel that different until you compare, but when you do it's pretty noticeable

obviously it's not the complete revelation the matt wallace don't tell a soul mix was but that's a whole different animal

Rhino producer Jason (I forgot his last name) on the Steve Hoffman forums:

Thanks for everyone's patience on this and for the fits and starts and blips of info that came and went this morning before the official announce.

The genesis for this came shortly after the release of Sorry Ma Deluxe when I had all of the multi-track tapes transferred from the Tim sessions. Both Bob and I hoped that the tinny sound was not baked in. To our delight, it wasn't... However, we did have the issue of what to do/search for next.

We had the good fortune of locating the complete multi-track reels for the Alex Chilton sessions, and by complete, I do mean complete including previously unreleased alternate takes of Left of the Dial (my personal favorite outtake on the box), Nowhere Is My Home and Can't Hardly Wait (including the lost acoustic guitar and cello version you'll find on the box).

The live show proved to be a bit of a struggle. However, we happened to find a workable source for their performance at the Cabaret Metro a week before the SNL performance (yes, that's why the live disc is titled as such).

From there, Ed did a masterful job bringing out the life in this album. For the first time, the quality of the production meets the high quality of the songwriting and performances. Also, the project reunited Ed with his old departed friend Tommy Erdelyi.

Bob, Ed and I came to the collective conclusion that the tinny sound of the original album was due to Bob's absence during the majority of the recording and Tommy Erdelyi getting used to hearing those songs without Bob's contributions. Thankfully, Bob's fully restored on this new remix.

I do not say this lightly. It is the definitive version of Tim. Ed exceed all of our expectations with this new remix. My three personal favorites from the new remix: Dose of Thunder (you will be floored), Little Mascara and Here Comes A Regular. However, it's hard to pick your favorites from a masterpiece like Tim.

When it came time to name the box set, we felt Deluxe Edition didn't do it justice. Instead, we went back to one of the original titles the band had in mind for the album: Let It Bleed. Not only does it complete the joke started with the previous Replacements album, but it also accurately describes the new life we pumped into the album.

You will not be disappointed.

Bob Mehr on the Hoffman forums:

FWIW, nearly everything on the Tim: Let It Bleed Edition boxed set is from the original multi-tracks. Not sure where the idea comes from that the Chilton multis or anything from the Tim sessions were ever lost. I can assure you none of the myths/legends about missing Replacements tapes are true. Almost every note the Replacements ever recorded in the studio is accounted for and well preserved on the original reels.

With regard to the material on Disc 3: Sons of No One -- the Chilton produced tracks were all remixed by Ed Stasium for this box. In addition to the keeper versions of Nowhere Is My Home and Left of the Dial, we also found alternate takes of those songs on the multis, along with the elements for the "Cello Version" of Can't Hardly Wait (all of which were mostly cut live at Nicollet Studios' smaller room in Jan. 1985). Basically, Ed remixed everything on Sons of No One, apart from the few prev. released alt versions we included from the 2008 reissue, and the two Tommy Erdelyi April 1985 demos (which are old/original mixes that we decided to keep, of which only Kiss Me on the Bus is prev. released).

With regard to the Cabaret Metro show, this is not a multi-track recording but a professionally recorded soundboard captured by the band's late soundman from 1985 to 1987, Monty Lee Wilkes. The peformance is all Monty's audio. To flesh out the atmosphere we mixed in just the crowd and audience sounds from Aadam Jacobs excellent pro-mic'd recording. All of it is pretty seamless. Granted, Monty's mix does fluctuate at the start of the show as he dials things in. But given the absolute killer performance, incredible setlist, and historical value of this show, we felt this was the perfect bonus live inclusion for this box set, which documents a remarkable year -- from Jan. 1985 with the Chilton session to Jan. 1986 at the Metro -- in the life of the Replacements.

Bob, Ed and I came to the collective conclusion that the tinny sound of the original album was due to Bob's absence during the majority of the recording and Tommy Erdelyi getting used to hearing those songs without Bob's contributions. Thankfully, Bob's fully restored on this new remix.

Aadam Jacobs made sooooo many historic recordings ...

wow, that LotD version feels like a complete 180. they'll be some hard Erdelyi/Stasium lines decades from now like the Bowie/Iggy versions of "Raw Power".

It took me until today to realise that Westerberg's singing "Wait on the sons of no-one" in Bastards of Young, and not "We are the sons".

Wonder if there'll be a remix of Pleased To Meet Me too, that album sounds godawful.

Wait, what? I always thought it was "we are ..." too!

It's written and recorded as "Wait on..." but over time he began singing "We are..." in concert, because so many people misheard it, and it's probably a better lyric that way.

Kinda like the "Alex Chilton" "sound/song" blurriness. (It's "song," but I always heard a switch between "I'm in love with that sound" and "I'm in love with that song".)

Live Westerberg would often change "kiss me on the bus" to "kiss me on the butt."

wow it's incredible how much better the new mix of "left of the dial" sounds

weird tinny 80s alt rock is one of my least favourite historical production trends

I WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE TO HEAR THIS.

Wonder if there'll be a remix of Pleased To Meet Me too, that album sounds godawful.

I haven't heard it yet, maybe it wasn't a remix, but wasn't there a new version of that one out in 2020?

wow, that LotD version feels like a complete 180. they'll be some hard Erdelyi/Stasium lines decades from now like the Bowie/Iggy versions of "Raw Power".

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Thursday, 3 August 2023 02:40 (twelve hours ago) link

Def this, the new mix is cool and interesting to hear but I found myself preferring the original, which for all its warts feels aesthetically truer to the band (or at least my take on them)

I cannot figure out for the life of me how to copy and embed Tweets (or X-posts or whatever) when I'm on my work computer and not logged in, but poor Bob Mehr is just getting slammed on Twitter over this remix.

There was a PTMM box a couple years ago, but the original album wasn't remixed. The bonus stuff included b-sides, demos, and outtakes. I wondered at the time if the fact that it was recorded using a Fairlight meant a remix wasn't possible. And I say that knowing absolutely nothing about how recording with a Fairlight works.

Thanks Tarfumes, I didn't end up buying that one so I didn't know it was a remix or not.

The outtakes are notable for having a couple of Tommy-penned and -sung songs, which are pretty decent, and would not have seemed the least bit out of place on PTMM at all. That said, it's my least favorite of the boxes so far; the many rough mixes are rarely, if ever, revealing or interesting.

More from Jason Jones at Rhino (though I don't know what he means by "IG"):

Thanks, everyone. You'll be so stoked come 9/22.

If you thought the remix of "Left of the Dial" was fantastic, then I can only imagine what y'all will say when you hear the rest of it as those new mixes are even more mind blowing than "Left of the Dial".

Hold My Life has guitar parts you've never heard before. Also, it tries to jump out of your speaker and choke you.
I'll Buy again has parts you've never heard. I could imagine this version being in "One Crazy Summer" or some other 80's teen flick (that's a good thing).
Kiss Me on the Bus (which came this close to being the first IG) has never sounded more elegant and beautiful. Much more acoustic and electric guitar parts.
Dose of Thunder will throttle you. It's my favorite of all the new mixes. What was once thought to be a clunker has now become a joyous screamer with a Bob solo that is maybe the most chaotic thing ever released by a major label (second maybe to PiL or Mr. Bungle or Ween).
Waitress in the Sky has harmonies you've never heard. It still has that ****kicker feel, but it just hits deeper.
Swingin' Party (which also came this close to being the first IG) finally has the widescreen noir feel that was hidden behind the sheen of the original mix.
Bastards of Young has more Bob guitar and is ever more anthemic than ever. I could hear this destroying Summer of 69 or The Hooters on the radio back in the day. It would've been huge. What a song.
Lay It Down Clown has boogie woogie piano that was buried in the mix and extended slide parts.
Left of the Dial - you've heard it.
Little Mascara is extended by about 90 seconds and have infinite more Bob guitar. It's my second favorite of the new mixes.
Here Comes a Regular has more piano and will rip your heart out again and again (it already did, but this one is THE one).

Maybe he means the first to be released online for everyone to hear?

I figure if the original is included in the set, then even if you don't like it a remixed version is just a nice bonus novelty to have.

According to Rhino there will be the new Stasium mix and a 2023 remaster in the box, so traditionalists should be covered as well (although it does seem the vinyl included will only be the Stasium mix).

I'll come out and say it, this is the truest verse ever written:

The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please
If it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them

Westerberg definitely had a lot of fun with that verse on SNL, preserved here in this utterly insane format:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOEi-UJRNLE

Like, if a band and performance this awesome was on SNL this weekend, they would be playing arenas in a month.

Idk if I can handle this! The new mix sounds intriguing and an audible live show is beyond my teenage imagination. Idk if it’s going to send me feeling emotionally to a place I’d rather not go. These songs were 100% my adolescent companions and I’m not sure I’m up to a reunion. Not that it matters but I feel like someone out there might appreciate they’re not alone in that conflict.

I haven’t listened to any of the new editions yet. For some reason the quality of this one is so tempting!!

Re: Bob Mehr getting dragged on Twitter, most of it seems to be from some asswipe who is full of shit, arguing that Stasium’s mixing is essentially what CLA did to Don’t Tell a Soul because it’s all just cleaning and punching things up. Completely asinine when you actually listen to all the mixes involved, if anything Stasium is doing the opposite. (Stripping out the echo alone makes Stasium’s work more in line with the remix done for Dead Man’s Pop.)

Yeah, there was that guy last night, but also a different guy today who keeps saying it "sounds like the Georgia Satellites".

idgi just listen to the old mix if you don't like the new one

oh shit, you didn't hear? when you buy the new one they come to your house and destroy all your old copies. it's sad.

re: the Stasium whiner on Twitter, he seems to not know who Stasium is while simultaneously painting it as a sellout move. Which...I mean, those mental gymnastics are almost impressive.

Yeah, there was that guy last night, but also a different guy today who keeps saying it "sounds like the Georgia Satellites".

As someone who has long argued that the Georgia Satellites > the Replacements, this is pretty funny. (I listened to the new mix above; it sounds really good, and I might even check out the whole album, but I'm not invested enough to buy it or anything.)

Honestly the Jason Jones descriptions are enough to make me not want to listen to the new mix, stay "stoked" dude

paid salesman guilty of hyping up the product he's paid to sell

I'll remember that when "Hold My Life" is choking me to death

Yeah was reminding me of the hyperbole attached to a Grateful Dead Dave's Picks release.

Yeah, those are bad, not every show can be "best show ever". That said, it's hard to fault a hype man for doing exactly what they are paid to do, even when it feels laid on thick.

“Hold My Life (While I Choke the Shit Out of This Guy)” (Ed’s Version)

"Hold My Life (Midnight Rambler Version)"

There was a PTMM box a couple years ago, but the original album wasn't remixed. The bonus stuff included b-sides, demos, and outtakes. I wondered at the time if the fact that it was recorded using a Fairlight meant a remix wasn't possible. And I say that knowing absolutely nothing about how recording with a Fairlight works.

This was asked elsewhere, but virtually ALL of the multi-tracks from those sessions still exist and were archived when they were preparing for that box set, a necessary step since they were on an obsolete digital format (i.e. it also preserves them for the foreseeable future). It was kind of implied that they didn't want to remix the album because there were so many different mixes and alternates that had been made at the time of those sessions, it seemed unnecessary. It's likely the fact that it was recorded in digital ensured that a LOT more material was recorded or outputted from a mixing console, much more than what had been done for previous albums.

Of all the Warner Bros records, PTMM has always sounded best to me.

I can see where complaints will be made, but at least you can hear the damn thing.

Also kudos to Glenn Kenny for calling out that whiner on Twitter, who actually apologized and also claimed he didn't realize he was tagging Bob Mehr in his complaints.

FWIW, I always liked how different PTMM was to their earlier albums. Unlike, say, Rob Sheffield, I don't think it sounds too slick at all, it is what it was intended to be - the 'Mats version of a power pop album, with bells, whistles and polish et al. It's more interesting to me that they'd do something like that (and do it extremely well) rather than stick to the same sonic template album after album. My only complaint about PTMM is that "Birthday Gal" should've been included and I wish "P.O. Box (Photo)" had been finished and included as well. They would've been much more preferable to something like "Shooting Dirty Pool" which feels very uninspired next to everything else.

why don't you get a haircut sister

LOL, to be fair "You're the coolest guy that I ever have smelt" is a great line, but I wish it was in a better song.

you need the mayhem of the 1-2 Red Red Wine then Shooting Dirty Pool to really feel the majesty of the last two songs

Next thing you know that guy on Twitter will be complaining about handclaps on a Ramones album.

vocals on “shooting dirty pool” are outta sight

I didn't realize Bob was only on half of the album. Per Jason Jones:

So! Here's what Bob Mehr, Ed Stasium and I have pieced together while working on the new remix.

We came to the conclusion that Bob Stinson's absence during most of the recording resulted in Tommy Erdelyi getting used to hearing those songs without his contributions. When it came time for Bob to lay down his parts, they were either left out completely or only sporadically present themselves in the original mix. When I threw all of the multi-tracks up on a board for the very first time, I was amazed by how much Bob there actually was on tape for the songs on which he laid down parts (which are: I'll Buy, Dose of Thunder, Bastards of Young, Lay It Down Clown, Left of the Dial, Little Mascara).

Before you ask, Paul plays all the parts on Hold My Life, Kiss Me on the Bus, Waitress in the Sky, Swingin Party and Here Comes A Regular (and even on those songs there were lost parts that we restored as a part of this new mix).

And Bob Mehr expands on that:

Bob’s role on Tim has been subject of much speculation. After going through all the tapes and tracking sheets and this new mix (as well everyone’s recollections, including Tommy Ramone’s) it’s all a lot clearer, even more than when I wrote the book.

As most folks know, the Replacements cut basic tracks for the album as a three-piece – Paul, Chris and Tommy -- while Bob was off working as a cook or doing whatever else at the time. Bob came by the studio at least one or twice while they tracked, just to check things out (which jibes with Westerberg’s memory).

Bob made a first attempt to come do his guitar parts/overdubs – but he wasn’t in good shape (confirmed by Tommy Stinson) and they didn’t get anything. He returned some days later in better shape and that’s when he laid down all his parts for the record. Basically, he played on and all the way through a variety of songs, with Tommy Ramone producing. Tommy Ramone later edited Bob’s parts during the mix (per Tommy Ramone’s own recollection).

In total, Bob is on basically half of the album. There are a total 10 band tracks on Tim – not counting Here Comes a Regular, which is essentially Paul solo. Bob is on Bastards, Little Mascara, I’ll Buy, Dose of Thunder and Left of the Dial (which is from the Chilton session). Oddly, he is not on Lay It Down Clown, even though Westerberg ostensibly wrote that as a vehicle for Bob to shine on (the finished track is just Paul on rhythm and lead slide). Paul, obviously, plays the balance of the guitars on remaining tracks, both rhythm and lead.

What Jason alluded to, with regard to there being more Bob on the record in Ed’s new mix is down to a couple things.

In later years, around 1990, Bob complained in at least one interview that a lot of his leads and best parts didn’t make it onto Tim. The sense we have now is that Tommy Ramone didn’t want to overdo the amount of Bob parts/licks on those songs. It seems like Tommy Ramone had been hearing the record a certain way with the three-piece and then Bob came in on top of all that and maybe it kinda felt like it was too much at the time (Tommy also confirmed this in my two interviews with him in 2005 and 2012). Tommy Ramone was correct about Bob's parts in a lot of cases – Bob was just jamming and improvising and trying all kinds of things (remember: some of these songs were new and he hadn’t rehearsed or possibly even heard them). So some of that playing worked and got used, and some didn’t.

But there were also some Bob performances that Tommy Ramone (somewhat randomly, we would argue) decided to overedit. Where Bob was playing stuff that had a real through-line and momentum and worked all the way through the song, but Tommy – for reasons of his own – kinda cut some of those connecting parts between main riffs. There’s def. some of that on Bastards and on Mascara…really, pretty much on all the tracks Bob is on, there is more of him that Ed has used (or at least that’s much more audible).

So yes, Bob wasn’t in the session for really more than a day recording, but there was a lot of stuff he did record -- some of which got used in the original mix, but there’s lots that didn’t and which we believe is now much better integrated and more powerful in the new Ed Stasium mix.

(As Bob Mehr mentions, Jason made a mistake - Bob Stinson is NOT on "Lay It Down Clown")

I mean, fortunately in terms of overall reaction, we are running probably 99 to 1 in favor of Ed Stasium's new mix (and Left of the Dial is just a small taste of what's different/better). The odd troll making specious arguments on Twitter doesn't really bother me (not to say it isn't annoying). Funny thing is the guy who was really Tweet storming utter bullshit about the illegitimacy of remixing last night is actually the author of a recent R.E.M. bio. Funny, he didn't save any scorn for his precious favorites when they remixed Monster in 2019 (which, believe it or not, Dead Man's Pop outsold considerably).

Anyway, I think -- though I am not objective -- that Ed's mix is far superior and much truer to the recording the band made. The reality is the '85 mix was deeply flawed on a technical level, as well as in terms of the uncharacteristic stylistic choices Tommy Ramone made (drenching guitars and vocals in early digital reverb, the lack of low end and instrumental separation, pushing everything to the middle of the spectrum so it’s almost a mono sounding record). Tommy and engineer Steve Fjelstad actually made a really great sounding recording. The raw tracks are excellent (thankfully). But the record got lost in the mix. It's not such a strange or unusual occurrence -- it happens.

Since Tommy has passed, we basically brought in the guy who was his longtime production partner and the person who mixed most of his records (and under diff circumstances would've been on the original Tim session to begin with) to finish the job properly and offer another better sounding version of the album. It's not really that nefarious or complex as some people want to make it out to be.

Wow, thanks. Welcome, Bob!

(Now hearing my last post in the voice of Paul on that fateful one day of recording)

Now if only someone would remix Legendary Hearts and restore Bob Quine’s guitar parts on that.

thanks bob appreciate the insight

totally — and without blowing too much smoke, the replacements archival releases from the past several years really are the gold standard imo.

imagine if Neil Young handed over the reins to his catalog in this way ... just look at how generally lame / useless his recent After The Gold Rush and Harvest box sets have been, when they could be definitive deep dives into classic records.

dead man's pop is one of the greatest archival releases ever imo

also i love the replacements but it's like they are tinkering with dylan's mid 60s stuff, i think it's fair to say the band never totally successfully navigated what a major label, somewhat slicker version of the band would sound like. i think the post twin town stuff has a lot of great songs but also i'm not sure if they ever really nailed being mainstream without compromising who they were in the same way the best REM major label records did.

Did you leave out a “not” there?

dead man's pop is one of the greatest archival releases ever imo

HI DERE!

JT - yes! it's NOT like they are tinkering with Dylan

Anyway their whole thing, musically at least, especially Bob’s, was some kind of organized chaos that threatened to careen (was this Rob Sheffield’s word?) out of control and often did so, but just as often worked in some way that made beautiful sense at an immediate level. Cleaning it up too much was as if someone cleaned up Pharoah Sanders because he was Too Outside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGdD4QJsKN4

( Restoring the missing ‘s’ for Stasium and Stinson)

dead man's pop is one of the greatest archival releases ever imo

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, August 4, 2023 1:19 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

OTM. I'm having difficulty thinking of an equivalent, another album whose unrealized potential was so dramatically realized with a remix/resequence.

The Scott Litt remix of MONSTER is atrocious

Sorry for the Introduce Yourselves! level revelation here, but the only album I listened to as much as this in the fall of 1985 was Two Wheels Good.

Pleased to meet me.

"OTM. I'm having difficulty thinking of an equivalent, another album whose unrealized potential was so dramatically realized with a remix/resequence."

I'd put James Williamson's modern mix of Iggy and his "Kill City" in such a list. If you only knew it from the old Bomb CD from the 90s, it's hard to believe it is even the same album.

Yeah, that remaster/remix of Kill City (from, I think, 2010 or so) is amazing. Had it come out that way originally it would have pushed Iggy on an entirely different career trajectory.

It is pretty much the missing link between the Stooges and the two Berlin albums.

What?!? I didn’t know there was a better Kill City. I love that album but it always sounded like a bootleg.

What?!? I didn’t know there was a better Kill City. I love that album but it always sounded like a bootleg.

Yeah, you've gotta hear it. It's halfway between Raw Power and mid 70s Stones, horns and all.

Thanks Bob and welcome!

Re: Monster, I actually think that's a good album despite its shortcomings, and the original mix was NOT one of those shortcomings. AFAIK, unlike the Replacements' Tim or Don't Tell a Soul, R.E.M. was not disappointed with the mixes when they first heard them or have reservations about what was going to be done to the mixes - it was fully approved by the band, and it was really only Scott Litt who decided over the years he wanted to re-do them. His new mix basically sucked out much of the character, and this was a case where the original sound of the album was actually its biggest strength, even making up for the shortcomings of the songs themselves.

No question, Kill city is a record (that is, the version retrofitted in 2010, I have never heard the previous iteration) in which Williamson and Osterberg try to sell out, and failed in doing so, but it's a completely credible effort for the two raw power guys to vault themselves into the big leagues, to make a Stones record, but a very tweaked, odd one at that… Williamson to me (and to Johnny marr) is the american Jimmy page, and its unfortunate (but probly good for his health and longterm prospects) that he left the music biz shortly thereafter… similarly, there's a compact version of the Heavy Liquid sessions (not the box with every single take of every song, but the best, most usable version of each song) that shows what the band was up to right after Raw Power, what could have been, etc etc…

It is pretty much the missing link between the Stooges and the two Berlin albums.

I’m embarrassed to tell you how long I just pondered a sonic cross between Iggy and Terri Nunn.

Ha!

Hopefully one of the discs will be a DVD/Blu-Ray with their SNL performance.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Saturday, May 13, 2023 6:03 AM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

per Jason Jones at Rhino on the Hoffman boards:

We tried to license it (both audio and video) for the box, but it was insanely expensive (as in would have tanked the entire project).

*bump*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opwFHzWjD2Q

Cool. I guess the physical edition drops today.

obsessed with this transcription of paul westerberg's primal scream at the beginning of bastards of young pic.twitter.com/Sv5KOh3QFF

— Lindsay Zoladz (@lindsayzoladz) September 22, 2023

The new mix of "Little Mascara" is pretty awesome - pretty wild how much more they had during the fade out.

Yeah, this is pretty great all around. Using the new mixes, I'd still swap out "Dose of Thunder" for "Nowhere Is My Home (Alternate Mix)" and "Lay It Down Clown" for "Can't Hardly Wait (The 'Tim' Version) (Alternate Mix)" - I'll probably burn that as my own personal version of the album once the physical set arrives.

I’m

Christopher Mars!

Sorry, first thing was a pocket post

On first listen... I'm not really sure about it. I've always thought Tim was The Replacements' least interesting collection of songs, and that hasn't really changed. "Hold My Life" is still a boring opener, and I've never connected with the big numbers on this record (e.g. "Swinging Party", "Left of the Dial", "Bastards") -- and I find the new mix flattens out their enjoyable HEAVINESS a bit too much, e.g. the guitars behind the "didn't mention your name" part of "Dial".

What works: "Waitress," which I already liked a lot, swings harder and the fact that it sounds even *more* like T-Rex now made me smile. For me "Little Mascara" is the only revalation - a good song that I'd previously ignored, now rescued from murk.

Meanwhile, "Here Comes a Regular" sounds neutered to me without the otherworldly echo and treble-y guitar sound of the original. It sounds less ethereal and more like one of the MOR ballads on "14 Songs".

Hmm, I never thought of "Waitress" as T-Rexy. But I guess it kinda is, in the sense that it is also kind of a riff on Chuck Berry.

I think "Hold My Life" still sounds off, in that Paul's vocal is almost driving it in the Stasium mix more than the band, but it's a song I've never fully jibed with anyway. Lots elsewhere here sounds wildly revelatory though. I always thought "Little Mascara" was really underrated and the extra parts found in this mix make it sound beautiful. The "softer" songs (Bus, Waitress, Party...) all really pop too.

"Waitress" is basically this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8qMXXluA4U

Is there more Bob on the Stasium mix? I feel like he's barely there on Tim (which may have been the case, in more than one way)

There is, there's a whole guitar hook he did for Little Mascara that's been added in.

ah jeez, I may have to get this

Elizabeth Nelson gets very enthusiastic about Tim and is meaning in the latest New Yorker

“Tim” is a great group of songs, possibly the best set that Westerberg has ever strung together for a single LP, but the revelation now is how powerfully the album captures the spiralling class anxieties of the era

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/listening-booth/the-replacements-are-still-a-puzzle

i don't know how to feel about this

part of this is just the songs, i forget it's a lot spottier than i remember it - i guess your head just goes to the hold my lifes, bastards, dials, etc...

it's certain a Good Job of remixing, like the clarity is pretty amazing

but do all these songs stand up to the light? dunno...dose of thunder definitely doesn't benefit, the exile-ish murk definitely gave that a certain vibe and covered up how slight it is...waitress was always kind of a nasty tempered throwaway* to me, and i don't like the backing vox that are prominent in the mix

swingin party sounds really good...i like the new i'll buy

i'm curious to listen more, but sometimes better isn't better? like i still prefer bowie's "terrible" mix of raw power

the best set that Westerberg has ever strung together for a single LP

this seem demonstrably not true

i get it tho, it was the first one without goof-offs like "gary's got a boner" on it

"waitress" isn't a goof-off? it is imo

working my way through "Kiss Me on the Bus" right now and the mix is noticeably more vibrant! college me would've been playing this mix incessantly during the spring months.

Written about his sister’s observations about how she was treated, New Yorker and others now say

I was Talking about “Waitress in the Sky”

Written about his sister’s observations about how she was treated, New Yorker and others now say

― curmudgeon, Friday, September 22, 2023 9:53 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i would have bought this line before i read Trouble Boys and learned what mean little shits they were

Gary's Got a Boner is a far better song than Waitress in the Sky

xpost agree "Kiss Me on the Bus" benefits and def you could hear a semi hit in that mix

"Gary's Got a Boner" is essential. Like Lou Reed solo, the Mats were their best with throwaways.

I agree with "sometimes better isn't better" - as a fan it's nice to hear everything sounding so clear, especially the band, but I miss the vibe of the Old Murky Sound, and maybe the murk helped cover up for the general sameiness of the songs. I feel like I'd rather hear a cleaned up Pleased To Meet Me, as I like the songs better.

I don't really understand when Replacements fans don't like the goof-off tracks

GGAB also benefits from knowing that "Gary" was Westerberg's go-to name for a really dumb guy.

i don't love either "waitress" or "gary," but i don't really think "waitress" is a goof off

it is silly, sure

so what is a goof-off if not a silly song?

def do not think it is intended as scathing commentary on the poor treatment of flight attendants or servers, inspired by his sister or not. after reading Trouble Boys I too have difficulty believing that this song was the product of any deep thought.

for me it falls more in the category of knowing early rock pastiche, taking their snotty petulance to its absurd end point. wish it was a better song tho

I was cool to "Hold My Life" when I first heard it, but it's grown on me since - not as one of the best tracks but fine nonetheless. I had a roommate who stopped what she was doing and say WTF when "Waitress in the Sky" came on (she had never heard it before). It's kind of like a (non-Disney) Randy Newman song to me, where it's from the POV of an untrustworthy shit, so I've always enjoyed it on that level - yeah, it's terrible, but it's about a terrible person and this is what everyone in the service sector puts up with. (I say this as someone whose first job was in the service sector. It was shitty, thankless work where virtually everyone looked down on you and used you as their punching bag.) But it's the kind of thing that can get taken the wrong way pretty easily depending on a variety of factors.

And yes, I'd agree it's his strongest set of songs, BUT, as mentioned upthread, I don't listen to the album as-is - I never think about "Dose of Thunder" or "Lay It Down Clown" because they don't exist on my iTunes/Music app or on the discs I listen to, I replaced them with two outtakes that are arguably two of the best by anybody. Side Two with "Can't Hardly Wait" replacing "Lay It Down Clown" is one of the greatest rock LP sides ever IMHO.

(I say this as someone whose first job was in the service sector. It was shitty, thankless work where virtually everyone looked down on you and used you as their punching bag.)

I'll elaborate on this - after I did my time in this shitty job, I saw some TV roundtable where they talked about how service has gone down the tubes in this country. For some reason Dave Foley of Kids in the Hall was there and he was the big dissenter, saying "oh please, these people are there to stroke your egos." THAT made me a fan for life. Also, ever been to a meal with a friend who you thought was a decent person and then suddenly they treat the waiter like shit? A big appeal of that song to me is that it essentially recognizes that a lot of customers act like assholes, and often times it's just accepted that they be that way because of some shitty agreed social custom that the people serving your food, bagging your groceries, mowing your lawn, etc. are peasants to your lordship.

I think of the boogie riff in Waitress as referring to "Spirit in the Sky"

definitely, similar melody as well

I’ve worked in the service industry on and off my whole life, including at the present moment, and I understand the dynamics. Just the other night an old man offered to show me a pic of himself in a thong. Another one joked about leaving without paying the bill. That was earlier this week. Two days ago!
I first heard this song when I was about 16 and also working at a restaurant. That was my first indicator of the intense disdain with which service workers are treated and honestly writing a whole song about it seems like a slap in the face rather than a commentary on the bullshit.
Many essays could be written on the scorn inherent in these types of songs imo. Not by me tho bc I gotta work!
Anyway I don’t think it’s a very good song.

On top of being scornful it’s a ripoff! 👎🏻

yeah lol, idk how i got in the position to defend the song, which i skip nearly every time

maybe eventually i'll warm up to this thing, but on first listen it just sounds like they remixed all the mystery out of it. i never really needed to know what the replacements would have sounded like if they'd tried to make a mid-1990s goo goo dolls or soul asylum album in the mid-1980s, but now i guess i do.

"Gary's Got a Boner" is essential. Like Lou Reed solo, the Mats were their best with throwaways.

otm (see also "dose of thunder," one of the few things on this album that i think actually benefits from the remix)

also, i'd never noticed the melodic similarities between "nowhere is my home" and bruce springsteen's "bobby jean."

they remixed all the mystery out of it.

that's a good way to put it

See, kind of like with, say, the Husker albums, I can't tell how much of an album's bad sound is intentional, or how much is just the version I am listening to. There are always examples like the original Raw Power or And Justice for All that are, for whatever reason, thin by design. Another example, I love how Lust for Life sounds, even though it is not a conventionally "good" sounding record.

Truth be told, "Waitress in the Sky" isn't one of my favorite songs on the album, I'm just defending it because I think it gets misconstrued in a way that's pretty common when depiction is taken as endorsement. But the song's clearly sung by an obnoxious asshole: "And the sign says, "Thank you very much for not smoking" / My own sign says, "I'm sorry, I'm smokin'" / Don't treat me special or don't kiss my ass / Treat me like the way they treat 'em up in first class." And I think the new mix actually brings that out more but restoring some jokey vocal bits.

Anyway they remixed all the mystery out of it is a good dissenting observation - I've always had mixed feelings about the original mix, but that pretty much nails the charm it did have. The original LP cover reflects this - it's kind of a mysterious unknown band you're hearing out of some concrete, cavernous underground bunker. On the other hand, Let It Bleed is a pretty spot-on name for this one: it's a real blood-and-guts mix. Cranked up on a real stereo system with good speakers, it really mows down the old mix when you compare the two. It sounds like you're close-up to four guys playing with full fury, especially Chris who was kind of this distant thing that could sound like a drum machine on the old mix.

song's clearly sung by an obnoxious asshole

yeah westerberg did sing it

Don't forget, he actually worked as a janitor - that was his regular gig when he first stumbled on to the band. When the CHARACTER in the song he wrote equates the flight attendant with a janitor, it pretty much alludes to the way Westerberg thought he was being looked down upon by everyone else.

The cover for Tim was heinous. Just... ugh. I think it was my first Replacements CD and it confused me because it looks like a concept album about some guy named Tim.

Basically I think the Stasium mix improves the rockers and hurts the slow ones. I really like the way the rhythm section is brought out of the murk, and it especially reminded me how important Tommy's energy was to the whole band's energy. Mars is a little more laid-back — I like his playing, but he's not really the propulsion.

"Swingin' Party" and "Here Comes a Regular" lose their spectral late-night dive vibe. Still great songs, but the original settings suited them imo.

Also, it reminded me that I never want to hear any mix of "Dose of Thunder."

Jason Jones at Rhino was hyping up the new mix of "Dose of Thunder" as a revelation. In his defense, the mix is better - I hear all the new stuff he was alluding to and yes, they're a welcome restoration if you really had to include the song on the album, but it's still a turd.

I get what you mean about the two slow ones...the echo on the original mix did actually fit the desolate mood pretty well, but I'm not sure if they could've dialed that back in without making those songs clash too much with the other new mixes.

xp man, I actually loved the original Tim cover, back in those pre-internet days it seemed really alluring when I saw it on the record store shelves. it has always been my second favorite cover after Let It Bleed (tbh not a high bar, they generally have terrible covers imo).

I bought Dead Man's Pop but I've tapped out on these deluxe reissues. Not sure it's all worth $75-$80. I'd happily plunk down for a cheaper box without the vinyl though.

Just wait, the price will go down. The box set for their debut (which may be the best overall package they've done so far) is now only $30 brand-new and shipped on Amazon.

Actually it went up to $35, but it wound up being a shade under $30 shipped including taxes when I bought it.

birdistheword curious have you read trouble boys?

most improved: Little Mascara - great mix

worst: Here Comes a Regular, kind of heartbreakingly bad mix :( i wish i never heard it

xp I did, but not too well. I think Jim Walsh's oral history on the Replacements had either just come out or I had just finished it, which left me kind of burned out, but I still wanted to read Mehr's book because I knew what he put into it in terms of original research and reporting. I ended up cramming/skimming it all on long roundtrip flight. I'm guessing the liner notes on these box sets have a lot of overlap in terms of info, but I should give it another read - I still have my copy.

Jim Walsh’s book not a patch on the pants of Bob Mehr’s.

Yeah, Bob's is definitive - Walsh was kind of lucky his came out first. (I borrowed Walsh's from the library, but I ordered Bob's before it even came out.)

Yes i mean it just kind of killed my view of them as loveable scamps, constantly trashing places, acting like dicks to everyone

Even worse was the Matt Wallace interview in Tape Op, constantly threatening him, Westerberg lighting money on fire (literally not figuratively) in the studio, Tommy writing on him with magic marker at a bar, doing coke in his bar when he had to give them rides....

Just colors my view of Waitress is what I'm saying

Plus, I dunno just being around Mpls music for a long time, heard a lot of them being arrogant jerks in general

Oh yeah, they could be real dicks and often were. This is not much of a saving grace since they were assholes to their friends and the people who worked with them (i.e. almost anyone with a significant role in their lives) but I don't remember it extending to a waiter, flight attendant or anyone in the working class who was just doing their job and fulfilling their needs, at least not directly. (It's not like they cleaned up after themselves after trashing a place - SOMEBODY had to do it.) They totally knew where they stood socioeconomically-speaking - Paul somewhat bragged that not a single person in their band had a diploma - and they didn't grow that far from their roots on their way up. As mentioned, Paul was a janitor and Bob worked at a pizza joint and wound up as a janitor after he was fired from the band where he met another musician working as a janitor, Slim, who replaced him.

I mean for wait staff I've heard stories about how assholish they were at the CC club back in the day from ppl from back then

I'm just saying you act like that all the time you don't just turn it off

Actually people said Bob was a sweetheart mostly

i'm going to try and ask my eldest kid's cello teacher to transcribe the cello version of "can't hardly wait" because in that rendition it's gorgeous.

Vocal aside, "Swingin' Party" now sounds like a really good Smiths record. You have all these guitar parts that are not only audible but crystal clear - not the kind you'd normally associate with a 'Mats record, at least not in 1985, but totally would with the Smiths.

(the new mix that is)

A 10 from Pitchfork, "a new mix that instantly becomes the best and most definitive album in the Replacements’ catalog."

The Replacements were so innately talented and alluring that they should have been playing arenas and climbing the charts every year, but then they wouldn’t have been the Replacements.

defining line of that review

It ranks high among the most revelatory revisionist looks at an album, up there with the release of Iggy Pop’s 1997 mix of Raw Power, or the Beatles’ 2003 stripped-down version of Let It Be

okay, hang on....

I agree about the 1997 mix of Raw Power with the caveat that it's either the 2010 vinyl-edition remaster or the current 50th anniversary remaster (the only times it's been mastered sensibly instead of crushed to death with way too much digital compression).

I don't agree with the 2003 remix of Let It Be (which amusingly was panned by none other than Bob Mehr in The Chicago Reader) BUT its heart was in the right place. I do prefer its track sequence, and I think you'd have the definitive edition if you simply repeated that track sequence using the versions that had already been released (starting with the original 45's and then using the stuff from the Let It Be LP that was overdubbed with an orchestra and choir while using Anthology 2 and Anthology 3 for the remaining few cuts).

*that wasn't overdubbed

Lol at that writeup.

_The Replacements were so innately talented and alluring that they should have been playing arenas and climbing the charts every year, but then they wouldn’t have been the Replacements._


defining line of that review

It feels like the Pitchfork review went in with the hypothesis that the big reveal of this mix was going to be the definitive statement of the Replacements, probably based on the pre-release hype train, and weren’t going to be convinced otherwise. I personally feel like the mix is a little too clean and almost makes me feel it reveals that the songs aren’t quite as good as I’ve thought they were all these years. Then again, it’s like shaving your beard off for the first time in ages — I’ve heard the original mix so many times that anything new would be a major adjustment to get used to.

I like it, but it’s not nearly as big a deal as the lead up made it seem so yeah.

haven't given this a listen yet but will today, but I was surprised to hear that this is an album that people thought was badly mixed. I mean maybe, but it's not the replacements album I think of when I hear "badly mixed replacements album" (that's Please to Meet Me, and the issue is not just the mix but the arrangements and overproduction).

agree with the people who think the og tim sounds needlessly wonky and echoey and for whom this new mix is revelatory

(iggy raw power and let it be naked both suck tho)

This video is private :(

Just recalled that the two albums that got me through the fall of 1985 were Tim and Two Wheels Good.

re here comes a regular remix

i’m a relatively new mats fan so not tryna discount ppl itt with decades of life w this album etc.

i get the comments about the atmosphere of the original mix adding to Here Comes a Regular, like he’s singing from the back wall of an empty bar & the faintness & echo adds to the feeling. it’s fucking beautiful as it stands, perfect, no notes.

but re the remix, why i like it is BECAUSE it’s such a beautiful song! imo it deserves this thought-exercise spotlight moment, and i think lives up to it. what i mean to say is the song is not so fragile that it can’t withstand coming into the light.
the piano notes sound like individual falling gemstones or raindrops or something, the whole song becomes so tangible like you could touch every note. like all of it, every part is so right & perfect, i enjoy the chance to finally appreciate ~all~ of it.

the end.

otm

did Ed Stasium think he could add :35 seconds on to Little Mascara and no one would notice? Like I'm happy for Bob Mehr and appreciate what Rhino is doing here, but declaring this the definitive version is borderline offensive. I had really hoped that the bass would come alive on the remaster, but most of the playing/recording wasn't that great, Bob's fills on Little Mascara are kind of mailed in, and Left of the Dial in particular is kind of neutered. On the plus side, it's nice to hear Chris, and there's at least one harmony on Little Mascara where it kills me they left it off the original recording.

My own conclusion from the remix is how much Paul was now leading a three piece, well before PTMM.

Its weird how this band has become like Orson Wells -- with the oeuvre considered genius, but more shambles than masterwork. Everyone has a got a discography in their mind of a perfect final state that a better timeline would have produced.

I never thought Pleased to Meet Me was badly mixed, whatever problems skeptics had with it lay with the production - I'm not one of them, I've always embraced that album as their idea of a pop record (exactly the kind they enjoyed). I think it's one of their great albums. I only wish "Birthday Gal" had been the closer. Great song, perfectly encapsulates their development as well as it points to where Paul was heading.

I never was crazy about Tim's sound - I originally listened to the old CD because of the complaints people had about the bits and pieces they cut out of the 2008 remasters, but the old CD sounded so flat and clangy and the rhythm section sounded so weak I eventually gave the remaster a try. Still not great but it was an improvement - warmer and fuller, and they amplified the bass which virtually disappeared on the old CD. The problem was obviously the mix and I was reminded of that every single time I played the album because as mentioned, I actually burned a CD that swapped in two songs - one of them was "Can't Hardly Wait" from Nothing for All and every single time I got through that track, I wished the rest of the album sounded that way and that's how the new mix sounds to me. It's exactly what I've hoped for.

There's a good handful of albums where I prefer an alternate mix, but the majority of them are not new mixes, they're actually vintage mixes that were pulled out of the vaults (closet mix for The Velvet Underground, the alternate of The Band's Stage Fright - not the 50th anniversary remix but the mix they used in the '90s, Butch Vig's mixes for Nevermind, etc.) The exceptions would probably be this one, Dead Man's Pop and Raw Power (at least when it's not crushed to death with compression) - that's probably it. I do like the new mix of Dylan's Time Out of Mind but I actually liked the original mix so it's more of a nice supplement, not something that supplants it.

Re: the Orson Welles comparison, I wouldn't change any of the 'Mats Twin/Tone records and I don't hear anyone saying they do. What Tommy Stinson and Bob Mehr said is pretty much true - Tim and Don't Tell a Soul are really the only two that stuck out as needing an overhaul. The only artist that comes close to that comparison is Bob Dylan, and not because of mixing so much as song selection. Oh Mercy and Infidels stick out the most as two not-bad albums that could've been truly great, but there's at least several others that could've been much better.

Bobtastic solo on live version of “Kiss Me on the Bus” gotta say.

I never thought Pleased to Meet Me was badly mixed, whatever problems skeptics had with it lay with the production - I'm not one of them, I've always embraced that album as their idea of a pop record (exactly the kind they enjoyed). I think it's one of their great albums. I only wish "Birthday Gal" had been the closer. Great song, perfectly encapsulates their development as well as it points to where Paul was heading.

Yep! The problem is the shitty songwriting.

Oooooh! Do you like any of the songs Alfred?

"Achin' to Be" is such a stupid idea for a track that of course they must have aspired to hit #1 on the Billboard AOR chart (and they did with "I'll Be You," of course).

Pleased to Meet Me is great!

xp those are from Don't Tell a Soul though, not Pleased to Meet Me

Re: Pleased to Meet Me, I was surprised the album was originally turned in with 10 songs...they only added "Valentine" because the label (Stein?) said it was too short (less than 30 minutes) and was there anything else they could add to it. Also Slim had pushed for it so that probably helped narrow down the choices.

"Birthday Gal" is great and I'm surprised "Photo" never made it past the studio demo, it had real potential. They were literally throwing away good material.

*asked if there was anything else

Just listened to this or at least tried to, had to keep skipping tracks, this remix is terrible. Not as bad as the Monster remix a few years ago but close. Guitars sound wimpy and diminished, vocal is way too loud. The remaster is good.

This is a good way to put zacata:

Then again, it’s like shaving your beard off for the first time in ages

I don't think I can maybe totally judge it right now

Like why remove that reverb from the vocals?

I feel for you, UMS, you're just too close to the flannel.

Bobtastic solo on live version of “Kiss Me on the Bus” gotta say.

Xpost hahaha it's tough!

Reading the box’s liner notes now and just got to the part about “Waitress in the Sky:”

“I was playing the character of the creep who demands to be treated like a king,” said Westerberg. “‘Cause I heard all the stories from my sister about how people would yell at her and how she’d ‘accidentally’ spill something on them.”

Listening now through shitty speakers, maybe this is another example of an album cleaned up for (ironically) inferior contemporary listening sources? Like, not good systems or headphones, but desktop l Amazon devices and phones and the like? Anyway, sounds fine to me so far.

Like why remove that reverb from the vocals?

Because every bit of texture comes through, like hearing every cigarette that's scarred that voice. I honestly think the vocal comes off a lot better now.

Josh, I said this upthread, but the improvement to me was even greater on a real stereo system, not on the computer or on earbuds where the low end's gone. Chris sounded anemic on the old mix, and if you had the old CD, Tommy was barely there. Now they come roaring through.

“I was playing the character of the creep who demands to be treated like a king,” said Westerberg. “‘Cause I heard all the stories from my sister about how people would yell at her and how she’d ‘accidentally’ spill something on them.”

Hah, there you go. I belatedly saw that Elizabeth Nelson came to the same conclusion in The New Yorker - hadn't read it until now due to the paywall.

Man, everything's been making me weepy these days, but I just hit "Here Comes a Regular" and here we go again. Then I imagined Taylor Swift covering it and it made me smile.

I like the dry vocal version, the reverb always sounded a little phony to me (relatively speaking).

Man, is there any songwriter as adept at sometimes heartbreaking, often almost non-sequitur one-liners? Maybe Dylan, of course. "She knows there's no success like failure, and that failure's no success at all," etc. But Westerberg, man, what a master, his just spill out and surprise you, like accidental aphorisms. "I used to live at home, now I stay at the house." "Lonely, I guess that's where I'm from." "The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest, and visit their graves on holidays at best." Maybe it's just Minnesota.

Absolutely. That's another thing I like about the mix - the words come through clearer and they're all the more powerful for it - you're not straining to make out anything, it's there and immediately hits you.

Also forgot to mention this, but Tommy Stinson always complained that Tommy Ramone mixed this on headphones, saying "who does that?" Thought of that when I fed this directly into my stereo.

I think there was no end to the band's self-sabotage, but Westerberg specifically, I suspect he had no problem hiding under muddy mixes, or in sloppy performances, or whatever. They're perfect for disguising insecurities. If you embrace choices others see as self-defeating, then when you succeed despite them and people notice you can boast, well, I wasn't even trying, that was a one-off, we did that when we were drunk or that was a first take. And if others think you fucked up or whatever, you can also then say, well, I wasn't even trying, that was a one-off, we did that when we were drunk or that was a first take, etc.

Xpost yeah he sometimes reminds me of classic country wordplay with those lines

xp those are from Don't Tell a Soul though, not Pleased to Meet Me

I thought you were discussing DTAS, though, sorry. But the point stands. It still sounds like one of the era's sadder mainstream accommodations.

I love that record. That era was rife with mainstream accommodations, and I bet stacked up against many if not most of them it comes out well ahead.

That's exactly it -- I love many of those accommodations, and I've defended them here. DTAS lacks the songs though.

Tommy Stinson always complained that Tommy Ramone mixed this on headphones, saying "who does that?"

the original mix sounds bad on headphones too

The bonus material was always a big help to DTAS. If it weren’t for those outtakes like “Portland,” “Wake Up,” “We Know the Night,” “Date to Church,” etc., I’m not sure if I’d ever go back to that album (or rather the music that came out of those sessions).

Basically I think the Stasium mix improves the rockers and hurts the slow ones.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, September 22, 2023 5:08 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Nailed it. I mostly like the new mix, but the difference between the old "Here Comes A Regular" and the Stasium mix is like the difference between the Jacobites and "Every Rose Has Its Thorn"

Hmm, that's pretty harsh.

I don't think there's a single song I don't like on "Don't Tell a Soul," lol.

i will say that the Tim version of Can't Hardly Wait being restored and cleaned up here is a real gift, that thing is amazing and blows the PTMM version out of the water.

ugh it's clear that the lyrics were very much a work in progress on Can't Hardly Wait. The final version is definitive, with the Shit Hits The Fans live version being preferable to the Tim era recordings.

The horns in the final version are unforgivable sorry

Imo the songwriting was always the least of DTAS’s problems.

I don’t think the perfect version of Can’t Hardly Wait exists. Both are good but I don’t think there’s a version that exists that fully brings out the 24-carat power-pop would’ve-been hit.

I guess I don’t want a 24k pop hit from it, I just want a well performed, impassioned, solid version, and the Tim version is pretty much that.

At this point there seem to be more versions of “Can’t Hardly Wait” floating around than there are tribbles in the quadrotriticale bin of the USS Enterprise.

In this imperfect but still best of all possible worlds my goto versions of “Can’t Hardly Wait” are the Live at Maxwell’s version and, to cut the Gordian Knot, the Justin Townes Earle cover.

On first listen it sounds ok. Not as revelatory as the DTAS set. While the distracting reverb has been stripped away, the new mixes also seem sort of claustrophobic and lifeless. When I put the OG mix back to back with the new one, the OG sounds more energetic, even if it’s kind of tinny and dated. This one doesn’t seem to have much air in it. Too tasteful? Anyhow, if I listen to it by itself it’s fine.

Maybe the best “Can’t Hardly Wait” is still the one on TSHtF.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVcivYXxxBc

the "can't hardly wait" here is the definitive studio version. it's easy to hear why the band rejected the original mix but this one makes it clear it belongs on the album

No doubt you are right. The ‘Tim’ version was already available on All for Nothing/Nothing for All, no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LceIOZvH7M

yeah and as a bonus track on previous reissues i think?

No, just this box set and Nothing for All. They used a pre-existing (probably rough) mix for Nothing for All, and for the box set they did a fresh mix.

The 2008 issue included two early versions from the Chilton session - both good but they don’t feel like candidates for a master take.

ah that makes sense

The horns in the final version are unforgivable sorry

to me, the cello versions included here indicate Paul was aiming for an am gold version of CHW when they couldn't get the rock version down, and I think they nailed it on PTMM. bubblegum was always the price of admission. worth searching for but his '93 SNL appearance included horns-though no strings.

I prefer the Tim version but I actually like both versions quite a bit. There is precedent with artists releasing two very different studio-recorded versions of the same song in quick succession, even on different albums - I kind of wish that happened here.

Copied from a Facebook group:

Here Comes A Regular- original version:
Day drinking in a dark, dingy smoke filled bar every day for the last two years after your wife left you, your dog died, and the house got repossessed by the bank.

Here Comes A Regular- Stasium version:
Day drinking in a well lit sports bar since noon because you spent $2000 at Guitar Center and you're afraid of what's going to happen when your wife sees the bill.

haha that's it exactly

I don't need to hear westerberg any more clearly than I can on the original mix, I guess, is my feeling. I'm really not someone who is against revisionist mixes, but I want them to be different in ways that are enlightening or revealing. Dead Man's Pop was a remix like that.

replacements fans

old smelly shirt covered in barf:
~heart eyes emoji~

same shirt, now laundered:
“WELL OBVIOUSLY NOW IT’S RUINED”

To me, Westerberg is either one of the greatest songwriters of the past 40 years or he isn't, and if he is then a song like HCAR can stand in the light. I don't see them as an atmospherics band anyway, and no one else does either except for this one album, apparently.

lol VG. It’s true!

Lolz vg

Cosign, irl lol VG. My favorite Mats album is Sorry Ma by a country mile, so I’m not the target market for laundering the barf shirt.

I'd say more but posting about the Replacements turns me into a jackass and vg has my number

VG’s example 500x better on account of 0 wife joke content, thank you ❤️

Apologies for the wife joke. I mostly like the mid-day sports bar vibe. Which is its own kind of desperation, no doubt.

The problem with the non-Twin Tone albums was that you could hear less and less of the chaos, the mistakes, the rattle, the string noise and its equivalents. Tim was the first step in that. Adding that stuff back in is not anti-Replacements, far from it.

Oh yeah, I like it on most of the songs.

part of this is just the songs, i forget it's a lot spottier than i remember it - i guess your head just goes to the hold my lifes, bastards, dials, etc...

it's certain a Good Job of remixing, like the clarity is pretty amazing

but do all these songs stand up to the light? dunno...dose of thunder definitely doesn't benefit, the exile-ish murk definitely gave that a certain vibe and covered up how slight it is...waitress was always kind of a nasty tempered throwaway* to me, and i don't like the backing vox that are prominent in the mix

swingin party sounds really good...i like the new i'll buy

same on all of this. The album is four, five great songs, the rest is kinda filler. The album before this the second song is Favorite Thing, after I Will Dare. Quite a one two. The album after this is IOU then Alex Chilton.

This one is Hold My Life, it's ok, and then I'll Buy sounds like it should be the penultimate song on side 2, I dunno. The best song is Swinging Party followed by Bastards. . . now that's a one two!

and Here Comes a Regular, romantic thoughts about alcohol are never interesting, sorry

you think that song is romantic?

How is the song romantic? I like the original mix because it nails the emptiness of nursing your fifth beer on a weekday afternoon.

lol at Here Comes a Regular being romantic about alcohol. that's one of the greatest songs Springsteen never wrote.

Kneeling alongside old Sad Eyes
He says, "Opportunity knocks once, then the door slams shut."
All I know is I'm sick of everything that my money can buy
The fool who wastes his life, God rest his guts

C'mon y'all

It isn't just lyrics -- it's the sadness of W's melody.

Also: that dude sounds like every barfly talking shit and sharing occasional pearls of wisdom.

Yeah, I was gonna say, that's not how I would describe that song.

Springsteen's pretty romantic

I mean to each their own--I'm just not interested in hearing what the barfly has to say about their sadness etc. Give me Sixteen Blue anyday of the week

Alfred otm.

• Hearing these harmonies "for the first time" was enough for me. The "crryyyyyyyy" part of "Little Mascara" for example.

• For two dudes who only had something like 42 years between them, Chris and Tommy sound like they've been playing together for a 100 years.

• Thing never mentioned about "Waitress In the Sky" is how much it sounds like a train song.

• Never got into "Swinging Party" before, but hearing this version conjured up visions of bubble gum soap shaped like rose petals for some reason.

For 40 years, this album has sounded like it was coming from dark hallway on the cover. The one song that benefitted from this was "Here Comes a Regular". And yeah, I too did not appreciate them suddenly turning the lights on in there.

A 10 from Pitchfork, "a new mix that instantly becomes the best and most definitive album in the Replacements’ catalog."

“Answering Machine,” is a yearning electric folk song, essentially the first solo Paul Westerberg track ever recorded under the banner of the Replacements.

Feels like the correct answer to that was just within the author's reach.

the romantic quality of many of Westerberg's songs were what made me obsess over them as an adolescent/child (not that I fully understood what I was listening to). I also agree that it's the melody in addition to the lyrics. He wrote a LOT of plaintive melodies.

Ultimately, my feelings are clouded by the childish way I approached this band when I initially got into them, with (mercifully) no knowledge of what jerkholes they were or what it meant to get as fucked up as they did. I ignored the parts of "Little Mascara" (and many others) that didn't apply to me and truly felt the parts that did. This was my approach to most of their music at the time. I was a kid!

That said, I listened to this album again and I truly do not think it's the best this band had to offer whatsoever. Too many crap songs, only a handful of good ones. Not my fave by a mile.

Jem Aswad has entered the chat:

https://variety.com/2023/music/opinion/replacements-tim-indie-rock-morality-1235734233/

As someone who purchased “Tim,” the Replacements’ 1985 major label debut, on the day it arrived in my local record store, I can say the following with absolute certainty: If the remixed, significantly beefed-up version of the album that dropped last week had been released in 1985, the group would have been crucified by the indie-rock morality police, and it probably would have destroyed their career.

And you can read the rest for yourself

if anyone wants to get truly demented about this, I created a Spotify comparison mix. all the songs in order:

1) 1985 original mix/master
2) 2008 reissue original mix/new master
3) 2023 Let it Bleed original mix/new master
4) 2023 Ed Stasium mix

**in a few cases (Kiss Me on the Bus, Bastards of Young, Left of the Dial, Here Comes a Regular), there was a 2006 remaster created for the Don't You Know Who I Think I Was?: The Best of the Replacements greatest hits set, included here when possible.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6FE002Tl05cFDwpXULffx1?si=66723f7c9bd14c84

I can say the following with absolute certainty: If the remixed, significantly beefed-up version of the album that dropped last week had been released in 1985, the group would have been crucified by the indie-rock morality police, and it probably would have destroyed their career.

Isn't destroying their career the only thing they were actually good at?

ha

good hair

This new version would have never turned them into superstars. Not enough Americans, especially at that time, liked witty couplets or bratty attitude in their music. Makes them feel not clever enough. They would have been relegated to Elvis Costello/XTC category.

behind a paywall but former ilxor keith harris wrote the best thing I've read so far:

Why Do We Still Pretend That the Replacements Should Have Become Real Rock Stars?

If you're not careful, an exciting new mix of 1985's 'Tim' will fill you with regret.
https://racketmn.com/why-do-we-still-pretend-that-the-replacements-should-have-become-real-rock-stars

We may never stop trying to fix the Replacements. Few bands’ legacies inspire such fervent choruses of “could have been”; few bands’ biographies holler back “no way in hell” with such finality. I defy you to find a possible turning point in Trouble Boys, Bob Mehr’s definitive Mats chronicle, where the willfully haphazard Minneapolis crew, had they only momentarily overcome their thrashed-about fuckuppery, could have immunized their career from future self-sabotage. Yet still, Tim (Let It Bleed Edition), a four-disc box set featuring a celebrated new mix of their 1985 Sire Records debut, is so thrilling that wistful fans are once more left puzzling through a cruel paradox: The Replacements could have been famous if only they hadn’t been the Replacements.

We’ve been here before. In 2019, a salvage job on the band’s last-ditch 1989 nosedive into the mainstream, Don’t Tell a Soul, was released as part of the Dead Man’s Pop box set. While spiking the sound to meet fans’ unkempt standards, the new version couldn’t render a (relatively) weak batch of songs into lost classics. (A "deluxe" edition of 1987’s Pleased to Meet Me the following year, though worthwhile for fans, promised fewer revelations.)

But Tim? Tim is a whole ’nother story. Even as someone who spent the ’80s listening to dubbed Maxells of my friends’ LPs, a guy who didn’t own a CD player till after the Berlin Wall fell, my take was “great songs, shame about the mix” long before I learned that was the conventional wisdom.

The Replacements were hardly the only up-from-indie band of their time flummoxed by the studio—in Hüsker Dü’s SST days, Grant Hart often sounded like he was drumming on a cereal box. But while major labels often garishly brightened an underground band’s sound for commercial appeal, Tommy Erdelyi (better known as Tommy Ramone) imprisoned Tim within an echo chamber of murk, adding shadows but no mystery, imposing a strange distance on songs that were so essential we willed ourselves across the gap, as though fiddling with our radio dial to catch some fading far-off signal.

No doubt, the dynamic new Ed Stasium remaster is what I’ll cue up whenever I want to hear those songs again. The mix does posthumous justice to the increasingly unsteady guitarist Bob Stinson, benched by Westerberg for most of the sessions. His still too-few demented prog-punk lines now wend unpredictably within earshot rather than milling about in the back of the room. The rhythm section kicks and swings with more abandon, and Westerberg's own guitars now chug inventively underneath or hang reverberant in the air, no longer bound like overly padded boxing gloves.

You don’t have to be a historicist to complain that a few early fade-ins and late fade-outs are distracting—the spoken intro to “Waitress in the Sky,” the stray guitar string thumps that close “Bastards of Young.” But whatever lyrics you once strained to hear (oh, so that’s "Uncle Henry, Auntie Em" Paul's muttering during the break on “One Good Dose of Thunder”) had nothing to do Westerberg’s lack of articulation. And as with all such overhauls, you listen closer to music that’s grown overly familiar—I hear touches I could have sworn were newly exhumed that are plainly audible in the earlier mix.

I’ll leave it to rock essentialists to debate about which is the “real” mix. The Erdelyi version remains a historical document, available for archivists, sticklers, or whoever’s had that earlier edition's tinny reverb imprinted on their soul. This new version may or may not represent how the Replacements wanted Tim to sound—intention is hard enough to determine in the moment let alone from the distance of decades. I’ll even accept (without caring about the implications) the argument that it presents a too-idealized Replacements, extracted from the messiness of history. But I get impatient when I hear folks wax hypothetical about what a record that sounded like this in 1985 would have had on the band’s career—especially since I wonder that myself.

Because at this late date, really, why should anyone give a fuck if the Replacements had become big rock stars? Surely enough people love the Replacements already. Maybe Minnesotans have the excuse of civic self-worth tied up in the Mats’ fate—Paul Westerberg is our Scott Norwood, our Bill Buckner, local rock's goat and its GOAT—though I’m still not sure that’s a healthy way to live. But settle down, the rest of you.

Play that tape all the way through and just look at where it leads. These guys handled notoriety so badly, just imagine what actual fame would have done to them. Anyway, they lasted a decade, and not many bands thrive for long beyond that. It’s a fatalist sickness to savor the supposedly apt poetic injustice of it all—the Replacements were just too great to be mere stars, pfft. But that’s no reason to nurse the belief that, with the right song, at the right time, they could have been as big as… the Georgia Satellites, maybe?

It can seem an impossible feat to separate the band’s music from its lore. But what if, summoning unprecedented stores of psychic effort, we listened to Tim as just one of the many major label records cut by underground strivers in the last decades of the 20th century that never went anywhere commercially. After all, if you were born after the Replacements dissolved, that’s basically what Tim is.

Come in fresh like that and you’ll hear some guys rocking with steadfast assurance of a band that’s far from doomed. With an unreal balance of chaos and craft, they seem to stumble across the song structures upon which the music industry would later lucratively construct alt-rock. “Hold My Life” alone sounds like a microcosm of 1994, a blueprint the Replacements could have fashioned the rest of the album from. Instead there’s the Stonesy tumble of “Lay It Down Clown,” the druggy, shoutalong metal of “One Good Dose of Thunder,” the brawny yet abject swagger of “I’ll Buy,” and the snarky country shuffle of “Waitress in the Sky,” in which lumpenproles lash out at unionized labor (and girls, of course) for the sake of a good joke—without (I think?) becoming Reaganists.

Long before quiet verse/loud chorus became modern rock cliché, the Mats upended that convention with the quiet-then-loud verses of the chorusless “Left of the Dial,” culminating in a final verse at full, reckless volume that drifts into a rueful coda. “Which side are you on?” Westerberg asks (himself?) cryptically throughout that song, and even if we’re still pretending to know nothing about this band (though are we even?), moments like this mark Tim as a crossroads of an album. “Time for a decision to be made,” he'd declared earlier on “Hold My Life” even as he seemed to hold out hope that Mr. Wizard would rescue him. In Westerberg’s nicotine-tinctured voice, you’ll hear why the Replacements couldn’t be just another band for so many.

Yet his lyrics evade the commitment with which he sings. A year earlier, “I Will Dare” swung with such assurance that you could miss how safe Paul was playing it. If you will dare, then I might dare. This is a note slipped secretly into a locker, a dare to dare, an invitation for you to jump first and I’ll follow, I swear. It’s less “I Want to Hold Your Hand” than “I Want You to Hold My Hand.” It’s “Thunder Road” if Bruce had left a message on Mary’s answering machine asking her to swing by and pick him up after work—but like, if not, that’s cool, no pressure.

A tension between emotional paralysis and desperate, misguided action runs throughout Tim. Elvis Costello made entire albums without a pun as good as “Swingin’ Party,” one of rock’s greatest songs about that most un-rock quality, shyness. The corrosive helplessness of being unable to budge, to overcome your inner blocks, that the song captures so well is what makes the impulsive PDA of “Kiss Me on the Bus” so necessary, even triumphant.

That push-and-pull between self-protective caution and self-destructive abandon might explain why “Can’t Hardly Wait” didn’t surface on Tim. It’s a song so undeniable that you can trick yourself into thinking it was the last puzzle piece missing, and the often slapdash Westerberg agonized over multiple versions (you can hear four on the outtakes disc of the new box) before determining that it just wasn’t ready for the world. But it’s-not-quite-there perfectionism is just the flipside of fuck-it-it’s-fine. If the end result will always disappoint you, there’s no reason to try. You may as well jump right in and make a mess of shit.

So much is made in retrospect about Westerberg's "fear of success," but really, what non-idiot under 30 in 1985 wouldn’t feel conflicted about rock stardom? (Well, besides Prince.) Elvis is a no-show—he’s in the ground, as Westerberg sings—and who’d look at Jagger shimmying alongside a leopard-skinned Bowie to a desecration of “Dancing in the Streets” and think, yeah, that’s what I’m shooting for? Who could listen back then to the raw punk singles that Peter Jesperson had exposed the young Mats to at Oarfolk without realizing that their promise had gone unrealized?

His excesses romantic rather than hedonist, Westerberg sang with an ache of inchoate desire, a desperation for some non-stupid reason to rock out. Tim is what it’s like to be cursed with the gift of waxing eloquent about how you don’t know what to say, what it’s like to recognize that all the goals set before you are inane, yet to be so infatuated by the raw power of an electric guitar that you can never fully accept that the noise you make is meaningless.

Tim has always been a fall record for me. This time each year my all-too-literal brain notices the longer late afternoon shadows and the earlier sunsets and the shriveled patches in my backyard where even the weeds have lost the will to sprawl and I hear Paul Westerberg murmur “The summer’s past/It’s too late to cut the grass” from “Here Comes a Regular.” Somehow it’s 1985 all over again for me even though I wouldn’t hear that song for a few years after that. Memory’s funny that way.

Then again, there was something autumnal about growing up in the ’80s. All the sex had been fucked. All the drugs cost too much. All the rock had been rolled. Our inheritance was AIDS and whip-its and Bon Jovi. We were forever being told the party was long over but you could sneak downstairs and drink the backwashed dregs from one of your parents’ warm unfinished beers and hope no one had doused a cigarette butt in it.

Maybe that’s just how every fifteen-year-old has felt forever. Certainly few rockers have ever felt as fifteen-for-life as Westerberg. On Let It Be he channeled the cranky old man nestled inside every disaffected kid, eternally wronged and romantically inept and blasting out blame like buckshot at MTV and answering machines and tonsilectomies. That resentment was more focused on Tim, where the exasperation of being born too late reached its fullest expression on “Bastards of Young.”

Sometime in the next decade, when media marketers tried to peg me and my contemporaries as “Generation X” so they could figure out what ads we liked, I’d think back to Paul sneering “ya got no warrant to name us” (a line I’d mistaken in the past for “war to name us” or even “maim us”—Tim is among rock’s great troves of misheard lyrics). Yeah, I'd think. That means you, Time magazine!

Yes, we project so much of our own baggage on the Replacements, and that includes our feelings of and about regret. No one makes it to 40 without a litany of what we have done and what we have failed to do haunting us. And the Replacements are our Ghost of Modern Rock Past, a reminder of missteps as ephemeral as a kiss left unkissed and as quotidian as that ill-timed second mortgage. It’s almost enough to imagine the Stasium mix of Tim duking it out with Bryan Adams or Dire Straits for the top of the Billboard charts, without realizing what a sad victory that would have been.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, blah blah friggin’ blah, to quote some other Minnesota drunk who knew a little something about regret, who we also remember as never surpassing his early successes. Fitzgerald flailed about in Hollywood and died young. Hackwork didn’t come naturally to Westerberg either, and he settled instead into Edina semi-anonymity. The Great Gatsby remains a great book. Tim is still a great record. Yet both are the same kind of works that make us demand more from their creators, that forever leave us unsatisfied.

Ha, was literally about to link that.

That's an amazing review. If nothing else, the Replacements/Rhino machine has brought us some top-flight writing.

Harris's going to need a bodyguard every time he's south of Lake & Lyndale

I reached the same conclusion about the Go-Betweens too: why lament their lack of success? After listening to them or the Replacements, how on earth could you have imagined they'd be in the top ten?

And as with all such overhauls, you listen closer to music that’s grown overly familiar—I hear touches I could have sworn were newly exhumed that are plainly audible in the earlier mix.

This is spot on, and was my experience listening to this box set, too. I even had to check the original mix to confirm a few things. This is also why I’m a sucker in general for these fish-in-a-barrel fan service deluxe packages. The more familiar I am with the original mix / master of an album, the more I want to hear the little upgrades and alterations. They don’t even have to be better, necessarily. I just like hearing those minute differences. This is also why I own every Kinks CD in both stereo and mono.

Something that is often overlooked or ignored with the Replacements is that, by most standards, they *were* pretty popular/successful. I want to say the last place they headlined here (excluding the final Grant Park show) was the Aragon, which is 5000 capacity and, for point of comparison, where the Clash played, where the Smiths played, etc. And by the end they were selling hundreds of thousands of records. They might have been fuck ups, but they largely fucked up up.

I guess for point of comparison, REM played the Aragon in 1984, but UIC Pavilion (capacity 10k) in 1985 (and 1986, and 1987; Rosemont Horizon arena by 1989), but the Replacements were like the id to REM's ego.

i love tim. i never knew that there was anything wrong with it. i have always played it loud. i didn't know about the new version. i am leery of remixes. which is what i call remasters. because people change things. but i would listen to it! without all the extra crap. is there a single CD?

B-b-but the extra crap is good!

Has any fan ever released an unremastered remaster, where they took an album that was cleaned up and made it sound shittier?

scott a remix is not a remaster, you should know that. i mean it's necessarily remastered, but it's adifferent thing. if you were fine with the original version of Tim this version is unnecessary, but I do think the included remaster of the original mix is really good.

Something that is often overlooked or ignored with the Replacements is that, by most standards, they *were* pretty popular/successful

I don't overlook or ignore this point, but nothing in the band's DNA suggested they would score any hit bigger than "I'll Be You" and sell albums higher than the low six-figure range.

I agree. As a contemporaneous fan of both R.E.M. and the Replacements, it was no mystery to me why one “made it” and the other didn’t. The Replacements were never really part of any zeitgeist, musically they were more like ‘70s punks than ‘80s punks, and their proto-slacker worldview was a harbinger but wouldn’t be radio-friendly until Nirvana or the Gin Blossoms or whatever. They weren’t really in step with much of anything.

tbf, neither were R.E.M.

R.E.M. was, though — they were part of the whole college-jangle-rock thing, obviously 10,000 Maniacs and Let's Active were fellow travelers, but there were a bunch of people like Guadalcanal Diary, Miracle Legion, other 120 Minutes names I'm forgetting.

Also R.E.M. never minded making music videos. They never exactly seemed like they were chasing stardom, but they also didn't seem very conflicted about it.

As far as I know they never tore their touring RV to pieces either.

The sales were massively disappointing - IIRC 95,000 for Tim in the first year, which is really fucking sad for a critically hyped, major label debut circa 1985. Having said that, I can't imagine them ever becoming huge stars even under the best circumstances. Even if they were like R.E.M. and knew how to play the game, it still would've taken years to build, and I don't think they had that time - Westerberg was going to be firmly entrenched in singer-songwriter territory by the end of the decade regardless.

My point was not that they might have ever been more successful than they were, it was that as far as success goes, they were more successful than the vast majority of their peers, at least at that point. So those (not me) that consider the Replacements a bunch of missed opportunities themselves often miss that the band achieved plenty.

Now, had the band lasted to the breakthroughs of Soul Asylum or Goo Goo Dolls, maybe that's a different story. Perhaps not a coincidence that the first Goo Goo Dolls song I ever heard on the radio was a Westerberg co-write.

True - I mean, they definitely did a thousand times better than they could have imagined in, say, 1980.

These guys handled notoriety so badly, just imagine what actual fame would have done to them

He got that right

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEe are the NOR-MALLLLL

Heh, that's the one.

first couple goo goo dolls records (before that song) are better than the last couple replacements, the metal blade GGD ones

This line of fan fiction is reminding me now to ask if anyone else here besides me and Edd Hurt has ever read Mark Shipper’s Paperback Writer?

IIRC 95,000 for Tim in the first year, which is really fucking sad for a critically hyped, major label debut circa 1985

Is it really? Seems like those numbers are pretty close to what X, Hüsker Dü, etc. were doing after making the jump but not landing a hit at radio or MTV.

Otoh, in Trouble Boys Mehr points out the pride the staff at Warner Music had in breaking previously fringe acts like The Cure, Depeche Mode, and the Cult to radio, leading to exasperation that couldn't do the same with the 'Mats.

Is it really? Seems like those numbers are pretty close to what X, Hüsker Dü, etc. were doing after making the jump but not landing a hit at radio or MTV.

To be fair, those numbers were considered disappointing for them too. They did get to make more albums, so I guess it's a sign that 95,000 wasn't considered completely acceptable (though more likely it was WB's artist-friendly culture at the time - during the Mo Ostin-era they nurtured acts regardless, believing you couldn't expect breakthroughs with just one album).

Don't forget in Trouble Boys when Don't Tell a Soul had been out for a while, there was a report Mehr found that has sales figures around 200,000 and a label exec circled it while writing "NOT ENOUGH," a sentiment confirmed by everyone he interviewed.

Probably helped that none of those bands had a penchant for peppering their sets with drunken versions of classic rock songs they barely knew. xp