The Replacements
All Shook Down
Released in 1990, this is the final album by one of the most critically loved, least-listened to bands of the 80s. Voted “the drunkest band of all-time” by Rolling Stone writers, the Mats (as their fans sometimes referred to them) made this recording mostly broken-up with only two members left playing along side singer and soon to be solo artist, Paul Westerberg who wrote most of the band’s songs. The Replacements are a perfect example of wild punkish louts who slowly learned to play their instruments, lost some of their original fans because of it then became really good at the end. Hard-drinkin’ Westerburg was on the wagon during production and moving into the ‘grown-up’ years of his life. Luckily for us he aged with style. Listening to this album now the songs are so crisp, well-crafted and smooth it almost feels like adult contemporary at first.
For me this a nearly perfect set of tunes with a deep bag of sharp, clever lyrics and sparse, to-the-point songwriting creating a nice place to relax and be 42 years old. In 2008, living in this world of adolescent, whining, girly emo boys, stupid, bland pop sluts and brainless corporate hip/hop pulling this disc out of an old shoebox was one of the best acts of the year so far. I don’t know how generation FACEBOOK will see The Replacements but a band who are known for being so out of control they were kicked-off Saturday Night Live and told never to return. And for making a video shot in grainy black and white showing a nothing but a close up of a speaker through the entire song (which is smashed at the end of the song to protest the stupidity of music videos) should at least appeal the supposed love of Punk they seem to share. The song in the video was called Bastards of Young which they (like many of the band’s fans at the time) certainly were. Standouts on All Shook Down include the catchy, When It Began with the lyrics....The Queen sat quiet, the Jester plays, she plays “Off with their heads and on with my pants.” Also, the darkly, somber, All Shook Down which begins...”Hollywood cops... shoot each other in bed... The bouncy, Someone Take the Wheel is a funny and realistic song about driving endless hours packed in a van with bandmates that are sick of each other. “...I see the fighting begin...so fuckin’ lame...throw in another tape man...someone take the wheel.” The album closes with the tender, but downer piano ballad, The Last, which is a song that sounds like it was written by a grizzled veteran of romantic war but sung with a comforting distance of one who has learned valuable lessons along the way.
The Replacements broke apart just before Nirvana sang about Teen Spirit and blew the lid off the deep and rich underground music scene (which would soon be trampled silly by the dimwitted MTV idiot masses) but listening to them now with fresh, ears well into the next millennium I doubt they would have gotten their due even if they stayed together. Download it, buy the disc or whatever but give this one many listenings. We all have to grow up sometime. Hopefully we can do it with the same style Westerburg shows with All Shook Down, The Replacements 41 minute swan song.
-Richard Mullins
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Record Review - Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Small Change
Recorded directly to a 2-track stereo tape in the summer of 1976, Small Change is by far my favorite Tom Waits record. The record opens with Tom Traubert's Blues, a gutter-rasping, heart breaking tune that drifts from verse to verse with soaring pain, loneliness and longing..."Wasted and wounded, 'taint what the moon did...got what I paid for now...." Throughout the album Wait's scratchy, straining voice floats over booze-soaked, church-hymn piano ballads and catchy and impossibly bouncy, bass-heavy jazz riffs. The lyrics are dark but hopeful, Charles Bukowski inspired poetry. The final track is I Can't Wait to Get Off Work To See my Baby which comes across as a Bukowski short-story set to music.
Invitation to the Blues is a wrenching ballad of vivid portraiture, chronicling the story of a small corner of American life set in a diner in No Place USA. The classic lonely, waitress and new-in-town guy yarn chocked full of Wait's genius metaphors..."Well she's up against the register with an apron and a spatula, yesterday's deliveries, tickets for the bachelors, she's a moving violation from her conk down to her shoes...well, it's just an invitation to the blues."
1975s, Nighthawks at the Diner was closer to stand-up comedy at times but Small Change's The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) is the funniest he has penned to date. Gems such as "the jukebox needs to take a leak and the carpet needs a haircut (shag carpet 1976.) Think about the year...Boston, Fleetwood Mac, Disco is heating up...blindly ignoring the bell-bottom, feathered hair scene around him Waits leans loose behind the giant wheel of his old '55 writing and tickling the ivories as if the dim days of the Great Depression never ended.
Two of the songs feature an infective crazy, bubbling bass line...Step Right Up satirizes cheap advertising's bull shit seductions with skillful glee and Pasties & a G String sing the praises of strip clubs 20 years before their mass acceptance..."crawling on her belly, shaking like jelly and I'm getting harder than Chinese Algebra...take that Abba!
Small Change (Got Rained On) is a film noir story set in a bone chilling air. A lone, aggressive saxophone shadows the singer's voice as he takes the listener through the grim tail of a small-time crook who gets...rained on by his own .38. If you enjoy sax this one has some really sweet rips.
As his career moves on, Waits has gotten really crazy and experimental (in a good way) but for me this one hit the bulls-eye dead on. I consider it an American treasure (as corny as that sounds.) I finally got to see old Tom live a couple of months back here in Dallas. Sadly his vocal cords are now so shredded it's hard to imagine him even sounding as 'smooth' as he did back in '76...when I was a clueless 11 year old Fonzie fan, listening to The Bay City Rollers and dreaming of Charlie's Angels. This is a record all music fans should own. Buy it.
-Richard Mullins
Small Change
Recorded directly to a 2-track stereo tape in the summer of 1976, Small Change is by far my favorite Tom Waits record. The record opens with Tom Traubert's Blues, a gutter-rasping, heart breaking tune that drifts from verse to verse with soaring pain, loneliness and longing..."Wasted and wounded, 'taint what the moon did...got what I paid for now...." Throughout the album Wait's scratchy, straining voice floats over booze-soaked, church-hymn piano ballads and catchy and impossibly bouncy, bass-heavy jazz riffs. The lyrics are dark but hopeful, Charles Bukowski inspired poetry. The final track is I Can't Wait to Get Off Work To See my Baby which comes across as a Bukowski short-story set to music.
Invitation to the Blues is a wrenching ballad of vivid portraiture, chronicling the story of a small corner of American life set in a diner in No Place USA. The classic lonely, waitress and new-in-town guy yarn chocked full of Wait's genius metaphors..."Well she's up against the register with an apron and a spatula, yesterday's deliveries, tickets for the bachelors, she's a moving violation from her conk down to her shoes...well, it's just an invitation to the blues."
1975s, Nighthawks at the Diner was closer to stand-up comedy at times but Small Change's The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) is the funniest he has penned to date. Gems such as "the jukebox needs to take a leak and the carpet needs a haircut (shag carpet 1976.) Think about the year...Boston, Fleetwood Mac, Disco is heating up...blindly ignoring the bell-bottom, feathered hair scene around him Waits leans loose behind the giant wheel of his old '55 writing and tickling the ivories as if the dim days of the Great Depression never ended.
Two of the songs feature an infective crazy, bubbling bass line...Step Right Up satirizes cheap advertising's bull shit seductions with skillful glee and Pasties & a G String sing the praises of strip clubs 20 years before their mass acceptance..."crawling on her belly, shaking like jelly and I'm getting harder than Chinese Algebra...take that Abba!
Small Change (Got Rained On) is a film noir story set in a bone chilling air. A lone, aggressive saxophone shadows the singer's voice as he takes the listener through the grim tail of a small-time crook who gets...rained on by his own .38. If you enjoy sax this one has some really sweet rips.
As his career moves on, Waits has gotten really crazy and experimental (in a good way) but for me this one hit the bulls-eye dead on. I consider it an American treasure (as corny as that sounds.) I finally got to see old Tom live a couple of months back here in Dallas. Sadly his vocal cords are now so shredded it's hard to imagine him even sounding as 'smooth' as he did back in '76...when I was a clueless 11 year old Fonzie fan, listening to The Bay City Rollers and dreaming of Charlie's Angels. This is a record all music fans should own. Buy it.
-Richard Mullins
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