I failed to post yesterday because I was up until like 5 that morning watching the last 2 discs of Lost, Season 2. Which means that my life is effectively ruined, yes. But after the weekend I've been through i felt like i 've earned myself the right to be a sack of crap for a night. I slept like crap all night and kept dreaming that something was chasing me, and it wasn't nearly as entertaining as the smoke monster from lost. Last night, I got home at 5 and immediately had 3 glasses of cabernet, but of course I got caught up in some book and still didn't end up sleeping until 2:30. So now today I'm paying for it and I have bills to pay, laundry to fold, and a life to resume. at some point, anyway. I keep thinking I should volunteer for some sort of experimaental sleep study, because I think my totally irregular patterns would be a pretty keen area of study for someone. or not. Anyways, if there's one thing that is easier to dislike than water chestnuts, it' people that always talk about how poorly they sleep. or their dreams. Which means I've caught a case of the double suck. My apologies.
Anywho, my day's been rolling along like a sack of crap, so I wanna get back to work sooner so I can leave sooner and go to sleep.
On a far more interesting note, I just found out that Norman Fell is from Philadelphia, which is awesome. who wants to find out visit his birthplace with me? I'm not sure it if makes up for Michelle Malkin, but it helps. Also, I'm not sure if anyone saw the Clinton interview on Fox News the other day, but it was shockingly distasteful, and obviously biased. It amazez me to hear people perpetuate this idea of the liberal media when you have shit like this going on. Or the media that we have today at all. If the media were generally liberal, don't you think that we'd hear a lot more about the issues that truly matter? Don't you think healthcare would be brought up more? Don't you think they'd paint something less of the (better, but still quite) rosy picture of Iraq? Don't you think they'd have come out with the wiretap scandal when they found out about it 2 years ago? For fuck's sake, how can these news channels that are owned by multinational corporations possibly be liberal minded? Don't they have the same war-profiteering masters as the rest of the media? What the fuck? Anyways, don't bother reading it.

also, an interesting note about the Philly suburbs recent shift towards the left here.

anyways, here's some Replacement's songs. I'll update this post later to write about them, but for now I gotta get back to work.

I fucking love the Replacements. I really do. Up until Tim, at least. Around this time, to me at least, they went from being (at least to me) this self-destructive force of rock and roll, fueled by booze and pot and midwest boredom to being sappy drunk modern rockers. I mean, I guess the latter has its time and place, but I guess by the time I was old enough to develop an interest in a band like this I’d heard enough of crap tender modern rock that I pretty much had decided it wasn’t my thing. And it’s not like the band playing on the earlier albums is notably talented, or completely original. I mean, they played bar rock, and Westerberg’s lyrics, while impressive, got much, much better as they band grew up and softed out.

That never mattered to me though. Because the band played their songs (and many others) with suck a careen-off-a-cliff-and-into-the-refinery sort of way, with such abandon that you just sorta wait for them to all spontaneously combust and leave behind a cloud of stale bong hits and beer farts. They were drunk and childish and were capable of falling apart before your eyes onstage. But they were drunken children. I mean, what the fuck are you gonna expect out of a band like that? But in the end, that’s so much of what I love about most of the music I love. Unrestrained character and spirit and yeah, sometimes utter stupidity. It’s a shame that they’re known more for their startling intake of booze, because they carried so much more in attitude than they really ever got credit for. I could go on for hours about the relationships between the band members and their rivalry with Husker Dü, but you can find all that shit somewhere else. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll go into it, because I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned there, not the least of which being that Bob Mould is in fact an asshole. But that’s neither here nor there.

They weren’t punk, and they weren’t a hardcore band. They were just fast hard bar rock. I think it’s hilarious to hear how shocked they were when they’d go to New York or something and see what their audience looked like.

Anyway, after they toured for Tim, Bob Stinson, who had fought kicking and screaming the slow eradication of power chords and frighteningly loud solos, was kicked out of the band. From there the band just lost that zeal that made them so likable. They didn’t burn out as much as just imploded. I guess it’s testament to Westerberg’s songwriting chops that they managed to eek out some incredible songs after that, but it just wasn’t the same.

I’m sure Paul Westerberg would have plenty to say about all of this, most of which directly contradicting what I just said and definitely unsafe for children’s ears. In fact I know this because I’ve heard as much. and that’s his prerogative. Just as it’s mine to do what I can to ignore what I can of their later years.

Anyway, these are all songs that were from the collection that Sire put together almost 10 years ago. Most of the fans of their early work wrote this off as a collection of what made them so bland later on, disc 2 pretty much as all the songs I’ve ever wanted out of their later catalogue, and disc 1 has enough classic songs and dunken outtakes that you pretty much have to enjoy it. Hence, these.

The first song is a quick short punch in the face. The second song was originally recorded by The Only Ones, but I think the ’Mats live version here kick the living shit out of that one. Bob’s guitar sounds better here than it did on almost all of his studio recordings. The third one has Tom Waits on organ, and is freakishly lovable. Is to me one of the most well written songs of all time. Live. That’s about all I got today, but have a good’un. I’m too tired to convince you to do otherwise.
It should be noted that 3/4 of the original band reunited to record some new tacks, but eithout Bob on guitar (and Chris Mars on the drums, I guess), it's nothing I'm gonna freak out about, you know?
I think one of the main reasons why I made this post today instead of holding on to it for a little while (seriously, there's a lot more to say about this band, and I'm shocked there hasn't been a classic book already), is because I'm listening to the new Hold Steady album, and while I don't dislike it, it could in time be their Tim, and it's a thought that's really starting to get to me. Of course, I could really grow to like this, and i'm certainly old enough where I should start loving something like All Shook Down, but I'm not there yet.

"Wake Up" - The Replacements
"Another Girl, Another Planet" - The Replacements
"Date to Church" - The Replacements

"Bastards of Young" (live) - the Replacements

Buy All for Nothing/Nothing for All here.

and I know that putting up the Slim Dunlap-era 'Mats picture up there is contradictory at best, but I can't help it, that picture cracks me up.


It's 11:20 right nnow and on the news the meteorologist just basically admitted that he's helpless without the computer. awesome.