Hello, last night i zapped thru 3 hours of Grammy award ceremony, even without the commercials it was a bizar waste of time , a 17 year old girl from Middle Earth was awarded with song of the year as she praised her Royals and her performance as a thirthy something swedish vixen got her the Best Pop Solo Performance (should be imitation). Yes infantile is the word the springs to mind when describing 2014's Grammy award ceremony. The Daft Punk guys must have been laughing themselves half dead all the way to the bank this year. To confirm their gullability the US music industry felt obliged to declare Get Lucky and the album Random Acces Noise (oops Memories) as the best 2013 had to offer...really. Such a bunch of nincompoops why anyone takes these guys seriously is beyond me.
I know money, shitloads of trickle down dollars forever created out of thin air by the FED and tonight the big boss get's to wave his magic wand and create an extra trillion or more- who cares, nobody on this planet dares to tell the US its dollar is worth less then toilet paper-which it is. But then say no to it and the Satan will destroy you. It's an evil game and now the UK has given itself over to the same game, print endless amounts of make-belief pounds to pay for its debts. However, there is a limit to how far this thieving is accepted and all the spying in the world will not be enough to intimidate the righteous and the day of reckoning will come or will it ? The price the world will have to pay for creating this monstrous monetairy system will be zero if only we would awaken. Alas this planet has been ruled by fear, it has been used ever since the monotheistic religions reared its ugly head, and those in power have used the tool of fear at every corner to drive forth it's army of human locusts. I really wonder if this planet can sustain another millenium of humans. I doubt it, but then there are such that strive to be immortal inside a virtual world ah yes that fear of death-the ultimate weapon of old. It's power has been waning which is a good thing too many have let themselves be intimidated by selfserving priests.
Meanwhile still stuck in Minneapolis a beautiful midwestern town built between lakes and woods by those who felt right at home there, Germans and Scandinavians still make up almost halve of its 400,000 citizens. The Minneapolis park system has been called the best-designed, best-financed, and best-maintained in America. The city's Chain of Lakes, consisting of seven lakes and Minnehaha Creek, is connected by bike, running, and walking paths and used for swimming, fishing, picnics, boating, and ice skating. A parkway for cars, a bikeway for riders, and a walkway for pedestrians runs parallel along the 52 miles (84 km) route of the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway. Public transport is well supported and it's one of the cleanest cities on the planet.
It has a very culture minded populace , the region is second only to New York City in live theater per capita and is the third-largest theater market in the U.S. after New York City and Chicago. Many performing arts groups and art museums/galleries. The man usually known as Prince the towns most famous musical progeny lights up it's music scene. It really is a very cultured city.... hence Republicans play second fiddle despite the presence of many affluent white citizens. Philanthropy and charitable giving are part of the community. More than 40% of adults in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area give time to volunteer work, the highest such percentage of any large metropolitan area in the United States.
Today's artists unlike many of their underground contemporaries, played "heart-on-the-sleeve" rock songs that combined Westerberg's "raw-throated adolescent howl," with self-deprecating lyrics. They were a notoriously wayward live act, part of the mystique of todays artists was the fact that the audience never knew until the start of a concert if the band would be sober enough to play and it was not uncommon for the group to play entire sets of cover versions . . ....N'Joy
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The Replacements' history began in Minneapolis in 1978 when nineteen-year-old Bob Stinson gave his eleven-year-old brother Tommy Stinson a bass guitar to keep him off the streets. That year Bob met Mars, a high school dropout. With Mars playing guitar and then switching to drums, the trio called themselves "Dogbreath" and began covering songs by Aerosmith, Ted Nugent and Yes without a singer.
After being impressed by the band's performance, Westerberg regularly listened in after work. Dogbreath auditioned several vocalists, Westerberg joined the band, Dogbreath often drank and took various drugs during rehearsals, playing songs as an afterthought. In contrast to the rest of the band, the relatively disciplined Westerberg appeared at rehearsals in neat clothes and insisted on practicing songs until he was happy with them. After the band members discovered first-generation English punk bands like The Clash, The Jam, The Damned and The Buzzcocks, Dogbreath changed its name to The Impediments and played a drunken performance without Tommy Stinson at a church hall gig in June 1980. After being banned from the venue for disorderly behaviour, they changed the name to the Replacements.
In their early days, they sounded quite similar to Hüsker Dü, the leaders of the Minneapolis punk scene. However, The Replacements were wilder and looser than the Hüskers and quickly became notorious for their drunken, chaotic gigs. After they built up a sizable local following the Minneapolis Jesperson signed them, he was the manager of Oar Folkjokeopus, a punk rock record store in Minneapolis, and had also founded Twin/Tone Records with a local recording engineer named Paul Stark. With the agreement of Stark and the rest of the band, the Replacements signed to Twin/Tone Records in 1980. Jesperson's support of the band was welcomed, and they asked him to be their manager after their second show.
When the band's first album, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, finally appeared in August 1981, it received positive reviews in local fanzines. Option's Blake Gumprecht wrote, "Westerberg has the ability to make you feel like you're right in the car with him, alongside him at the door, drinking from the same bottle." The album contained the band's first single, "I'm in Trouble", Westerberg's "first truly good song".[18] Sorry Ma included the song, "Somethin to Dü", a homage to another Minneapolis punk band Hüsker Dü. The Replacements had a friendly rivalry with the band, which started when Twin/Tone chose the Replacements over Hüsker Dü, interestingly the Replacements began playing faster and became more influenced by Dü's hardcore punk. Despite this, the band did not feel part of the hardcore scene.
Sometime in late 1981, the Replacements played a song called "Kids Don't Follow". Jesperson was convinced the song sounded like a hit and pleaded with the Twin/Tone co-owners Stark and Hallman, "I will do anything to get this out. I will hand-stamp jackets if I have to." The partners agreed to fund the recording, but Jesperson and virtually everyone he knew had to hand-stamp ten thousand white record jackets The band recorded eight tracks within a week, with Jesperson as producer. Their "balls-to-the-wall hardcore punk attempt", their first EP Stink, containing "Kids Don't Follow" and seven other songs, was released in June 1982, six months after the Chicago show.
The Replacements began to distance themselves from the hardcore punk scene after the release of Stink. "We write songs rather than riffs with statements," Westerberg later stated. Inspired by other rock subgenres, he had been writing songs that incorporated a wide range of musical styles. He even wrote an acoustic ballad, "You're Getting Married One Night", but when he played it to the rest of the band, it was met with silence. "Save that for your solo album, Paul," Bob Stinson said. "That ain't the Replacements". The track remained unreleased for years. Westerberg realized his toughest audience was the band itself, later saying, "If it doesn't rock enough, Bob will scoff at it, and if it isn't catchy enough, Chris won't like it, and if it isn't modern enough, Tommy won't like it."
With a batch of new songs, the Replacements entered a warehouse in Roseville, Minnesota, to record their next album, with the Twin/Tone co-owner Stark engineering. Westerberg wrote songs in stops and starts, so it took several sessions of recording to finish the album. Hootenanny, the band's second studio album, was released in April 1983. Hootenanny saw Westerberg expand his songwriting capabilities, In songs such as "Willpower", with echoed vocals and a sparse arrangement, and "Within Your Reach", which features Westerberg on all instruments, he revealed a more sensitive side. It was a much more mature album than Stink and Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. Hootenanny was played on over two hundred radio stations across the country, with critics acclaiming the album.
By Hootenanny's release, The Replacements had begun to attract a following outside of Minneapolis. The band embarked on its first tour of the U.S. in April 1983, Tommy Stinson dropped out of tenth grade to join the rest of the band on tour. The Replacements toured venues in the East Coast of the United States. The band supported R.E.M. on an eight-date tour later that summer, deciding that they should alienate the audience as much as possible. It was not a successful tour; by the end, various members had threatened to leave The Replacements. Band morale was low, and Westerberg later stated, "We'd much rather play for fifty people who know us than a thousand who don't care.
For the recording of their next studio album, The Replacements decided to return to Blackberry Way Studios in late 1983. The band considered R.E.M.'s guitarist Peter Buck as producer, but when they met him in Athens, Georgia, they did not have enough material to begin recording. Instead, Jesperson and Steve Fjelstad co-produced the album. The new material placed more of a focus on songwriting and the music was influenced by heavy metal, arena rock and Chicago blues. Instruments such as piano, twelve-string guitar and mandolin featured throughout the album. The new album included songs such as "I Will Dare", which featured Buck playing lead guitar, "Androgynous", with Westerberg on piano, and "Unsatisfied", where, according to writer Michael Azerrad, Westerberg "had hit upon a moving new way to declare that he can't get no satisfaction." Let It Be was released in October 1984 to critical acclaim.
It's release attracted attention from the major record labels, and by late 1984 several had expressed an interest in signing the band. Financially, the band was not doing well; they were not selling enough records to recoup their expenses, and money from shows went to recording costs, hotels, travel and instrument repairs. Twin/Tone was not being paid reliably by distributors and the sales of Let It Be were not high enough to justify extra promotion. "It was time for a major label to take over," according to the label's co-owner Stark. The band was close to a major label contract, but often alienated label representatives by intentionally performing badly in concert; their 1985 live album, The Shit Hits the Fans, was an example of their concert performances at the time.
One label, the Warner Bros. Records subsidiary Sire Records, eventually signed The Replacements. The band admired the label head Seymour Stein, who had managed the Ramones. The Replacements' first major-label album, Tim, was scheduled to be produced by Westerberg's idol, Alex Chilton, but the sessions fell through; the album was produced by former Ramone Tommy Erdelyi. Upon its release in 1985, Tim garnered rave reviews that equalled those for Let It Be. Though the band was poised for a popular breakthrough, they were unsure about making the leap into the mainstream. As a result, they never let themselves live up to their full potential. The Replacements landed a spot on Saturday Night Live, but they were roaring drunk throughout their performances and Westerberg said "f*ck" on the air. Their concerts had became notorious for such drunken, sloppy behavior. Frequently, the band was barely able to stand up, let alone play, and when they did play, they often didn't finish their songs. The Replacements also refused to make accessible videos -- the video for "Bastards of Young" featured nothing but a stereo system, playing the song -- thereby cutting themselves off from the mass exposure MTV could have granted them.
After the tour for Tim, the Replacements fired Bob Stinson, partly for being unwilling to play the band's "less rocked-out" material, and partly for being too drunk to try. They also fired Jesperson the same year. "It was like being thrown out of a club that you helped start," Jesperson later commented. The Replacements recorded their next album as a trio in Memphis, TN, with former Big Star producer Jim Dickinson. The resulting album, Pleased to Meet Me, was more streamlined than their previous recordings. Again, the reviews were uniformly excellent upon its spring 1987 release, but the band didn't earn many new fans. During the tour for Pleased to Meet Me, guitarist Slim Dunlap filled the vacant lead guitarist spot and he became a full-time member after the tour.
Two years later, the band returned in the spring of 1989 with Don't Tell a Soul, The Replacements' last bid for a mainstream audience. The bandmembers had cleaned up, admitting that their years of drug and alcohol abuse were behind them, and were now willing to play the promotional game. Don't Tell a Soul boasted a polished, radio-ready production and the group shot MTV-friendly videos, beginning with the single "I'll Be You." Initially, the approach worked -- "I'll Be You" became a number one album rock track, crossing over to number 51 on the pop charts. However, Don't Tell a Soul never really took off and failed to establish the band as a major commercial force.
Defeated from the lackluster performance of Don't Tell a Soul, Paul Westerberg planned on recording a solo album, but Sire rejected the idea. Consequently, the next Replacements album, All Shook Down, was a solo Westerberg record in all but name. Recorded with a cast of session musicians as well as the band, All Shook Down was a stripped-down, largely acoustic affair that hinted at the turmoil within the band. Chris Mars left shortly after its fall 1990 release, claiming that Westerberg had assumed control of the band; he would launch a solo career two years later. The Replacements toured in support of All Shook Down, with Steve Foley, formerly of the Minneapolis-based Things Fall Down, as their new drummer. Neither the tour nor the album were successful, and The Replacements quietly disbanded in the summer of 1991.
Tommy Stinson quickly followed his time in The Replacements with the short-lived but fan favorite bands Bash & Pop and Perfect. He has been the bass guitarist for Guns N' Roses since 1998, replacing the original member Duff McKagan. In 2004, he released a solo CD, Village Gorilla Head, followed in 2011 by One Man Mutiny. Dunlap released a solo album in 1993. Bob Stinson died February 15, 1995, from a drug overdose. Westerberg began a solo career slowly, releasing two songs on the Singles ("Dyslexic Heart," "Waiting for Somebody") soundtrack in 1992; he also scored the film. He released his debut solo album, 14 Songs, in the summer of 1993 to mixed reviews. Paul Westerberg's second solo album, Eventually, was released in the spring of 1996.
On April 22, 2008, Rhino released re-mastered deluxe editions of the band's four Twin/Tone albums with rare bonus tracks. On September 24, 2008, Rhino similarly released the four Sire albums as deluxe editions. On October 3, 2012, it was announced that The Replacements had reformed and that Westerberg and Tommy Stinson were in the studio recording an EP containing song cover versions. Titled Songs for Slim, the EP was sold in a 250-copy edition of 10" vinyl and auctioned online to benefit former bandmate Dunlap, who had suffered a stroke. The Replacements played their first shows in 22 years at Riot Fest in Toronto (24–25 August 2013), Chicago (13–15 September) and Denver (21–22 September). Dave Minehan, guitarist/vocalist, and drummer Josh Freese rounded out the line-up for these shows.
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Let It Be looms large among '80s rock albums, generally regarded as one of the greatest records of the decade. So large is its legend and so universal its acclaim that all the praise tends to give the impression that the Replacements' fourth album was designed as a major statement, intended to be something important when its genius, like so many things involving the 'Mats, feels accidental. Compared to other underground landmarks from 1984, Let It Be feels small scale, as it lacks the grand, sprawling ambition of the Minutemen's Double Nickels on the Dime or the dramatic intensity of Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, or if the other side of the Atlantic is taken into equation, the clean sense of purpose of The Smiths. Nothing about Let It Be is clean; it's all a ragged mess, careening wildly from dirty jokes to wounded ballads, from utter throwaways to songs haunting in their power. Unlike other classics, Let It Be needs those throwaways -- that Kiss cover, those songs about Tommy getting his tonsils out and Gary's boner, that rant about phony rock & roll -- to lighten the mood and give the album its breathless pacing, but also because without these asides, the album wouldn't be true to the Replacements, who never separated high and low culture, who celebrated pure junk and reluctantly bared their soul. This blend of bluster and vulnerability is why the Replacements were perhaps the most beloved band of their era, as they captured all the chaos and confusion of coming of age in the midst of Reaganomics, and Let It Be is nothing if not a coming-of-age album, perched precisely between adolescence and adulthood. There's just enough angst and tastelessness to have the album speak to teenagers of all generations and just enough complicated emotion to make this music resonate with listeners long past those awkward years, whether they grew up with this album or not.
All this works because there is an utter lack of affect in Paul Westerberg's songs and unrestrained glee in the Replacements' roar. Sure, Let It Be has moments where the thunder rolls away and Westerberg is alone, playing "Androgynous" on a piano and howling about having to say good night to an answering machine, but they flow naturally from the band's furious rock & roll, particularly because the raw, unsettled "Unsatisfied" acts as a bridge between these two extremes. But if Let It Be was all angst, it wouldn't have captured so many hearts in the '80s, becoming a virtual soundtrack to the decade for so many listeners, or continue to snag in new fans years later. Unlike so many teenage post-punk records, this doesn't dwell on the pain; it ramps up the jokes and, better still, offers a sense of endless possibilities, especially on the opening pair of "I Will Dare" and "Favorite Thing," two songs where it feels as if the world opened up because of these songs. And that sense of thrilling adventure isn't just due to Westerberg; it's due to the 'Mats as a band, who have never sounded as ferocious and determined as they do here. Just a year earlier, they were playing almost everything for laughs on Hootenanny and just a year later a major-label contract helped pull all their sloppiness into focus on Tim, but here Chris Mars and Tommy Stinson's rhythms are breathlessly exciting and Bob Stinson's guitar wails as if nothing could ever go wrong. Of course, plenty went wrong for the Replacements not too much further down the road, but here they were fully alive as a band, living gloriously in the moment, a fleeting moment when anything and everything seems possible, and that moment still bursts to life whenever Let It Be is played.
The Replacements - Let It Be (flac 368mb)
01 I Will Dare 3:11
02 Favorite Things 2:17
03 We're Comin' Out 2:20
04 Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out
1:51
05 Androgynous 3:14
06 Black Diamond 2:36
07 Unsatisfied 3:59
08 Seen Your Video 3:05
09 Gary's Got A Boner 2:25
10 Sixteen Blue 4:21
11 Answering Machine 3:37
Bonus Material
12 20th Century Boy 3:57
13 Perfectly Lethal 3:31
14 Tempatation Eyes 2:30
15 Answering Machine 2:43
16 Heartbeat - It's A Lovebeat 2:56
17 Sixteen Blue 5:09
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Twin/Tone rush-released the cassette-only live album The Shit Hits the Fans before the Replacements left the label for Sire later in 1985. The album is an audience tape of an Oklahoma City concert from 1984 that a Replacements roadie confiscated from a patron that was bootlegging the show and it is presented unvarnished. Consequently, it is, as they like to say, a "warts-and-all" document of a standard Replacements show, capturing the group as they slaughter several of their best-known songs and run-through drunken covers of R.E.M., Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. The tape sounds poor and the performances are, to be charitable, sloppy, but it's great fun for hardcore fans, especially those longing for the 'Mats alcohol-fueled live shows.
The Replacements - Shit Hits the Fans ( flac 312mb)
01 Lawdy Miss Claudy 1:35
02 Sleeping Night Of Jesus 2:21
03 Lovelines 2:54
04 I'll Be There 3:01
05 Sixteen Blue 4:46
06 Can't Hardly Wait 3:26
07 I Will Dare 3:44
08 Hear You Been To College 3:18
09 Saturday Night Special 2:01
10 Iron Man 1:35
11 Misty Mt. Hop 1:03
12 Heartbreaker 0:22
13 Can't Get Enough Of Your Love 2:30
14 Jailbreak 1:18
15 Breakdown 1:42
16 No More The Moon Shines On Loreena 2:00
17 Mirror Go Round 1:05
18 Left Here In The Dark 3:00
19 Takin Care Of Business 2:50
20 I Will Follow
0:35
21 Jumpin Jack Flash 1:08
22 Radio Free Europe 1:54
23 More Fun In The New World 2:12
24 Let It Be 1:18
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Moving to a major label was inevitable for the Replacements: they garnered too much acclaim and attention after Let It Be to stay on Twin/Tone, especially as the label faced the same distribution problems that plagued many indies in the mid-'80s -- plus, the 'Mats' crosstown rivals, Hüsker Dü, made the leap to the big leagues, paving the way for their own hop over to Sire. the Replacements may have left Twin/Tone behind but they weren't quite ready to leave Minneapolis in the dust, choosing to record in their hometown with Tommy Erdelyi -- aka Tommy Ramone -- who gives the 'Mats a big, roomy sound without quite giving them gloss; compared to Let It Be, Tim is polished, but compared to many American underground rock records of the mid-'80s (including those by the Ramones), it's loose and kinetic. The production -- guitars that gained muscle, drums and vocals that gained reverb -- is the biggest surface difference, but there aren't just changes in how the Replacements sound; what they're playing is different too, as Paul Westerberg begins to turn into a self-aware songwriter. A large part of the charm of Let It Be was how it split almost evenly between ragged vulgarity and open-hearted rockers, with Westerberg's best songs betraying a startling, beguiling lack of affect. That's not quite the case with Tim, as Westerberg consciously writes alienation anthems: the rallying cry of "Bastards of Young" and the college radio love letter "Left of the Dial," songs written with a larger audience in mind -- not a popular audience, but a collection of misfits across the nation, who huddled around Westerberg's raw, twitchy loneliness on "Swingin Party" and "Here Comes a Regular," or the urgent and directionless "Hold My Life."
These songs are Westerberg at his confessional peak, but instead of undercutting this ragged emotion or hiding it away, as he did on the Twin/Tone albums, he pairs it with the exuberance of "Kiss Me on the Bus" -- an adolescent cousin to "I Will Dare" -- and channels his smart-ass comments into the terrifically cynical rockabilly shuffle "Waitress in the Sky." All this eats up so much oxygen that there's not much air left for any of the recklessness of the Twin/Tone LPs: there's no stumbling, no throwaway jokes, with even the twin rave-ups of "Dose of Thunder" and "Lay It Down Clown" straightened out, no matter how much Bob Stinson might try to pull them apart, which is perhaps the greatest indication that the Replacements were no longer the band they were just a couple years ago. Some 'Mats fans never got over this change, but something was gained in this loss: the Replacements turned into a deeper band on Tim, one that spoke, sometimes mumbled, to the hearts of losers and outcasts who lived their lives on the fringe. If Let It Be captured the spirit of the Replacements, then Tim captured their soul.
The Replacements - Tim (flac 246mb)
01 Hold My Life
4:18
02 I'll Buy 3:20
03 Kiss Me On The Bus
2:48
04 Dose Of Thunder 2:16
05 Waitress In The Sky 2:02
06 Swingin Party 3:48
07 Bastards Of Young 3:35
08 Lay It Down Clown 2:22
09 Left Of The Dial 3:41
10 Little Mascara 3:33
11 Here Comes A Regular 4:46
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Most of the albums i 'll post made many millions for the music industry and a lot of what i intend to post still gets repackaged and remastered decades later, squeezing the last drop of profit out of bands that for the most part have ceased to exist long ago, although sometimes they get lured out of the mothballs to do a big bucks gig or tour. Now i'm not as naive to post this kinda music for all to see and have deleted, these will be a black box posts, i'm sorry for those on limited bandwidth but for most of you a gamble will get you a quality rip don't like it, deleting is just 2 clicks...That said i will try to accommodate somewhat and produce some cryptic info on the artist and or album.
