RhoDeo 1403 Aetix

Hello, 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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Part of the Replacements' appeal always was that they didn't quite fit into any tidy category and nowhere was that truer than on their 1981 debut, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash. Falling over themselves to fit into the Minneapolis hardcore scene, the 'Mats played fast and loose, which was part of the problem -- they were too loose, lacking the discipline to fit within hardcore, which even in '81 was adhering to the loud-fast rules that would later morph into straight-edge. Then again, that was a common problem in the Twin Cities, as Hüsker Dü also were too big and blustery to be a standard hardcore band, but where the Huskers traded in violence and fury at this early stage, the Replacements wallowed in cheap thrills. Danger still pulsated in their music, but the group didn't inflict emotional damage: they were a party spinning out of control, getting sloppier with every beer swilled. The messiness on Sorry Ma is hardly confined to the cheap, thin recording or the band's playing -- they sound as if they're stumbling upon each other as they fumble for the next chord -- but how the songs pile up one after another, most not managing to get close to the two-minute mark. Such brevity could be dubbed as hardcore, but apart from the volume and speed, this doesn't feel like hardcore: there's too much beer and boogie for that. Then, there's also the fact that the Replacements reveled in mid-American junk culture, with Paul Westerberg boasting that he'd bought himself a headache the very year that Black Flag sneered that they had nothing better to do then having a bottle of brew as they watched the TV. Neither did the Replacements, but they sang about this with no disdain, as they enjoyed being "Shiftless When Idle," as one of the best songs here called it. This could be called defiant if it seemed like the 'Mats were raging against anything besides garden-variety suburban troubles, as there's nothing that attacks other punkers (quite the opposite; there are love letters to Johnny Thunders and Hüsker Dü), and even when Westerberg is chronicling Midwestern ennui, there's a sense of affection to his laments, as if he loves the place and loves acting like an angry young crank. This strain of premature curmudgeonly humor is undercut by the boundless energy of the band, so happy to make noise they don't care if they're recycling old-time rock & roll riffs that are closer to amped-up Rockpile than the Ramones, as there's more swing to the rhythms than that -- swing that careens wildly and madly, but swings all the same. And that's what made the Replacements seem so different with their debut -- they didn't fit anywhere within American punk, but there's no defiance here; there's a celebration of who and what they are that's genuinely, infectiously guileless. It may not quite sound like any other American punk record but Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash is one of the best LPs the entire scene produced in the early '80s.

The Replacements - Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash  (flac 429mb)

01 Takin A Ride 2:23
02 Careless 1:08
03 Customer 1:29
04 Hangin Downtown 2:06
05 Kick Your Door Down 3:11
06 Otto 2:09
07 I Bought A Headache 2:25
08 Rattlesnake 1:47
09 I Hate Music 1:50
10 Johnny's Gonna Die 3:32
11 Shiftless When Idle 2:18
12 More Cigarettes 1:19
13 Don't Ask Why 1:57
14 Something To Dü 1:41
15 I'm In Trouble 2:10
16 Love You Till Friday 1:53
17 Shutup 1:23
18 Raised In The City 1:57
Bonus Material
19 Raised In The City (Demo) 2:17
20 Shutup (Demo) 1:40
21 Don't Turn Me Down (Demo) 1:55
22 Shape Up (Demo) 2:12
23 You Ain't Gotta Dance (Demo) 2:24
24 Get On The Stick (Studio Demo) 1:39
25 Oh Baby (Studio Demo) 1:18
26 Like You (Outtake) 1:45
27 Get Lost (Outtake) 2:28
28 A Toe Needs A Shoe (Outtake) 2:09
29 Customer (Alternate Take) 1:33
30 Basement Jam (Rehearsal) 3:33
31 If Only You Were Lonely 2:54

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Almost as if they were aware that Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash was masquerading as a hardcore album, the Replacements designed their second record as a mean, lean, nasty, brutish affair, the opposite of the mirthfully messy Sorry Ma. Stink wasn't even a full-fledged album -- at eight tracks, it was labeled a mini-LP, maybe just a bit longer than an EP, but it was just scraping by at 14 minutes regardless of what label it wore. So, it was tighter than Sorry Ma but that wasn't the only way Stink seemed more like a hardcore record: the band approximated a hardcore rave-up at the end of the white blooze parody "White and Lazy," and Paul Westerberg's songs bristled with anger against all manner of middle-class irritants, as he spit vitriol at his "God Damn Job" and told school to go f*ck itself. Such a sudden burst of anger could almost seem parodic, especially with such snide jokes as the Frère Jacques chorus of "Gimme Noise," if the Replacements didn't sound so lethal: they're hard and merciless, never stopping for air. This is where the brevity of Stink is in its favor -- not that it would be too much to take if it were longer, but at such a brief length this dose of thunder is positively addictive. And only when it starts to roll away does it sink in that Westerberg wrote his first genuine anthem with the great "Kids Don't Follow."

The Replacements - Stink  (flac 179mb)

01 Kids Don't Follow 2:18
02 Fuck School 1:25
03 Stuck In The Middle 1:46
04 God Damn Job 1:16
05 White And Lazy 2:06
06 Dope Smokin Moron 1:31
07 Go 2:28
08 Gimme Noise 1:35
Bonus Material
09 Staples Her Stomach 1:28
10 Hey, Good Lookin' 1:48
11 (We're Gonna) Rock Around The Clock (Outtake) 3:01
12 You're Getting Married (Solo Home Demo) 4:35

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Hootenanny is the place where the Replacements began to branch out from the breakneck punk that characterized their first two records -- which isn't quite the same thing as growing up, however. The brilliant thing about Hootenanny is that it teeters at the brink of maturity but never makes the dive into that deep pool. Paul Westerberg nevertheless dips a toe into those murky waters with "Color Me Impressed," as good an angst-ridden rocker as he would ever write, and the heartbroken "Within Your Reach," which presented a break from the Replacements' past in its slower tempo, driven by a stiff yet sad drum loop, and its vulnerability. Not long after this, Westerberg's vulnerability would become central to the 'Mats, although here he's keeping it way in check, but Hootenanny has something better to offer than a collection of soul-searching ballads: it offers the manic, reckless spirit so key to the Replacements' legend. All the myths of the Replacements at their peak speak to how it seemed like anything could happen at one of their shows, how Bob Stinson could blow out his amplifiers, how Westerberg would stumble through impromptu kitsch covers, how it could seem like the band would never make it to the end of the show. Well, Hootenanny is the only record of theirs where it seems like they may not make it to the end of the album, so ragged and reckless it is. It lurches to life with the folk piss-take "Hootenanny" before spinning out of control with "Run It," a piece of faux-core harder and funnier than anything on Stink. Hootenanny continues to bounce from extreme to extreme, stopping for a Beatles parody on "Mr. Whirly" and the instrumental "Buck Hill" before Westerberg reads out personal ads on "Lovelines." Almost all of the album's 12 songs could be seen as slight on their own merits, but the whole is greater than its individual parts, not just in how it is a breathless good time, but how this album offers a messy break from American punk traditions, ushering in an era of irony and self-deprecation that came to define much of American underground rock in the next decade. Nowhere is the Replacements' influence clearer than on Hootenanny, and although they made better records, no other one captures what the band was all about better than this.

The Replacements - Hootenanny  ( flac 335mb)

01 Hootenanny 1:52
02 Run It 1:12
03 Color Me Impressed 2:27
04 Willpower 4:20
05 Take Me Down To The Hospital 3:47
06 Mr. Whirly 1:58
07 Within Your Reach 4:25
08 Buck Hill 2:10
09 Lovelines 2:01
10 You Lose 1:42
11 Hayday 2:07
12 Treatment Bound 3:30
Bonus Material
13 Lookin' For Ya 1:57
14 Junior's Got A Gun (Outtake - Rough Mix) 2:08
15 Ain't No Crime (Outtake) 1:15
16 Johnny Fast (Outtake - Rough Mix) 2:28
17 Treatment Bound (Alternate Version) 3:16
18 Lovelines (Alternate Vocal) 2:05
19 Bad Worker (Solo Home Demo) 4:15

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