We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Let it Be
Year: 1984
. . .
How do you say “I’m lonely” to an answering machine?
“Answering Machine” just might be the greatest song Paul Westerberg has ever written.
And it’s my official All-Time Favorite Song. But, how do you say a song, any song, is your all-time favorite song?
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1869: The Replacements – “Answering Machine”
Album: Let It Be
Year: 1984
. . .
Your age is the hardest age
Out of all of the major songs on Let It Be, the hardest one for me to get into was “Sixteen Blue.” Sometimes it just happens that way: you know on every objective level that a song is great, but it just doesn’t resonate with you.
Maybe because I was 21, and didn’t want to try to relate to teenagers, having just escaped being one for what felt like an eternity, and so it didn’t quite resonate with me the same way that the more adult themes “I Will Dare” or “Unsatisfied” or, heh, “Answering Machine” did.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1868: The Replacements – “Sixteen Blue”
Album: Let It Be
Year: 1984
. . .
We don’t wanna know
April 19, 1985.
That was the first time I saw the Replacements. At the Star Palace in Fresno, CA, a 500-seat club that our college radio station, KFSR, managed to sell out for a band based 2000 miles away that only we played. There were a lot of other things going on that day: the same radio station was choosing a new station manager, and the band that would eventually become The Miss Alans — who just released their first album in nearly a quarter-century — was playing their first gig ever that night.
But the most important thing to me: I was getting to interview Paul Westerberg. Live, on the air, in the KFSR studio. Just him, answering my questions (with, of course, a bunch of people hanging around the station.)
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1867: The Replacements – “Seen Your Video”
Album: Let It Be
Year: 1984
. . .
I’m so, I’m so unsatisfied
“Unsatisfied” just might be the greatest song Paul Westerberg has ever written.
Shit, it might just be the greatest song anybody’s ever written. And yet, it’s not even my favorite song on Let It Be.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1866: The Replacements – “Unsatisfied”
Album: Let It Be
Year: 1984
. . .
Mirror image / see no damage / see no evil at all
“Androgynous” just might be the greatest song Paul Westerberg has ever written.
Let it Be was the album where I started thinking in terms of Replacements albums having “major” songs and “minor” songs. In general, the “major” songs were usually — but not always — grand statements where he somehow universalized the personal. The minor songs were the jokey ones, the pisstakes, the ones delivered with a wink. Or, the major songs could be the ones I loved more.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1865: The Replacements – “Androgynous”
Album: Let it Be
Year: 1984
. . .
One more chance to get it half right
In December of 1984, a couple of months after Let it Be came out, the Village Voice published an instantly infamous cover story — pretty much forever known as “The R.J. Smith story” — which described the tumultuous chaos (or chaotic tumult) that surrounded the ‘Mats. And by “surrounded,” I, of course, mean “created by.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1864: The Replacements – “We’re Coming Out”
Album: Let It Be
Year: 1984
. . .
Bar nothing!
On its way to becoming quite possibly the greatest rock ‘n’ roll album ever recorded, Let It Be did a tricky thing: after the opening bounce of “I Will Dare,” — cos you gotta lead with the hit single — it frontloaded nearly all of its punk songs, before giving away to the experiments, covers and ballads that dominated the rest of the record.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1863: The Replacements – “Favorite Thing”
Album: Let it Be
Year: 1984
. . .
How smart are you? How dumb am I?
“I Will Dare” might just be the greatest song Paul Westerberg has ever written.
And so, in the summer of 1984, this single just arrived at KFSR. A brand-new 12″ 45-RPM vinyl record from The Replacements, that scruffy sloppy garage band that had made one of my favorite records of the previous year. Maybe I knew that “I Will Dare” was coming, maybe I didn’t. Maybe I knew that some guy named “Pete Buck” played the guitar solo before I read it on the jacket, maybe I didn’t. I don’t remember any of that.
But what I do remember is knowing that it was a fucking classic before Paul Westerberg even opened his mouth.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1862: The Replacements – “I Will Dare”
Album: Let it Be
Year: 1969
So first off, of course I’m aware that Let it Be didn’t come out until 1970, but this performance of this song was from 1969, and I’m trying to go with performance dates over release dates if things were shelved for any time.
Anyways, I first saw the film of Let it Be way back in either the late 1970s or early 1980s on HBO at my grandparents house in Bakersfield. It was weird and depressing – at that time, I was still trying to sort out The Beatles as a story with a beginning, middle and end as opposed to the overwhelming cultural presence with which I’d grown up – but two things stuck out in the middle of all of the fighting and anger: the snippet of “Dig it” and the entire rooftop performance of this song.
“I’ve Got a Feeling” is majestic and melancholy at the same time, and it has always struck me as more honest and real than anything else going on in their “Get Back” project. After all, in a weird way, Paul & John are formally showing just how much their paths have diverged by singing completely different songs at the same time.
BTW, it’s goddamn shame that the film of Let it Be isn’t commercially available in any way, shape and form 45 years after it was filmed. It might not be as uplifting as A Hard Day’s Night, but it’s equally as important as a way to understand The Beatles. Maybe more so.
It’s almost as if the gatekeepers of The Beatles legend would prefer to keep them as overwhelming cultural presence as opposed to a story with a beginning, middle and end. Which is a shame, and extends – of course – to not being able to embed a proper clip of this song.
Fan-made video for “I’ve Got a Feeling”
My Certain Songs Playlist on Spotify
(Twin/Tone)
Some records hit me hard, then lose their impact after repeated listenings. Then there are other records that take awhile to kick in, but when they do, it’s like being socked in the head.
I wasn’t too sure about The Replacements’ third album, Let it Be, at first, but suddenly I realized that it was becoming an obsession with me. There is as much diversity, humor and just plain rock ‘n’ roll fun on Let it Be than on any record I’ve heard since The Clash’s London Calling.