In an effort to explore the roots of my music geekdom lets get in the way back machine and visit 1990.
When I was 16 I inherited a box of records from my uncle Bob, Mostly 70's comedy and Dylan records although the inclusion of the nadir of Dylan's career, the self titled mess of half finished ideas and Self Portrait outtakes qualified as both. Soon afterwards I started picking up vinyl in used records stores and among the first things I found was The Replacements "Stink", from the original Twin-Tone pressing, pristinely wrapped in plastic and cheap at $5.00. I took it home that day along with some other records that have been lost to various moves through the years.
It was 1990 and the Replacements hadn't broken up yet. Thanks to time spent in a bad girls basements sharing cigarettes and 40's of malt liquor I was well versed in their stuff, especially Hootenanny, and Let it Be which were my favorites. I wasn't familiar with this record, with it's black and white cover that looked like it was created with a rubber stamp and copy machine but I bought it anyway.
I was a pretty astute music fan for a kid and I knew that there was something more than what was on the radio or on the still in it's early stages MTV. It just took me a while to find out what it was. If I didn't believe that my heart and soul was firmly entrenched in raucous rock and roll before I played that record, I believed it afterwards. Stink out did the Replacement's stuff I knew already as well as almost everything I had heard from anyone up till then (I say almost because the Pixies had already hit my teenage radar by then). Remember, this was a pre Nirvana world we were living in so the garage style, heartfelt, trashy rock was harder to find even if Johnny Thunders was still hanging on by a thread somewhere.
The record started with the sound of the Minneapolis police breaking up a party and 14 minutes and a few seconds later it ended in a fury of noise. Somewhere in between I realized that this was the sound of my heart. Yeah, 8 songs in 14 minutes and change, that's not even time enough to be famous.
Here's a live version of "Dope Smoking Moron" as well as the unreleased "Skip It" recorded in 1981 (My god they are impossibly young in this clip):
3 comments:
I look forward to watching the video when I'm not at work. Love The Replacements, even though I'm not as well-versed in their catalog as you are. One of my fondest college memories was driving to Syracuse from Ithaca...on a school night! (big deal for me)...to see them play in a tiny club. Must've been '88 or '89. So, so cool.
if you're going to repost stuff from your old blog (where you were reposting stuff A LOT) - why bother starting a new one if you are going to keep reposting?
Good question. I'm going over some old ground in order to set some of the groundwork for how my relationship with music has changed. Keep in mind that not everyone reading this has read the old blog. There will be new stuff in the future.
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