Want more Rolling Stone? £11.19. . Original guitarist Bob Stinson was ousted from the band when it was time to record Pleased to Meet Me. Why are you sabotaging your own songs?”. With rare recordings featuring guitarist Bob Stinson and previously unreleased songs, the collection shines new light on the beloved indie-rock band’s career turning point. The Beatles could afford the bad press because they had built up tons of goodwill; The Replacements couldn’t afford the controversy. and "Shooting Dirty Pool" practically sound like Exile on Main Street at 78 rpm. When the Yankee Clipper was asked why he consistently played so hard, he replied, “There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time. A: We Are Devo! disclaimer: I received an advanced copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for review consideration. ( Log Out / After he sees the girl walking high up in the Skyway, he turns his attention to his appearance: “In my stupid hat and gloves . The feeling isn’t so much discomfort as “what-the-hell, it-is-what-it-is, this-far-and-no-further.”. The opening track manages to affirm their disdain for commercialism and their rejection of the DiMaggio Doctrine while confirming their ability to dish out nasty, bad-ass rock ‘n’ roll without Bob Stinson lending a hand. As it turns out, this was the last time they could still shoot for the stars and seem like their scrappy selves and, in many ways, it was the last true Replacements album. is London.” Feel the weightiness of that voice of utter authority and you’ll begin to grasp the significance I am attempting to attach to The Replacements’ album cover. But they were never going to be Cheap Trick. Pleased to Meet Me starts off strong with "I.O.U", a song that frequently exposes the Replacements' deep roots in classic rock. What he couldn’t do was fake it. The equally raucous “I Don’t Know,” on Pleased to Meet Me, the Replacements’ fifth full-length platter, is Westerberg’s latest ode to his own uncertainty. ( Log Out / . I don’t know what they were thinking with “Never Mind,” but it sounds like they weren’t. Now you can finally hear how they tried and where they succeeded. Musically, it’s easily the tightest song on the album, featuring an exceptionally sensitive and emotionally expansive performance from Westerberg; lyrically, Westerberg does a marvelous job by having his suicidal narrator comment on the indifference that surrounds him while standing on the ledge (“Wind blows cold from the west/I smell coffee, I smell doughnuts for the press”) as opposed to reciting a long litany of grievances or delving into excessive self-pity. “I’m not giving you 100 percent night after night,” replied Westerberg. The Replacements – Classic Music Review – Pleased to Meet Me. Getting back to “Nightclub Jitters,” I love how the song immediately transports you to a dark and smoky joint that may have a neon sign out front advertising the place as a “cocktail lounge,” but the two or three burned-out letters tell you that it’s a dive bar way past its prime. This new box set shows how the album could have been even better. Oh by the way, I saw the Replacements in 1991, five months before they called it quits, and I remember that bassline from “Alex Chilton” sticking in my head for days afterwards. Change ). . I’ve often wondered whether the Replacements could have been not only more popular but also a better band if they had been more willing to compromise. The Replacements Pleased To Meet Me. Pleased to Meet Me was the sound of the Replacements trying for once. For some necessary clarification, when I use the term classic rock I don't mean the Eagles or the Rolling Stones or whatever the media is calling "classic" now. Westerberg’s vocal is appropriately weary and tinted with heartache, completely free of any hints of sardonic compromise. Uh, oh. You know that he’s on his game in the second line of the song when he elongates the completely unimportant word “right” in the phrase, “Step right up son” with gravelly delight. Pleased to Meet Me … Independent music reviewer on altrockchick.com and 50thirdand3rd.com. Speaking of degrees of shame, Westerberg recorded this alone, early in the morning before his mates had recovered from the nightly bender, because he didn’t want them to see him as soft. Even the demos they cut as a three-piece show how playful they could be; the two versions of Westerberg’s anti-TV screed “Kick It In” demonstrate how they could give a song a facelift on a whim, playing it straight on the first demo and adding bongos and more guitar textures to the second. We want to hear from you! Another interesting comment was from the author of the book, but was also backed up by Tommy Stinson. Westerberg’s vocal starts out as if someone had nudged him out of a snooze, and remains a low-volume, low-energy effort throughout. It also comes with a 12" x 12" hardcover book with rare photos and new notes by Bob Mehr, author of Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements. Westerberg hated the strings as much as I do, confirming my opinion of him as a man with excellent taste in music. Pleased to Meet Me should have ended with “Skyway,” but instead we get the producer-dominated “Can’t Hardly Wait.” This not-much-of-a-song had been around for a while, but The Replacements never found a satisfying arrangement. In spite of some über-Eighties, ultra-reverberated production (which still sounds better than their next album, Don’t Tell a Soul), the record was the band’s last moment of greatness. " Pleased to Meet Me is the finest record The Replacements ever made," writes The Current's David Campbell. If you can find any of his Mud Boy and the Neutrons recordings, I hope you’ll agree. It was always too cold inside. Up in the skyway. Over in the far corner you see a worse-for-the-wear Westerberg at the upright piano, the slop from a glass of bourbon on the rocks barely glistening in the dim pink spotlight shining on the dust-encrusted piano top. The arrangement is one of blessed simplicity: acoustic guitar enhanced with echoing reverb and just a touch of vibraphone. You write these amazing songs. They sing “I’m in love. Which the world sorely needs to be. The Replacements – Pleased To Meet Me Label: Sire – R2 643412 / 60349784647, Rhino Records (2) – R2 643412 / 60349784647 It’s a “wow” moment guaranteed to get you out of your seat, shake your fanny and clap like there’s no tomorrow. For better AND for worse. “Valentine” was a song pulled out of the reject pile at the last minute because Warner wanted another track to comply with the running time paradigms of the day, and the less-than-enthusiastic performance reflects that. . But as he spit out the words again to Rieger, it went far deeper. Three of those were played in clubs, so they don’t have horns, either. Nelson Rockefeller died “of an apparent heart attack.” Now that is fake news. "It lands in that sweet spot where technology, team, craft, chops, guts, attitude, ideas, creativity and some major label money all intersected at the … I run into an inherent bias in evaluating “Red, Red Wine,” as I have been a wine snob since the age of twelve when my mother began what proved to be a lengthy and thorough oenological education, with close attention paid to the impact of a given terroir on the character of the finished product. On the whole, I think Jim Dickinson’s contributions to music and production have made the world a better place. I bought it years ago and forgot about it. Every Replacements record is extraordinary in its way, but none exemplifies their garbage-to-grandeur alchemy like Pleased To Meet Me, which rocks like early Kinks, swaggers like T. … When you’ve grown up in a certain place and have become thoroughly familiar with the sights, you tend to see patterns instead of details. Yeah, it’s a pretty good song when the Mats just let it flail. “I just can’t fuckin’ mean it every night.”, Westerberg viewed performing, as he did everything, in stark black-and-white terms. They were contrarians right from the start. “Shooting Dirty Pool” is just Westerberg bitching about a no-account promoter who bad-mouthed The ‘Mats on college radio after yet another crappy concert. While you do hear a few sops to commercial considerations on Pleased to Meet Me, most of those were added by Dickinson post-production. the place I’d catch my ride most everyday Well, that would be my plan until the end of the first bridge when Prince Gabe makes his entrance. Amazon.com. Later in the chapter covering Pleased to Meet Me, producer Jim Dickinson recalled that “When we started, ‘art’ was a word he wouldn’t let me use . In many ways Pleased to Meet Me is the most mature of the Replacements albums; they're no longer the drunk, immature kids of their early records (instead they're just drunk), nor do the songs contain the youthful exuberance that Let It Be and Tim held. There wasn’t a damn thing I could do or say Audio CD. In Pleased to Meet Me, Bill Sullivan sets out to explain what makes us, well, us. What takes the song to another level is the fade, where Westerberg repeats the line “I’m in love. In “Skyway,” Paul Westerberg positions himself on a one-way street below the Skyway, “the place where I’d catch my ride most every day.” His wait coincides with the schedule of a woman who uses the Skyway regularly to get to wherever she’s going, most likely to work. The Associated Press reported that Kirby died after he had “collapsed at home,” which sounds like journo-speak for dying in the middle of a glorious ejaculation. The cover image of The Replacements' 5th studio collection is a telling one: PLEASED TO MEET ME has one foot in the door and the other one in the gutter, with the spirit of the Minneapolis band's punk roots given a newfound polish and a willingness to explore other genres. (Mehr).” Though the background “singers” are as sloppy as a poorly aimed-ejaculation, Paul Westerberg is on full-throated fire, a condition most apparent when the voices of his bandmates disappear on the chorus: One foot in the door, the other one in the gutter https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the-replacements/pleased-to-meet-me Eight of the tracks feature some of Stinson’s last recordings with the band, and his whiplash snarls on “I.O.U.,” rockabilly shredding “Time Is Killing Us,” and tasteful accents on “Valentine” show what the album could have been. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. Gospel organ ran through the original mix of “Valentine.” It sounds like somebody played a little mandolin in “Alex Chilton” at some point. Then again, the Replacements don't make sense as a success story, so the failure of the gleaming, glistening Pleased to Meet Me winds up making its polish kind of heart-rending. Jim Dickinson took over and added horns in all the wrong places and (gasp) strings to a song that simply couldn’t handle their weightiness. Essentially, Westerberg poses a series of questions to which his bandmates usually respond with “I don’t know.” An amateur detective would put two and two together and conclude that the opening laughter combined with poorly-articulated responses indicates that the boys were probably shit-faced drunk at the time, a daily reality that Dickinson learned to work with. Music Reviews: Pleased to Meet Me (Deluxe Edition) by The Replacements released in 2020 via Rhino. “I Don’t Know” definitely needed something to ground the drunken exuberance and Dickinson made the right call when he brought in future Rock Hall of Famer Steve Douglas on baritone sax. The key to interpreting the song lies in what appears to be a throwaway line in the first verse. 342 Comments. Roscoe. It was noted that Replacements fans are not like the Replacements, and they never were. ... of that voice of utter authority and you’ll begin to grasp the significance I am attempting to attach to The Replacements’ album cover. Lawmakers Promise Investigation, Firings of Capitol Police Following Insurrection, The Attempted Coup at the Capitol Proves This Is the United States of QAnon, Joe Scarborough Drops F-Bomb on MSNBC, Calls for Arrest of Donald Trump After Capitol Raid, Twitter Takes Bold Action Against President Who Can’t Hurt It Anymore, John Fogerty Debuts New Gospel-Flavored Protest Song to See Trump Off, The Best Albums of December 2020: Paul McCartney, Taylor Swift and More. Rarely in the annals of music history has an album cover said so much. For years I pretended I wasn’t. Note that this is a fantasy, not a confession: I was only five years old when Prince Gabe left in all his glory, so don’t try to pin his collapse on me. The latest in Rhino’s years-long reissue campaign of the Replacements’ discography, Pleased to Meet Me lacks the revelatory quality of some other releases. ... but come on. James Brown & The Famous Flames – Live at the Apollo, Update on Life, International Relations and the American Boycott, Book Review: Sleeping with Patty Hearst by Mary Lambeth Moore, Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King - Classic Music Review, Fleetwood Mac - Future Games - Classic Music Review, The Kinks - Face to Face - Classic Music Review, Blur - The Great Escape - Classic Music Review (Britpop Series), The Kinks - Come Dancing - Classic Music Review, Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours - Classic Music Review. And then they’d be too drunk, and they’d get useless. Figuring that she would never lower herself to walk the streets, he decides to take the elevator up to the Skyway: Oh, then one day, I saw you walkin’ down that little one-way For that reason alone, Minneapolis wins my vote as the most thoughtful and considerate city in the USA. Released in 1987 by Sire Records, Pleased To Meet Me is the only album recorded by the band as a trio, after original guitarist Bob Stinson acrimoniously left the band. Touch, adding a bit of sweetness to balance the power chord attack without softening.. To follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email that reality without embracing and!: Pleased to Meet Me, Bill Sullivan sets out to gallery owners, to! Now you can also be found on my iTunes alone to commercial on! The ultimate fool ’ s what he wanted out of the cover think... My vote as the anti-Joe DiMaggio of vibraphone album Minneapolis ’ the Replacements trying for once larded part of Crimson! 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