Replacements - Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? - The Best of the Replacements
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CD Details
Artist: ReplacementsEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2006-06-13
Music Label: Rhino
Soundtracks:
- Takin A Ride
- Shiftless When Idle
- Kids Don't Follow
- Color Me Impressed
- Within Your Reach
- I Will Dare
- Answering Machine
- Unsatisfied
- Here Comes A Regular
- Kiss Me On The Bus
- Bastards Of Young
- Left Of The Dial
- Alex Chilton
- Skyway
- Can't Hardly Wait
- Achin' To Be
- I'll Be You
- Merry Go Round
- Message To The Boys (New Recording)
- Pool & Dive (New Recording)
Music reviews of Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? - The Best of the Replacements
Music Review: A decent sampler but a vast amount of the "best" was left off
Rating: 3 Stars
A couple of years ago I went to pull out PLEASED TO MEET ME by the Replacements and was stunned to find that it simply wasn't there. Further searching failed to turn it up, so I was off to the local Borders to get a replacement copy (no pun intended). I was looking through their selection (they didn't have it) when a record store clerk came up and asked if he could help. I told him that he couldn't unless he had a copy of the disc in overstock somewhere. He checked and didn't find anything and then asked something that nearly floored me: "Are the Replacements very good?" I was flabbergasted. I have learned to be disappointed with Borders' employees over the years (like the time I asked where they kept Montaigne and the assistant manager of the store confessed she didn't know who he was), but this was amazing even by their standards. I tried to explain that what the media tried to make Nirvana in the nineties, that was in fact what the Replacements were in the eighties. I told him that the Replacements in concert was both the world's greatest and the world's worst band, depending on what night you saw them. I explained that Paul Westerberg was one of the great songwriters in rock and that SPIN magazine, when they did an issue on the spirit of rock and roll around 1990, put Westerberg on the cover as the person who best personified that spirit. At the name of Westerberg he awoke and excitedly said he loved Paul Westerberg and didn't know he had ever been in a band. I then explained if he had loved him before he was going to adore him as soon as he heard what he did with the Replacements.
'Mats fans from the eighties will recall how great these guys were. To the reviewer who expressed disbelief that they never were famous, the fact is that they were. Every indie rock fan in the eighties knew who they were. And they did the impossible: they went from an independent label to a major label and still turned out great music. As great as 1984's LET IT BE was, they followed it by two that were just as good, the weirdly named TIM and more normally named PLEASED TO MEET ME. The album that followed those two, DON'T TELL A SOUL, was perceived as a disappointment, but even then it contained at least four great songs, while ALL SHOOK DOWN, which was very close to a Paul Westerberg solo album, was a huge rebound.
You had to see the 'Mats live to understand them. No great band could be as awful as they could be. If they were drunk or stoned and just didn't care, they could be dreadful. The story is that security personnel at one of their shows learned someone had recorded the concert and grabbed the tape and gave it to the bad. This was supposedly the source tape for the cassette only release on ROIR called THE [Poop] HITS THE FANS. It is nearly unlistenable. On one of their bad nights, they might play only the first verse of songs. Or they would do only renditions of country western tunes. Or perhaps they would work through their Kiss songbook. On the other hand, the very greatest concert that I have ever seen was the Replacements in Chicago in January or February of 1991 at the Aragon, only a few months before they returned to Chicago to break up playing a WXRT Fourth of July show in Grant Park. That winter night they cared. They were straight and played with a passion and energy that I've only rarely seen in a band. They were spectacular. A few days later Bill Wyman wrote in the Chicago Reader (I think he now writes reviews in Los Angeles) that he had seen the Replacements a few dozen times and had never seen them better than that night. The crowd that night was comprised exclusively of students from various Chicago universities, so I think the special nature of the crowd may have made a difference.
So the Replacements have always been a special band to me. So that is why this disc is something of a disappointment to me. Yes, all of the cuts on the disc are at least interesting and most of the obvious cuts are on the disc and the two new cuts, but simply too much got excluded. Even a few cuts that have received airplay were not included, like "We'll Inherit the Earth," "Talent Show," and "All Shook Down." What about "Sixteen Blue" and "Androgynous" from LET IT BE (though thank god they got "Unsatisfied" and "Answering Machine")? Or "The Ledge" or "I Don't Know" or "Sadly Beautiful" or "Someone on the Wheel." So to serve as a true "Best of" this disc would simply have had to have more songs. Probably it needed to be a double CD.
But this at least is superior to the previous best of album, ALL FOR NOTHING/NOTHING FOR ALL. That one did have a lackluster rarities disc, but for legal reasons they had nothing from the Twin Tone period. This disc at least has cuts from all periods of the band's career. It is simply that too much gets left off. People will always quibble about having one or two songs left off, but leaving off eight to ten is just excessive. On the other hand, if one wants an overview but doesn't want to go out and buy a stack of CDs, this just might do. But my first recommendation is not to get this CD, but instead to start by getting the three straight masterpieces they did in the eighties: LET IT BE, TIM, and PLEASED TO MEET ME. Then if you are blown away by what you hear (and you will be) add HOOTENANY from their early period and ALL SHOOK DOWN from the end of their career. Heck, add in DON'T SAY A WORD, which while it isn't a great album, nonetheless contains one of their few hit songs as well as some other gems. But if you are determined to have only one album, this one is better than nothing.
But remember this: these guys are even better than this best of album will show. In fact, until the Pixies showed up, they were probably the great alternative American band of the eighties.
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Description of Don't You Know Who I Think I Was? - The Best of the Replacements
The ragged and glorious alt-rock of The Replacements made them one of the greatest and most iconic American bands of the 1980s, and inspired countless groups to come. Fronted by lead singer, pianist/guitarist, and principal songwriter Paul Westerberg, these heroes of post-punk/pre-grunge rock ?n? roll fused garage band greatness with powerful pop beauty. Fueled by both thrashing energy and a lyrical and emotive sonic flow, The Replacements? kamikaze live shows and richly textured albums made them music legends.Chronicling The Replacements' gloriously tempestuous decade on a single disc ostensibly seems akin to reading Cliff's Notes for the New Testament: No sooner do you grow fond of the protagonist than they've nailed him up. And if that comparison sounds a tad sacrilegious, perhaps you underestimate the Mats' hallowed place in modern rock history--and the hearts of their ardent fans. Yet somehow even this condensed format focuses the songs of Paul Westerberg and playing of bandmates Bob and Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars into a dramatic arc that can't be denied. The initial tracks of this 20-track collection display a band joyously besotted by nascent punk thrash, yet one not so different from the scores of similar bands tearing up local clubs in the '80s.
But by the time of Hootenanny's "Color Me Impressed" and "Within Your Reach," something magical was clearly happening within Westerberg's songwriting and the band at large, even if it was largely inspired by terminal boredom, perpetual discontent, no small amount of alcohol--and an indifference to success that was one of their greatest charms. Within two years they'd produce one of the decade's--and perhaps rock history's--most compelling albums with Let It Be and the indie movement's first grassroots anthem in "Unsatisfied." They followed it up with Tim, a collection where Westerberg seemed able to conjure similar generational marching orders ("Here Comes a Regular," "Bastards of Young," "Left of the Dial") with preternatural ease; enraptured rock critics probably thought harder about his music than he ever did. Though highlighted by such gems as "Alex Chilton," "Skyway" and such pop-smart swan songs as "I'll Be You" and "Merry Go Round," the Mats' third act dissolved into the expected, if equally star-crossed solo career for Westerberg and the tragic death of Bob Stinson, events which can't help but cast a melancholy shadow over the unexpectedly gritty new old stock recordings "Message to the Boys" and "Pool & Dive." --Jerry McCulley
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