Pop notes

Replacements’ Live at Maxwell’s show is ‘officially’ released on 2 CDs

Album cover for The Replacements' "For Sale: Live at Maxwell’s 1986"
Album cover for The Replacements' "For Sale: Live at Maxwell’s 1986"

The Replacements -- singer-guitarist Paul Westerberg, guitarist Bob Stinson, bassist Tommy Stinson (Bob's little bro) and drummer Chris Mars -- were on a brief East Coast tour when they rolled into the Hoboken, N.J., club Maxwell's on Feb. 4, 1986, for a raucous set that was taped for what was supposed to be the band's first live album for its new label, Sire.

It took a little over three decades, and the beloved band had been broken up for the majority of that time, but the oft-bootlegged show finally has an official release: The two-CD For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986 (Rhino, rated A+). The wait was totally worth it. And get this -- two weeks after its release, the album hit No. 1 on Billboard's vinyl record sales charts. Surely the first time the phrases "No. 1," "sales charts" and "The Replacements" have ever appeared in the same sentence. These are indeed strange times.

This is sloppy rock 'n' roll in all its boozy, ragged glory, complete with bum notes, false starts and moments of genuine transcendence. It is, in other words, quintessential Replacements, the Minneapolis band that helped define a certain strain of insouciant and raw American punk rock in the '80s and balanced chaotic, drunken gigs with poetic vulnerability, loud guitars and smart aleck charm.

"Murder," Westerberg screams inexplicably in lieu of the chorus on the opener, "Hayday," a stone-cold classic from the band's third album, Hootenanny. An in-joke among band members, shouts of "murder" show up a few other times in the first part of the two-CD, 29-song set. As the evening progresses, the Replacements rip through "Color Me Impressed" and "Dose of Thunder" before crashing back to earth about a minute into a cover of Sweet's "Fox on the Run." They then right the ship, mostly, for runs through "Hold My Life" and "I Will Dare."

"Unsatisfied," the bruised ballad from the band's fourth album from 1983, Let It Be, is a desperate plea by Westerberg as the band pushes him forward before staggering and finally collapsing at the finish. The then-unreleased "Can't Hardly Wait," which would show up in a different form on the 1987 album Pleased to Meet Me, rocks like a monster. Westerberg stumbles through the frayed, country-inflected "If Only You Were Lonely" and the group sounds like one big, pogo-ing unit on the rave-ups "Otto" and "Take Me Down to the Hospital." "Answering Machine," the Westerberg-only track from Let It Be, gets a full band arrangement here, propelling its bitter heartache into a punk rager.

Covers of T. Rex's "Baby Strange," The Beatles' "Nowhere Man," KISS' "Black Diamond" and Vanity Fare's "Hitchin' a Ride" are done fairly straight, while the show comes to a close with a pair of tracks from the EP Stink.

The group wanders through the evening sans set list, talking among themselves and taking suggestions from the audience between songs (turn it up as the tunes end to hear the banter, and credit to the guy in the audience who tries to keep "Left of the Dial" afloat after the band abruptly gives up before the final chorus).

Mars and Tommy Stinson are a rollicking rhythm section; Westerberg's voice is cracked, worn and defiant while notes fly from Bob Stinson's guitar like a truckload of cheap fireworks all going off at once (the album also serves as a tribute to the hard-living elder Stinson, who was pushed out of the band not long after this show and who died of organ failure in 1995).

"You can burn this tape," Westerberg ad libs during "Waitress in the Sky." Good thing they didn't.

BASHING AND POPPING

This long-awaited live document is a nice companion piece to another recently unearthed, Replacements-linked release. Friday Night Is Killing Me (Omnivore, rated A+), the fantastic 1993 debut album from Bash & Pop, Tommy Stinson's short-lived, post-Replacements band, got a remastered, re-released revisiting last month with a second disc of B-sides, demos and rarities to boot.

The younger Stinson was just 12 years old when The Replacements started, and dropped out of high school to go on tour, growing up in cramped clubs, ratty vans and recording studios. He picked up a few tricks from songwriting savant Westerberg, and was primed to record his own brand of rowdy power pop tinted with woozy, closing-time profundities when his former band shut down.

The original album is an overlooked gem that proved Stinson knew his way around a catchy melody and insightful lyrics that somehow still sounded tossed off. The title cut, the acoustic-based "Tiny Pieces," the rueful raver "Never Aim to Please" and the nostalgic "First Steps" are just a few of the highlights, while the 18-track bonus disc includes many of the album's tracks in embryonic form, recorded in Stinson's Minneapolis attic.

And speaking of bonuses, For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986 and the Bash & Pop reissue feature insightful liner notes from Replacements biographer Bob Mehr.

photo

Album cover for Bash & Pop's "Friday Night Is Killing Me"

Style on 10/29/2017

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