MUSIC: I missed the boat on the Replacements

It's like they've been hovering over me for years, and I just never bothered to look up. Had I discovered this band in high school, they would have been the equivalent to Nirvana for me, Paul Westerberg my Kurt Cobain. As I see it now, they were the heirs to the throne occupied by the Clash in the late 70's and through the early 1980's.

The first Replacements album that I heard was Tim, and it blew me away almost immediately. The Goo Goo Dolls later re-made this album, and called it Superstar Car Wash (Back when they were an alright band, in my opinion, but we won't get into that right now.).

Some spectacular tracks from Tim include the anthemic Bastards of Young, the swinging Waitress In The Sky and the adjectivelly challenged Left of the Dial. The album ends with the song Here Comes A Regular, which absolutely reeks of being a "punker's first ballad," although it's really quite charming because of that.

Although the follow up album Pleased to Meet Me was a bit more polished ("JUDAS!"), Westerberg cannot be blamed for showing off his pop-chops on this album. Catchy as all freaking hell, I tells ya. I swear, as soon as anyone hears Can't Hardly Wait, it will be etched in their minds for all time. The rest of the album is certainly not filler either.

The big gap in my Replacements experience is the seminal Let It Be, which I really need to find this summer.

All Shook Down is a pretty good album in it's own right, but is fairly boring compared to their previous achievements (As with Don't Tell A Soul, before that). If you find it for less than $10, get it, but certainly do not pay full price for it.

Another interesting thing to note is that The Replacements have probably been covered almost as often as the Beatles, so here are some standouts that I've heard:

Counting Crows - Unsatisfied (will link later on)
The Weakerthans - Swingin' Party
Jesse Malin - Bastards of Young

This has been another episode of "I Arrived Late To The Party." We hope that you have enjoyed my shame.

MUSIC: St. Robinson's Cadillac Dream

The current blog name was chosen hastily after only a slight bit of research, but I think it really fits with what I'd like to do here. It was chosen because a blog can't be started without a good (or at least a distinguishable (i.e.: not "the cake blog" or "the dogfood blog.")) name, and it's getting late in the evening as of this writing.

The song from which the lyrics were taken is called "St. Robinson and His Cadillac Dream," from an album by Counting Crows called "This Desert Life" (And no, it's not the one with "Mr. Jones" on it.). Here is what the writer, Adam Duritz, has to say about it:

"Thats the one song we had written before we started the album, its the only one, although it was drastically different before. It's of a different depth lyrically cause its really about someone, It's sort of me taking the piss out of myself in a way. It's about a guy with big dreams, which is you know, been what I've always been. But it's about a guy who is so obsessed with his big dreams and like everything he wants out of life, but he cant relate to life on simpler terms, all he can think of is in terms of his big dreams, and it makes it so he can't deal with day to day communication with people, specifically this one person. It's a song about how at some point this guy is looking back at him life and hes seeing a point where two peoples lives spun together and then for what ever reason they spun apart.." [Thanks to Anna for the quote.]

But no, I'm not St. Robinson, and I'm not trying to make some kind of grand statement. I do like the bit about relating to people on simple terms, and I think everyone has something in their lives or in their minds that keeps them from completely connecting to others while out there in the shadow of the modern machine. Isn't that what it's all about though, right? We're all trying to connect. That's why we have music.

Regardless of whether or not the Crows are hot shit among the college crowd has yet to be fully explored by me. But who the hell cares, right? It's my damn weblog, I'll do what I want. Since you can't hear music through someone else's ears, there are very few times when you can discuss music with someone and know exactly what they are talking about, and that I suppose it is these differences that form individual tastes.

I'm only here to make an argument for mine, using words and (hopefully soon) sounds. Hell, maybe even other people's words from time to time.