See, here’s what I like about writing this column. Some weeks I give you a song you haven’t heard or a factoid about a band that you didn’t know. Other weeks you guys give me information I don’t know and turn me on to music that’s missing from my life. Of course that happened last week with the Replacements chatter in the comments.
So far I’ve been able to get to two of their albums. I know you guys recommended I start with Tim (1985), but I haven’t been able to hit that one yet. I have, however, listened to Let It Be (’84) and Pleased to Meet Me (’87), with pleasing results.
I went with Let It Be first and thought it was decent, but it doesn’t flow very well at all. I dug “Favorite Thing” and the cover of Kiss’s “Black Diamond” the most.
Then I moved to Pleased to Meet Me, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The first three tracks — “I.O.U.,” “Alex Chilton,” and “I Don’t Know” — are killer, with the latter being my favorite of the three. Pleased certainly feels more like an album than Let It Be, and based on just those two records I can pretty much tell I’m going to like the major-label-era Replacements the most.
Either way, both records were very much worth my time, and I will listen to Tim soon, so thanks to everyone for the recommendations and for turning me on to a band I never would’ve listened to otherwise. That’s part of what this series is all about.
Here’s our third week of artists whose names begin with the letter R, as we continue to look at songs that charted no higher than #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the 1980s.
