FAVOURITE DISC

BRIAN LILLIE 

LET IT BE

The Replacements

(Twin Tone Records)

Then, of course, I discovered Dylan that summer and by tenth grade, a mere four years later, found myself being virtually mesmerized by everything I heard coming from radios and record players and grocery store speakers. Surprising how powerful it can be to really LISTEN to the Beatles or the Stones or Otis Redding or Springsteen or Joni Mitchell or Van Morrison or Hendrix for the first time! It was like Dorothy's much vaunted arrival into Technicolor, and it wasn't long before everything took a backseat to music, and to finding out everything I could about it. I honestly don't remember doing homework in high school, though I'm sure I must have. All I remember is records, practicing guitar, and reading every single music magazine I could get my hands on.

Then, after a few years of that, just as it seemed there could be no more surprises to find, no more Elvis Costellos or Kate Bushes or REMs to discover and go bonkers over, I bought an album that would forever change music for me. It was called "Let It Be", by a band out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, called The Replacements.

It was unlike anything I had ever heard up to that point, yet not at all alien sounding at the same time. A blast of rock and roll, somehow played both loose and scruffy, and elegant and restrained, seemingly tossed off by a little-known post-punk band in their little-known prime. I think that "Let It Be" is THE post-punk album that others should be held up to. Sure, Hüsker Du had "Zen Arcade" and "New Morning" and "Flip Your Wig" and the Minutemen had "Double Nickels on the Dime", just to name a few other worthy contenders, but for sheer emotional power and heart-breaking songwriting, all performed with a self-importance-deflating sense of humor, nothing beats Paul Westerberg and company's third album.

The album cover shows The Replacements huddled on the roof of some nameless Minneapolis house, looking like a neighborhood gang of lanky goofs and perfectly embodying the unpretentious nature of the music within.

It's clear from the opening song, "I Will Dare", that this is a different kind of voice than the usual rageful, overly egg-headed lyrics of many of the 'Mats peers. It's a blast of yearning and speaks of how love enobles everyone, even beer-guzzling midwestern losers with perpetual colds and basement apartments. It's a refreshing juxtaposition to go from lines like:

Call me on Thursday, if you will

Or call me on Wednesday, better still

Ain't lost yet, so I gotta be a winner

Bacon and a cigarette's a lousy dinner

To the chorus of:

Meet me anyplace or anywhere or anytime

Now, I don't care, meet me tonight

If you will dare, I will dare

The closest thing I can think of to "I Will Dare" is the Rolling Stones "Factory Girl", or some of the Pogues' more ragged love songs (which did not yet exist at this point in time). The imagery is very mundane and working class, with no romanticized glow to it at all, and yet the emotions expressed are quite intense and, above all, real.

Then, from this pop masterpiece with its catchy mandolin line and emotively plaintive singing, the album veers and stumbles its way through the rest of a collection that embraces everything from hard core punk to delicate Tin Pan Alley balladry, from penis jokes to touching songs about longing, from a KISS cover (!) to a stark piano tune about androgynous clubbers. And, almost every note is PERFECT!

It's the sound of a band playing way over its collective head, knowing they want to break away from the creative monotony of being just another punk band and pushing themselves as far as they can go. There are pop touches like the aforementioned mandolin and piano (which even appears in the middle of the single most purely hardcore tune, "We're Coming Out"), as well as lap steel, 12-string acoustic, and some great proto-Keef harmony vocals. It's a long way from their first album, "Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take the Trash Out", though it shares the same manic sense of humor, and also makes the case strongly for some of 'Mats more brilliant signature stylistic touches that would go on to influence countless bands after them.

There is a certain type of chord phrasing that The Replacements used a lot, a kind of melodic version of the infamous "power chord" that uses only octaves, which has been borrowed by just about everybody after them, from The Pixies to Uncle Tupelo to The Smashing Pumpkins. "Let It Be"'s brilliant throwaway "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" is a perfect example of this, and it shows up elsewhere (like on the angry semi-instrumental "Seen Your Video", which ends with the rant:

Seen your video

It's phony rock and roll!

Also, the bass playing is much more interesting on this record than anything they had done before, with Tommy Stinson breaking all the punk conventions and adding almost McCartney-inspired lines to otherwise thrashing songs. This, coupled with Westerberg's voluminous knowledge of song craft and his ability to be both woundedly vulnerable and over-the-top irreverent at the same time, makes for an album of extreme beauty and energy.

For me, the single most amazing moment on this album that is made up of almost nothing but amazing moments (the unbelievably stupid song "Gary's Got a Boner" being the only tune that doesn't really rock my world anymore) is the opening to the song "Unsatisfied", which kicks off Side Two, if you have the vinyl. A delicate twelve-string arpeggio figure plays, Westerberg makes this incredible, wordless sound that can't even be written down phonetically, and then the band comes careening in with electric guitars, drums and drunkenly out-of-tune lap steel. Holy mackerel! This is the real, honest-to-goodness stuff right here my friends! You want a moment that displays all that is good about rock and roll, from its searching and delicate side to its explosively energetic wallop? Well, here it is. I listened to "Unsatisfied" about four hundred times in the first week of owning the album.

Like the Pogues' brilliant "Rum, Sodomy and the Lash", Let it Be has this scruffy, weathered feel to it. On "Black Diamond", the aforementioned KISS cover, you can distinctly hear beer bottles clinking, and then Paul sniffling loudly, and then once again the band makes its entrance and transforms a monolithic glam rock tune into an anthem of defiance.

I don't have the space here to mention every highlight on this record, because I just can't help myself from getting carried away. Just the mere three word title is enough to send me back to pre-grunge, post-punk heaven, those strange years where "college" radio was just starting to define itself as an important cultural and demographic power, and great bands were popping up like mushrooms left and right in the detritus of the bloated 70s. If you have never heard Paul Westerberg sing the immortal opening lines to "Androgynous", backed only by a semi-haphazard piano track, then you have not yet lived:

Here come Dick, he's wearing a skirt

Here comes Jane, y'know she's sporting a chain

Same hair, revolution

Same build, evolution

Tomorrow who's gonna fuss

And they love each other so androgynous

Closer than you know

Love each other so

Androgynous

A majorly timeless and raggedly beautiful masterpiece.