Replacements/Westerberg fans, I need your help

OK...I have to compile a single disc to try to convince a nonbeliever of Paul Westerberg's greatness. This person enjoys music, but in a somewhat casual and mainstream way, so excerpting the Replacements Twin-Tone albums (with the possible exception of Let it Be) is not the direction I want to go with this. The disc will also have to cover both the Replacements and Paul's solo career. Please make any suggestions in relation to the preliminary list below; all are enthusiastically welcomed and appreciated - I am a huge Westerberg fan and putting together a single disc has proven to be too tough a task. Thanks in advance.

I Will Dare
Unsatisfied
Kiss Me On The Bus
Left of the Dial
Here Comes a Regular
Alex Chilton
Can't Hardly Wait
I'll Be You
Merry Go Round
Sadly Beautiful
When It Began
Waiting for Somebody
Dyslexic Heart
Knockin' on Mine
Things
These are Days
Love Untold
MamaDaddyDid
It's A Wonderful Lie
Only Lie Worth Telling
No Place for You

A couple of other random notes re: the above. Unsatisfied is a great song, but grinds the disc to a halt in a sort of, ahem, unsatisfying way. Skyway should probably be included, but Here Comes a Regular and Sadly Beautiful are already similar in style - don't know how to handle this. World Class Fad and Achin' to Be were singles that don't seem to rise to the level of greatness, but maybe I should throw them on anyway. The Mono CD is not represented; although it is great, to my ears there is not an individual song that belongs.

 

Tim & Let It Be should be enough to convince anybody, IMHO. Just my two cents.

 

I agree with Sckott 100% -- these are the two best Replacements LPs. However, they're still a bit raw in places, while IMO, "Pleased to Meet Me," might better sway the unititiated with its melodic punch and slicker production.

My vote for best Paul Westerberg song is, "Answering Machine" -- nothing but Paul's guitar and a great lyric, although it took me years to catch it all. Is there a better couplet in the Westerberg canon than, "Try to free a slave of ignorance, try and teach a whore about romance."

 

I must suggest "Die within your reach" from "Hootenany", and "Achin to Be" from Don't tell a Soul. Of the newer album I also like the song "Mr. Rabbit". If these plus the songs you have chosen do not convince, then nothing will!!

 

Also, on their first album, "Sorry Ma forgot to take out the Trash", there is a great slow song about the death of Johnny Thunders called "Johnny's gonna die". It's the only "ballad" in between a bunch of fast, thrashy punk songs. A hidden gem, kind of. That whole album is one of my all time favorites.

And what about "Let the bad times roll" from the new album. What a great song about staying in a relationship even when the going gets rough.

I saw Paul last year in Somerville MA, and it was awesome! A very underappreciated artist.

 

It sounds like you are looking to avoid anything remotely punkish... which is too bad, because that tosses out a lot of his best work. With that proviso, you have a pretty good representative sample of his more mellow Replacements stuff. My suggestions/additions:

If Only You Were Lonely: a great acoustic ballad with clever, funny lyrics. Hard to find and not available on CD, so maybe you don't have it, but if you do you should include it.

I would dump Unsatisfied and add Sixteen Blue. It might flow a bit better, and I like Sixteen Blue better, with that weird Bob solo. Never been a big Unsatisfied fan.

A big part of Westerberg is his sense of humor. Maybe throw in Waitress in the Sky to illustrate that.

Ya gotta have more from PTMM. The Ledge maybe? Melodramatic but good. IOU is the best song on that album, but maybe it's too punk for your purposes?

I really like Happy Town off All Shook Down.

 

Thanks for the suggestions so far - all are appreciated (especially the almost completely alternate song selection, Ken - I think I might just have to burn yours and see how it sounds.) Sckott- I totally agree with you about Let it Be and Tim, although in setting up Paul Westerberg for this friend, I have described a twenty-five year, Hall-of-Fame level, Kinks-like songwriting proficiency and consistency. Therefore, I am somewhat committed to showing off the whole career to avoid any notion that Paul had just a one or two album peak.....

Thanks again - if there are any other thoughts or suggestions, do not hesitate...

 

You have to add Answering Machine, Sixteen Blue, Bastards of Young, Skyway and Valentine.

You only need one or two songs each from "Sorry Ma" "Hootenany" "Don't Tell a Soul" and "All Shook Down".
The meat of the disc as said before should come from "Let it Be", "Tim" and "Pleased to Meet Me".

If he likes this disc make another comp disc from the Westerberg solos.

Joe Lee

 

Here's a 'Mats comp I made once:

Johnny's Gonna Die
Shiftless When Idle
Somethin' To Du
Kids Don't Follow
Dope Smokin' *****
Hootenanny
Color Me Impressed
Within Your Reach
Hayday
I Will Dare
Androgynous
Unsatisfied
Sixteen Blue
Answer Machine
Here Comes A Regular
Left Of The Dial
Hold My Life
Kiss Me On The Bus
Bastards Of Young
Skyway
Alex Chilton
I Don't Know
Portland
The Ledge
Can't Hardly Wait (Tim version)
Achin' To Be
I'll Be You
Talent Show
Anywhere's Better Than Here
Another Girl, Another Planet (live)
Merry Go Round
Sadly Beautiful
Nobody
Treatment Bound


Not that familiar with the solo stuff, but I have Stereo/Mono which is really good. Favorite track is "We May Well Be The Ones" (or something like that; that's a lyric in the song).

 

Here is the Comp I'd make

I'm In Trouble
If Only You Were Lonely ( Available on a Twin Tone promo Sampler CD or the B-side to I'm in Trouble or on the Boink LP or Cassette)
Kids Don’t Follow
Color Me Impressed
Take Me Down to the Hospital
Within Your Reach
Left of the Dial
Little Mascara
Can't Hardly Wait
Nevermind
Rock and Roll Ghost
Achin to Be
Nobody
Bent Out of Shape
Torture
Runaway Wind
World Class Fad
Love Untold
Dyslexic Heart

I'd skip all of Let it Be but that's just me. It just doesn't hold up the way Tim or Pleased to Meet Me does.

Best,
Aaron

 

Yeah, If Only You Were Lonely is great. I only have an mp3 of it.

Skip Let It Be? Man, that's like a Beatles fan skipping Revolver!

 

http://www.soundopinions.net/realaudio/Matsrequest/matsrequesta.ram
http://www.soundopinions.net/realaudio/Matsrequest/matsrequestb.ram

Check these out: some old radio interviews with Westerberg, done around the release of Stereo/Mono (but before the remasters came out, which is why they mention how hard it is to find the Twin/Tone stuff). The songs they play during the interview seems to have been edited down a bit, but everything else is there.

 

No Replacements/Westerberg overview would be complete without "Here Comes A Regular", though.

 

I know. Absolute heresy. I started out with Pleased to Meet me as the first Mats album I bought. I went back and bought the whole catalog, even S#@T Hits the Fans. Of the early catalog, I liked Hootenany best.
Mr Whirly is a genius rip off of Strawberry Fields, Oh Darling and the Twist, Sorry Ma is great if not a bit uneven and slightly redundant. Stink is Westerberg trying to write an angry Sex Pistols type songs( even he said this was silly) When I listen to Let it Be, it sounds like they are growing, but there ideas don't seem fully realized. The rockers don't rock like they do on the early albums and the ballads/slower songs don't seem to be the quality they are on later albums. The I think they better achieved this on Tim. On Let it Be, they are trying to maintain there indie cred and grow by being slightly more mainstream. I don't know if it's the production or more outside influence on this album or what, but this just isn't the Replacements album I go for.

Best,
Aaron

 

I had a hard time digging the early music, pre-Hootenanny. For awhile, it just seemed like clamor, even a bit of a pose, but some of the songs began to grow on me.

They've got the funniest song titles this side of the Ramones, and the lyrics can be downright hilarious, but it doesn't always work. I guess that was part of the appeal, where they could either crash and burn or do a brilliant, transcendant, sloppy performance.

 

Thanks again for all the help. I feel somewhat better about having difficulty settling on a single disc's worth of material, as the recommendations here are all over the map (in a good way of course). I am now wondering if I am over-rating Paul's solo career, although in my heart I don't feel I am. He does appear to miss having a real band (his more recent work, with Paul recording mostly alone, seems part design and part artistic confusion), but I still think the high points of his solo stuff are at the Mats' level.

I now realize that I have a tough time making comps of artists who happen to be very strong songwriters working in classic pop/rock traditions - it is murder picking out the high points of the albums. I similarly labored over a Marshall Crenshaw comp, and really never got it right....

 

I would definitely include the following:
Answering Machine
Bastards of Young
World Class Fad
Hold My Life

 

Luckily, Rhino's THIS IS EASY is the perfect Marshall Crenshaw comp -- they even nailed "Starless Summer Sky" off MIRACLE OF SCIENCE. Anyone who doesn't fall in love with Marshall Crenshaw after hearing this or either of his first two albums can be dropped off at your local planetarium's Pink Floyd laser show and safely ignored thereafter.

If you're trying to convince a mainstream listener of Paul Westerberg's greatness, I think your selections have to be a little more conservative, leaning toward the later major label stuff, as per your (CM Wolff's) original selection.

Tracks I'd have to make room for, given your purposes:

Waitress In the Sky
Skyway
Talent Show
Cruella Deville
My Little Problem (unjustly buried on ALL SHOOK DOWN)
Silver Naked Ladies
Call That Gone (that's your MONO/STEREO track!)

I think "The Ledge" is one of his greatest tracks, but probably a little rough in presentation and subject matter for swaying a general listener.

 

Ron-

Funny you should mention this. I did a Crenshaw comp a couple years ago and came up with something that shared about 2/3'rds the songs of what eventually was released as This Is Easy. It didn't feel right, though, and I have been reworking it on-and-off ever since. This past weekend, I remembered that you touted This is Easy in another thread and decided 'screw the CD-R, I'm gonna go buy the album, it's good enough for Ron, it's good enough for me'. (One of the things that was making my homemade comp incomplete was the fact that I do not have the debut single version of 'Something's Gonna Happen', which is totally essential Crenshaw, and that of course leads off This is Easy.) Well, I went to all my local establishments, and the only place that had it was Borders, at an uneconomical $18, earning a pass from me. Ordered it online, and my pursuit of a perfect Crenshaw comp is hopefully almost at an end. Now I can just try to finish this Westerberg thing - thanks for your input - glad to see someone else likes 'My Little Problem'....

 

Jeeze, tough assingnment...

Well, I'd just buy them All Shook Down, really Paul's first solo album.

Yes, I know I'm skipping all those others, but wow, what a great album that was/is...