I agree with that. But I was also surprised how much more I liked Talent Show in the demo version (which actually sounds like the Mats) when I first heard it. Better production and better performances will inject some life into all these tracks even if they aren't his best songs. And I kinda hope maybe some of them have better lyrics in their original forms which he later dumbed down to try to make them more commercial.
It is cool. It's always cool when "lost" albums turn up just in time for some special release. It's been happening a lot lately. I love it!
Didn't the Mehr book state that Paul erased, destroyed or taped over the majority of the Berg sessions?...or maybe I read that in a Berg interview.
Presumably it's an unreleased Westerberg song that they decided not to redo with Matt Wallace, just like Portland and Wake Up.
Reminds me a bit of when Elvis Costello famously begun his liner notes to a reissue of Goodbye Cruel World with the immortal line “Congratulations! You’ve just purchased our worst album!” Hopefully, it’ll achieve a similar success as Dylan’s Another Self Portrait, which forced a major re-evaluation of one of his most notorious albums (or, more precisely, it forced a re-evaluation of the New York sessions from which the original album was partially compiled from). On the merits you make a great case why this set had to go first. It definitely has the most potential to confound expectations. But I hope it’s lower critical profile does not result in underwhelming sales that make future archival sets less likely.
I'm in. I got on board with PLEASED TO MEET ME, backtracked with TIM, and loved DON'T TELL A SOUL as well. In ye olde pre-Internet days, a Twin-Tone CD was a two-hour drive away from my ex-urb, assuming it was even stocked, so I didn't have catalog preconceptions to disappoint. I just thought they were a smart, rockin' band.
No. In the Mehr book, Berg recalls one instance in which a night's worth of recording was lost because of problems with an unformatted digital recorder, and he mentions another instance in which he was afraid the Mats might try to destroy some of the session tapes, so he hid them. But that's it. I just reviewed Mehr's discussion of the Berg sessions. He says that they recorded 15 songs: 11 Westerberg originals, plus a cover of James Burton's Love's Lost, Cruella DeVille, an "untitled rockabilly number" which was a band cowrite, and apparently a 15th song which he doesn't specify. Since there's only nine Bearsville tracks on the amazon listing, I guess we're not getting 100% of the Berg sessions here. Perhaps they are holding stuff back so they can release a 40th Anniversary Super Duper Really Deluxe Edition in 2029?
Yes, a big box set. the best songs from the band's albums, plus more ("newly found") unreleased tracks, etc. but only in a few more shorts years.
I think Mats fans are completists and any Mats deluxe edition would sell equally well, so I don't think there's much worry there. And FWIW, DTAS was the best selling Mats album upon its original release and had the closest thing to a hit single they ever got, so there's that.
Now that I think about it, if that's the original track listing on disc one of the upcoming box, it's front heavy with the singles all on what would have been side one...and the strongest material in my opinion. However I always thought a heavier version of Anywhere'S Better Than Here would have been the Mats defining later years anthem. Love that song, and the scream that opens it and all the additional screaming that ends it.
Yeah, the overall stiffness and slickness of the album really undermines the two rockers on the original album. It's too bad we're not getting Berg versions of either of those.
Longer than that, possibly. In 1999, I was working the entertainment beat for a newspaper in a midwestern city, and a concert promoter there told me that Paul was trying to get a Replacements tour together to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Winter Dance Party tour. The idea, as he explained it, was that they would play all the towns that were on the original tour, at the same venues if they still existed. One of those venues was in our city (it has since been torn down), and he was supposedly doing preliminary work to make it happen. Obviously, it didn't, but it sounds like a perfectly Westerbergian disaster, and I want so badly for it to have been true.
Paul Westerberg is just mystifying to me... just a couple of years ago he started releasing mysterious one-offs... some of which were great... in the vein of his 49 minutes - masterpiece IMO... but then he stopped releasing songs and that was that. Anyway this is an instant buy for me.. like others have said..not their strongest album... but underneath the 80s production gloss are some real gems.
I was living in Iowa City when Don’t Tell a Soul came out. The ‘Mats had been my absolute favorite band at this point since Let It Be had came out. The clerk at the record store I used to shop in Iowa City (I can’t remember its name now), knew how much I loved the band, as he dug them to. However, he was not into Don’t Tell a Soul—which I hadn’t heard yet—as it had just been released. And while I was checking out, he was telling me how disappointed he was in it (you know, good for business ;-) ). And I’ll never forget when I looked down at the handwritten receipt he had handed to me for my new purchase, he had written “Don’t HAVE a Soul”. (Clever, huh?). A funny thing to remember after all these years, but I guess it worked, as it’s stayed with me for 30 years! It’s of course not true, as for it’s flaws, it still has four to five among their greatest (even, dare I say, most soulful) songs, “Achin’ to Be”, “Talent Show”, “I’ll Be You”, and “Rock’n’Roll Ghost” among them.
I created the thread about the cryptic facebook posts and I am always excited for any possible release.
Having refreshed my memory, it looks like the Tom Waits session might not be complete after all, as Paul singing Tom's "Ol' 55" doesn't seem to be included (unless it's just a fragmentary rendition that's been incorporated into one of the other tracks). Then again, perhaps tapes weren't running for that performance? On the plus side, I don't think I've ever heard of the song "I Can Help" being part of the session.
Here’s the description from Mehr’s book of “Date To Church” before Tom’s contribution was downplayed in the mix (apparently at the direction of Tom’s label): “Waits then set up behind a B-3 organ and began orchestrating another new tune, the stomping gospel number “Date to Church.” After a few passes at the song, things began to really warm up. “Let’s give it the f***ing gusto,” said Westerberg. With the band on its feet, Waits began playing fat fills and delivering a wild hellfire preacher rap. “There was a whole track of him yakking behind Paul,” said Dunlap. “He was going, ‘Jesus has the tools! Jesus is the carpenter!’—all this religious stuff. Oh, man, it was awesome.” I *desperately* want to hear this version.
I always took the spoken line, "might catch some perch," at the very beginning of "Date to Church" to be Tom Waits, right? In my imagination, the studio banter was Paul calling out, "I need another line, something that rhymes with 'church!'" And then Waits obliging with his contribution.
I'll probably get this thing. I'm getting into solo PW now for the 1st time, and have been digging it. This week "Folker" seeing a few plays in the vehicle. I own 2 copies of DTAS (box set/original) and have always liked the album. I love the Mats but I read more than post in these threads, being I don't have much knowledge to offer about the band.
I hope you're joking. If not, remind me never to discuss the JFK assassination with you. I would guess anything they've left off this set was due to quality control reasons, nothing more. Mehr's book does say that only 11 of the 15 tracks recorded at Bearsville had vocals, so some were likely just rudimentary backing tracks and that's why they're not on here.
I’ve got a copy of the DTAS promo w/Cruella, but do you happen to know if any of the other advance promos featured alternate bonus tracks? I know All Shook Down was originally announced with somewhat different contents than what eventually was released, but near as I can determine the advance promo matches the retail version.
