Fingernails and Cigarettes (A Lousy Dinner)

Original Facebook post here.
Been taking the iTunes off shuffle and revisiting formative albums in toto. Yesterday: The Replacements Let It Be. It was like I was on my high school paper route all over again. (Thanks to Cinco Paul for making a cassette of that for me back 1984.) Seriously, it's amazing how well almost all of the record holds up, how prescient it now seems in retrospect (of both grunge and alt-country), and how much range and punch and feeling they wrought from such noisy, drunken chaos. 

Comments:

Kerry Reid Though I still will argue that "Bastards of Young" may be one of the greatest rock songs ever. "The ones love us best/are the ones we lay to rest/and visit their graves on holidays at best./ The ones love us least/are the ones we'll die to please/if it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them."

Jason Holtham Ditto on Bastards of Young, but Unsatisfied is a pretty amazing song and this album, I agree, sets the table for all that came next. The "Mats are best and, in some ways, the worst that punk rock wrought.

David Ellis Toto rocks.

David Tobocman Hold my life/until I'm ready to use it/Hold my life/because I just might lose it. Tim is the best. I like Pleased to Meet Me and Let it Be too. Mats were my favorite 80s band followed closely by early Pretenders.

David Tobocman I went through a non-shuffle thing too recently. Felt great. I listen to Spotify album by album. Listened to Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme today front to back.

Robert L. Williams That is on of the best albums and Unsatisfied inspired a screenplay from me
Rob Weinert-Kendt I agree with most of the above but "Tim" has just never charmed me as much as a whole and "Pleased To Meet Me," though practically perfect, just has fewer songs as dear to me as the unkempt motley that is "Let It Be." I'm prepared to admit it's a sentiment thing, in much the way I'll always love "Murmur" more than any other REM record, no matter the merits I can acknowledge in some others, just because it was the first that hit me and I never got over it.

David Tobocman Pleased>Tim>Let for me. I do things backwards. Murmur is their best album is my explanation. Btw.

David Tobocman There's a whole lotta motley on all three of those Mats albums

Cinco Paul In my opinion, this is still their best, and captures perfectly everything I loved about them. And it (along with Purple Rain) was the soundtrack of my junior year in college. You're welcome!

Rob Weinert-Kendt I can't and won't defend every single track on "Let It Be," but for me what gives that album its charm as a whole is that it really sounds like it was made over one long drunken weekend; it doesn't sound produced at all, it's almost like found art. Its crude excesses, its crazy noise, and its yearning sweetness all sound totally uncalculated. "Pleased To Meet Me" is the inevitable all-grown-up studio record, and it's a great one; song for song it's probably "better" than "Let It Be." But the Mats + polish takes a little of their shine off for me. And "Tim" has always felt caught between those two poles; the hooky romps on it rank among their best but the throwaways sound extra disposable ("Lay It Down Clown"? No thanks) in a way that, say, the Kiss cover and "Gary's Got a Boner" don't in the context of "Let It Be" 's inspired free-for-all. But hey, they're all essential records.