Torture

It's been said before here during this fun little All Shook Down exercise, and it bears repeating—as the Replacements wound down their career as a band on this one final record, we essentially heard songs that fell into three categories:

1) Genuinely terrific Replacements tunes that they were able to churn out as if nothing was about to end. "Merry Go Round," Nobody" and "When It Began" being the primary three.

2) Efforts by Paul and some form of the band to recapture the old sound that, while all having fine moments, didn't quite get to where they/he wanted. "One Wink At a Time," "Someone Take the Wheel" and "Attitude" are prime suspects.

3) Songs that pointed to a clear path forward to Paul Westerberg as a solo artist. We'd heard the Paul-centric efforts before ("Here Comes a Regular," "Skyway," "Androgynous" and more), but we'd never heard quite so many on one album. "Sadly Beautiful" and "All Shook Down" are prime examples of Paul forecasting what was to come. Two others will follow on All Shook Down.

The first of those efforts shows up today. The 11th track on the album and the shortest Replacements song since back in the Twin-Tone days: "Torture."

To me and maybe only me, this song is the one that truly feels like a Paul Westerberg solo effort, a song that prolly would have done just fine on 14 Songs, which would be out in three years. "Sadly Beautiful" by itself is no different that "Skyway" was, right? A Paul effort done in the clear spirit of the Mats. Even the title track, for all its dusty somnambulance, had that subversive Replacements zig-when-you-think-I'm-about-to-zag quality to it.

But not here. There are songs on All Shook Down that sound like the Replacements, and there are songs on All Shook Down that sound like the Replacements trying to sound like the Replacements. And there is just one song that sounds like Paul isn't just moving on, but has moved on. For good. That's "Torture."

A million baby kisses from a kissing booth on wheels
This sign is pretty poison on the envelope she seals
Your love is by the way who knows exactly how she feels
Whose torture
Without you, it's torture
What new

You climb into your rocket ship and count from ten to one

There's no television coverage for that loser on the run

You hide yourself in darkness but we're heading for the sun

Whose torture

Without you, yeah torture

What to do, it's torture

Tighter and tighter and tighter soon

Yeah torture

And 809 is rockin' with a party full of lies

And on the tenth floor smokin' til the sun's about to rise

There's trouble in 302, can't you see it in my eyes

Whose torture

Without you yeah torture

What to do, it's torture

Ooo torture

 

Look. I don't really know what the hell Paul is singing about here. But he sure ain't happy. "Torture" is the final ever example of that wonderful Mats trick of taking some seriously troubled and downbeat lyrics and matching them up with a catchy as hell tune. "Little Mascara" did it. So did "I.O.U." and "Valentine" and "Asking Me Lies." So did "When It Began" a few tracks earlier on All Shook Down. And so does "Torture."

It's so odd. The song almost plays and feels like a demo, yet it may in fact be the most polished track on the album. Paul offers this lovely stemwinding arpeggio that is as melodic as anything he has ever done, and it spins the track upwards into the atmosphere. His lyrics are clear, cool and precise, filled with lithe little witticisms and turns of phrase that made Paul famous(ish). ("You hide yourself in darkness but we're heading for the sun" is particularly awesome). It's downright pretty! And how often do we say that about Replacements tunes? Pretty and supple and catchy...and it makes it 100% clear that the Replacements are a spent force and we will never hear from them again.

Fun, huh?

In many ways "Torture" doesn't really belong on the album because it so clearly is not a band track, not even a smidge. Again, I think it could have worked pretty fine alongside poignant songs like "Things" and the magnificently incomplete "Black Eyed Susan" on 14 Songs. But then again maybe we did need to hear this. Maybe we did need to hear what was left behind and, just as important, what was soon to come.

Paul Westerberg would embark on a solo career two years later with the wonderfully goofy "Dyslexic Heart," and soon enough he would begin cranking out solo albums that would take him all over the map. Some were great, some were okay, all were interesting. And I think "Torture" can hold its place with some of the best solo ballads he ever did. As a Replacements track? It's lost and meandering and struggling to fit in. On All Shook Down or anywhere else.

But then again, lost and meandering and struggling to fit in sounds an awful lot like a certain Minneapolis-based quartet we've been writing about these past few weeks, dunnit? So perhaps it has its perfect place on this farewell album after all.

The truth is Paul Westerberg has never really fit in, nor have the Replacements. And I for one cannot picture a world in which they did. And honestly, would we want them to? Because when you think about the Replacements even trying to belong, to be part of the crowd, you know what Paul, Tommy, Chris and Slim just might have considered that?

Torture.

Merry Go Round

“Anyone seen my trouble doll?” Paul Westerberg asked the crowd. It was the final tour of the Replacements' life (until 2014 anyway) and All Shook Down’s lead song and first single was “Merry Go Round.” I saw them play live on that tour twice, once as the lead act in Springfield’s (MA) Paramount Theatre (which remains one of my greatest ever concert experiences), and once to a half-filled amphitheater in Mansfield (also MA) as the opening act for Elvis Costello. And both times Paul announced “Merry Go Round” with that query—“Anyone seen my trouble doll?”

I wished I knew what that really meant, because I wanted to know what everything Paul uttered meant. But I didn’t. And I still don’t. I kind of know what a trouble doll, or worry doll, is—some sort of talisman meant to ward off sorrow, I think. But Paul uses the term twice in “Merry Go Round,” and while it could be one of those colorful little trinkets the protagonist wears, it sounds like it’s more than that. In sounds like the trouble doll becomes the main character in “Merry Go Round,” someone who—surprise, surprise, it’s a Mats song!—doesn’t seem to know what she wants or how to come close to getting it. And therefore kinda tunes out the rest of the world and just turns everything pretty much inward. Someone who sounds kinda like…Paul Westerberg? And hell, kinda like the Replacements?

 

Why am I spending so much time talking about trouble dolls? Because the imagery and the melancholy attached to it shows us that for one last time, one last set of songs, we would be hearing the Mats (at least on occasion) do what they do best—sing about fear and loneliness and uncertainty while, at the same time, sounding supremely confident in how fucked up things always seemed to get. From the get go, you know this is a Replacements record when “Merry Go Round” fires up, and that should have been enough to make the fans smile. It sure as hell was for me.

This is how the final offering from the Mats kicked off in late 1990. When eager Mats fans tore open their cassettes or obnoxiously big and clunky CD boxes (what was the damn deal with those, anyway?) and hit play, “Merry Go Round” is what they heard first on All Shook Down. It’s a stop-start funky corker of a song that seems to begin mid-beat and then spend the next 3 ½ minutes playing catch up. Slim and Paul play descending power chords with these little offbeat string bends that give the song a powerful postpunk twang with a jagged edge. Tommy brings his usual jaunty bass romp, and fill-in drummer Charley Drayton (that’s apparently him playing, although it sounds like Chris Mars and Chris appears in the above video behind the drumkit) keeps it churning in 4-4 time. It’s another attempt at the Replacements to do pop. Albeit their brand of pop. And naturally, people outside of their hardcore fan base barely paid attention.

But this song, despite the strife surrounding the band and the fact that it wasn’t even the band’s customary lineup, is a Replacements song to the core. Pop success or no.

"Merry Go Round" revisits that glossy funk that reimagined mid-70s Rolling Stones or even Led Zeppelin, and evoked that hard-but-melodic pattern that traipsed through earlier Mats songs like “Asking Me Lies” (from Don’t Tell a Soul) and a bit on “Alex Chilton” and “I Don’t Know” (from Pleased to Meet Me). It works because it moves and gives the band the room to both slop it up and find the groove at the same time, something the Mats (either intentionally or not) always did as well as anyone. There are little flares here and there that give the song its ample bone structure—the squawky guitar blurts Slim throws on the breakdown of each line in the chorus, the grumbly fill Tommy offers at the end of each verse, the gorgeous breakdown at the bridge and that acidic guitar solo that sounds like a cocktail of hormones and hesitance. And they provide the solid foundation on which Paul can lay his as-typical fascinating lyrics.

“You wake to another day and find
The wind’s blowin' out of key with your sky
Only you can see
And the rain dancin’ in the night
Everybody stands around in delight…
…Hush is the only word you know
And I stopped listening long ago
They ignored me with a smile, you as a child
But the trouble doll hear's your heart pound
And your feet they say goodbye to the ground
Merry go round in dreams
Writes them down, it seems
That when she sleeps, she’s free
Merry go round, in dreams
Merry go round, in me”

This is full-tilt Paul Westerberg gutter poetry wordplay, and it kicks ass. Do I really know what he’s talking about, about wind being out of key with the sky and the song’s main character seeming to take flight at the end? Or what that damn trouble doll has to do with it at all? Nope. But we get the gist, don’t we? It’s about being cut off or, at least, feeling cut off. Life goes on around you, people smile and laugh, even the rain is dancing in his world. Yet to Paul it’s all illusory. His character remains, as always, alone in the crowd.

And this is obviously well-trod ground for Mr. Westerberg. “Achin’ To Be, “Can’t Hardly Wait,” “Unsatisfied,” “Sixteen Blue,” “Swingin’ Party,” “Valentine,” ‘Color Me Impressed”…the list goes on and on all the way back “If Only You Were Lonely,” perhaps the first time Paul bore his soul and showed how life as we know it just doesn’t seem to work for him. For whatever reason it always tends to go sideways, or in the case of this song, just round and round without getting anywhere.

You may notice that I write this assuming Paul is talking about himself. And I am. I just think it so. He wryly hints at it right at the end when “Merry go around in dreams” flips to “Merry go round in me.” The same way the stunning “Achin’ to Be” (perhaps the most indirectly confessional song he ever wrote) ends with “…just like me,” after telling this beautiful story of the mystery girl no one understands. We don’t understand what he’s really saying because I don’t think he does either. But Paul has never been one to come out and say, “I’m so confused and lonely.”

He’d rather wrap it in the puzzle he always sees himself encased in. When he sang “I’ll be home when I’m sleeping” on “Can’t Hardly Wait” he probably came as close to letting us in as he ever has, showing us exactly where it his he feels most at peace.

And when he sings, “When she sleeps, she’s free” it sure sounds like he’s saying the same thing. Paul becomes his own trouble doll, I suppose—something tangible where he can unload all of his worries and escape into—even if that doll doesn’t so much bring relief as it does cement his decision to detach.

“Merry Go Round” is a fascinating way to kick off All Shook Down, an album borne in fracture and disillusionment. To be sure, it shows the distance, the loneliness, the isolation. But it also shows a heart that keeps beating, a mind that keeps trying to decipher what this is all about. And the churning and pumped up music behind it showcases a trump card the Replacements always had, right until the bitter end. Lyrics that could make you laugh, shake your head and sometimes even cry, but music that made you nod your head, somehow understand, and then scowl your way through. All the while moving forward, even if it meant doing so alone. Quite a way to start the final chapter.

Achin' To Be

This post is not exactly going to be one that in the business world they call a "value-add." There's not a ton of new ground I'll be covering here, and I hope that is OK with you, dear reader(s).

It's fairly obvious and simplistic. Just my favorite song by one of my absolute most favorite bands that ever lived.

I listened to the song (actually to the entire Don't Tell a Soul album this morning) on my ride into work today. No real reason why, other than it had been a while. And this was the first Mats album I ever fell in love with; my love affair with everything else they did would literally come seconds later. But "Achin' To be" always struck me as a great rock-n-roll band at their very very greatest.




Did it rock as hard as the Replacements were capable of rocking? Nope.

Was it a touch more produced than a lot of their vintage stuff? Yep.

Was it representative of their total work? Which is to say if an alien landed tomorrow and gave you one song to define for him or her who the Replacements were (and wouldn't that just be an awesome reason for an alien coming to Earth? Seriously!), would this be the song you'd play? I don't think so. I really don't. Not with this out there. Or this. Or even this. Or this. 

Anyway.

Still it is just so raggedly beautiful, so jaggedly heartfelt and, yes, aching. There's not an ounce of strut or pose in the band here, particularly not from the inimitable Paul Westerberg. His voice is tired and raw, as it always was, but there is a longing underneath. Like these are words he just has to get out and has only a tiny window of time to do it. The rest of the band is perfectly in form; Tommy Stinson does his thing by adding some pop to the loping bassline, Slim Dunlop adds a few small country licks into the mid-tempo mix, and Chris Mars kept perfect time just the way Chris Mars always did. Combining that with Paul's peerless songwriting and shattered glass voice, this is what I mean when I say while this might not represent the quintessential Replacements song, it does show them doing it as well as they ever could.

And if you're like me and buy into the theory that Paul really was singing about himself here, only with flopping the gender and putting it into the third person to throw us all off the trail, then read these lyrics again. And tell me you're not achin' to be right there with him. Hearing every single syllable and, what's more important, getting it. Getting it all.

Well she's kinda like an artist
Sitting on the floor
Never finishes, she abandons
Never shows a soul
And she's kinda like a movie
Everyone rushes to see
But no one understands it
Sitting in their seats

She opens her mouth to speak and
What comes out's a mystery
Thought about, not understood
She's achin' to be

Well she dances alone in nightclubs
Every other day of the week
People look right through her
"Baby doll, check your cheek."
And she's kinda like a poet
Who finds it hard to speak
The poems come so slowly
Like the colors down a sheet

She opens her mouth to speak and
What comes out's a mystery
Thought about, not understood
She's achin' to be

I've been achin' for a while now, friend
I've been achin' hard for years

Well she's kinda like an artist
Who uses paints no more
You never show me what you're doing
You never show a soul
Well I saw one of your pictures
There was nothing that I could see
If no one's on your canvas,
Well I'm achin' to be

She closes her mouth to speak and
Closes her eyes to see
Thought about and only loved
She's achin' to be
Just like me

Favorite Song Friday: September Gurls

There’s no way he could have known.

There’s no way that a teenaged Alex Chilton could have known in 1966, with his voice rich in soulful southern gravel as he belted out rock-n-roll gold like “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby,” that he would one day front a band that wouldn’t get half the attention that his Box Tops did, but it would be that very band that would become the proto-postpunk and college rock fore-bearers for a generation to come.

I mean, how could he? He had no idea in 1966 that Big Star would exist. He was 16! And postpunk? Hell, punk rock hadn’t even reared its head yet. At least not as a genuine rock movement, anyway.

But there ‘tis. In the 1960s Alex Chilton possessed the grittiest voice on the pop charts, the archetypical “blue-eyed soul” sound that was raw and throaty enough to become an instrument as vital to the Box Tops sound as the dreamy keyboards or country-fied guitars. And then he hit his 20s and decided to form a band that seemed to lean way more on Roger McGuinn or Stephen Stills’ influence than the Holland-Dozier-Holland sound of his youth.

It was a dramatic turn, that is to say, the transition from The Box Tops to Big Star. Not only that but he had taken to writing his songs (with partner Chris Bell) rather than signing other people’s material. The simple tales of young lust turned to the more introspective 1970s ilk of the singer-songwriter. At which he more than excelled. This wasn’t the same kid who was belting out “Soul Deep.” And for those who noticed, the change must have been alarming.

But that’s the thing. Not many folks noticed. At least not right away. Their three albums between 1971 and 1974 all received good reviews, but the sales were minimal. When Bell died in a car accident after Big Star’s third album, that was pretty much it. Chilton moved on to his next chapter.

Somewhere in there, though, and in the years to follow his legend began to build. That Memphis cool, that grown-up voice now aching with sincere, pained longing, and those lyrics that placed his heart smack out there for all to see. There was a melodic raggedness to Big Star’s sound that was there for a reason, a sound that gave hints to what was soon to come from the CBGB and from Athens and from Minneapolis and from, yes, eventually Seattle.

I mean, it’s easy to see why he had such a profound influence on Paul Westerberg (who of course penned one of the Replacements greatest songs in his honor, eponymously). Paul Westerberg even sounds like a less-refined version of Alex Chilton. But you also get why Michael Stipe and Peter Holsapple and Frank Black and Evan Dando and so many other singer-songwriters of Generations X and Y worshiped him too.

Which brings us to today’s installment of Favorite Song Friday. Which is somewhat appropo, given what month we’re still in.

Favorite Song Friday—Big Star—“September Gurls”

Those opening chords. Those opening chords!

Those scraping, jangly chords that open up the song and carry it to the very end. Those chords sound like someone someone crying in the rain, staring up at a closed window he knows will never open. It’s a jarring and unsettling way to open up a love song, but damn if it also isn’t just so pretty, too!

September gurls do so much

I was your Butch, and you were touched

I loved you, well nevermind

I’ve been crying, all the time

December boys got it bad

December boys got it bad

September gurls I don't know why
How can I deny what's inside
Even though I'll keep away
Maybe we'll love all our days

December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad

When I get to bed
Late at night
That's the time
She makes things right
When she makes love to me

September gurls do so much
I was your butch and you were touched
I loved you, well never mind
I've been crying all the time

December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad

Read these lyrics and one thing you notice—after, I guess, the spelling of “gurls,” which, well, I just don’t know, but it probably has something to do with that eternal obsession of youthful love Chilton always seemed to have—is its never exactly clear who “September Gurls” are or why “December boys got it bad.” (Aside from maybe the plain fact that Chilton was, well, born in December. Occam's Razor and all that.) But really, we don't know. Not at all. Nor is it clear who or what “Butch” is or means. It’s a loveletter, the contents of which are possibly only understood by one person, and maybe not even her.

What we get is a fairly sparse and heartfelt plea. These words mean something to someone, though, and maybe that’s the point. But they are nonetheless breathtaking. And honestly, as someone who very often loves great songwriting and great lyrics above all else, and has assembled myriad lists in his head of his favorite lyrics over the years, this little toss-off:

I loved you, well never mind

…is and remains one of my favorite lyrics of all-time. It’s beautiful and it’s silly. It’s petulant and immature and desperate and defeatist and it’s bluntly honest and plainly confused and it’s all of six words long and I just used 10 words to try and describe it!

Every little inch of this song is lovable and memorable. The sweet and sunny harmonies that hang over it. The lustrous background vocals and cries that take the song up into the ether. Chilton’s shows some damn impressive range, starting high and staying high and going ever higher when he hits the “When I get to bed” bridge. And that weeping, descending guitar line, which you just know Peter Buck must’ve listened to a thousand or two times, seems to offer a pleasant nod to everything that led Chilton to this point – Motown and Stax and Liverpool and his beloved Memphis. It’s all in there, neatly tucked into 2:44 of rock-n-roll splendor.

“September Gurls” is neither a kiss-off or a sappy plea. Or it’s both. It is what you want it to be, as so much of the best music so often is. When Chilton died in 2010, his postpunk godson Westerberg wrote an op-ed about him for The New York Times. He summed up his career thusly:

Success shone early on Alex Chilton, as the 16-year-old soulful singer of the hit-making Box Tops. Possessing more talent than necessary, he tired as a very young man of playing the game — touring, performing at state fairs, etc. So he returned home to Memphis. Focusing on his pop writing and his rock guitar skills, he formed the group Big Star with Chris Bell. Now he had creative control, and his versatility shone bright. Beautiful melodies, heart-wrenching lyrics.

That’s the story of Alex Chilton, leader of Big Star and, as Westerberg would later describe him, “folk troubadour, blues shouter, master singer, songwriter and guitarist.” And what he left behind, with “September Gurls” and plenty more, keeps him going, makes him relevant to those of us who weren’t even alive when “The Letter” was released.

September comes to an end in four days. “September Gurls” exists forever.

Favorite Song Friday: Dyslexic Heart

OK, I know one of the cardinal rules of “Favorite Song Friday” that we laid out at the beginning was we weren’t going to constantly pick songs by our very very favorite artists, namely the Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M, the Replacements and Bob Dylan.

But, well…the thing is we really haven’t. It’s been a half a year now of Favorite Song Friday and we haven’t picked one song by any of the above. One Paul McCartney song, sure, but that’s it.

And after today, we still will not have picked one of those five. Or, for that matter, a song by other favorites like David Bowie or Warren Zevon or Dinosaur Jr. or Peter Gabriel.

So we will now have one from Paul Westerberg. His very first solo song, in fact. Because it’s just too fun and playful not to choose it.

Favorite Song Friday – Paul Westerberg – “Dyslexic Heart”

The title kinda tells you you’re in for a treat, doesn’t it?

You keep swayin'

What are you sayin'?
Thinking 'bout stayin'?
Or are you just playing, making passes?
Well, my heart could use some glasses.

“My heart could use some glasses.” Awesome. Just awesome.

When Nirvana and Pearl Jam led the Seattle Invasion in 1991, a movement that would displace Michael Jackson from the top of the charts and signal the burial dirge for the late-80s scourge of “glam metal,” it was as significant a period of time in rock-n-roll history as anything we’d seen since the birth of punk. And it was only a matter of time before someone made a movie about it.

That someone, fortunately, was Cameron Crowe, and the movie was Singles. And the truth is it really didn’t succeed on all the right levels. Personally I think it came too early. Period pieces written about the period they are currently in can be tricky. Rock Around the Clock did it, as did Saturday Night Fever in its own magnificent way. But American Graffiti succeeded in part because it came out 10 years after the time it featured, allowing for ample amount of nostalgia to seep in. Same thing with Whit Stillman’s highly underrated The Last Days of Disco, which waited even longer to tell the story.

Regardless, Crowe made his movie and it had many enjoyable elements to it—Matt Dillon’s wondrous turn as a lame-brained but fairly well-meaning grunge rocker, the flighty charm of Kyra Sedgewick, and the music. All that great music—Nirvana didn’t make the soundtrack, but Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Alice in Chains and Mother Love Bone and Screaming Trees and Mudhoney did. So did outsiders Smashing Pumpkins, who got their first big break from Singles. Crowe even threw in a touch of Jimi Hendrix—the original Seattle rock god—for good measure.

And scoring it all, as well as adding his first two ever solo songs, was Mr. Westerberg. The man who had been the idol to pretty much all of those above-mentioned artists during his 1980s run with The Replacements. As has been well documented with fair amounts of irony abounding everywhere, the Replacements broke up in 1991 and then watched as those sounds they so masterfully but recklessly created in the 80s became the foundation for the megahits of the early 90s. There wouldn’t have been a “Smells Like Teen Spirit” without “Bastards of Young.” A “Black” without “Unsatisfied.” And imagine the hit “Alex Chilton” could have been in 1993?

So Cameron Crowe, his finger so perfectly on the pulse of musical trends as always, made the right choice when he tabbed Paul Westerberg to score his movie. A more than appropriate nod to the postpunk god who became godfather to this magical new era.

And for someone who had never done it before, Westerberg handled the scoring job with an effortless grace. Watch the movie again and try and notice the delicate little transitional fills he throws in there as the story progresses. They are beautifully crafted and add some rich and worthy hues to the film’s outer edges.

“Dyslexic Heart” and “Waiting for Somebody” are the two songs from which all these little touches spring, and the former plays over the closing credits as the ideal wrap-up. What’s so glorious about it is how much fun Paul seems to have with the sly, goofy words, and how in his element he is once more as a wordsmith who can bounce from sardonic to sweet with each changing chord.

“Dyslexic Heart” becomes the perfect opening shot to what became a more than solid solo career. The joyously hopeful acoustic chords that open the song are the launching pads for the irresistible “na na na na na” vocals that take over. The Replacements never ever veered this close to pure pop. Paul does that here. And he nails it.

Just a quick sampling of some of the lyrics shows us clearly that Paul is fully in touch with his wordsy brilliance and poetic soul and he sings about a love that may or may not be unrequited. But it doesn’t matter.

Slip me a napkin, and now that's a start.

Is this your name, or a doctor's eye chart?

Thanks for the book, now my table is ready.

Is this a library or a bar?

Between the covers, I thought you were ready?

A half-angel half-tart.

I try and comprehend you but I’ve got a dyslexic heart.

Do I read you correctly?

You need me directly?

Help me with this part.

Do I date you

Do I hate you

Do I got a dyslexic heart?

The song bops and sways along like a joyride. It’s quirky and a little nutty and, yes, filled with a great big smiling beating heart at its center. Westerberg sees to that. On his first full solo album that would come out a year later he appropriately sang, “I used to wear my heart on my sleeve, I guess it still shows.”

It does. Even without the great Replacements, his heart was still very much on display. And that, as Martha would say, is indeed a good thing.

"My heart could use some glasses."

Awesome.