"All Shook Down"--15 Years Later

At the cafe where I get breakfast 2-3 times per week, they've been playing a lot of Replacements lately, and mainly their last 2, "All Shook Down" and "Don't Tell a Soul."

I hadn't heard "All Shook Down" in fourteen years, since it first came out. The immediately apparent thing about it is how it sounds about 2 years ahead of its time. The tracks sound like a what's-what of alternative lite rock, a trojan horse for the Gin Blossoms and others from the class of '94. It's better than a lot of that, but not by a whole hell of a lot. You kinda just wish somebody would have given them a hit song already, so they could get on with it, or that the Replacements would have just tried a wee bit harder going down that slippery slope...put Tommy in some Vision Street Wear, give Bob's replacement some Navarroish dreadlocks, put Peter Criss cat whiskers on Chris Mars. I mean--if you wanna play by the rules of showbiz, you might as well go whole hog, right?

The other immediately apparent thing about "All Shook Down" is how weary and wornout they sound with the effort of trying to reach R.E.M.'s audience, especially compared to the earlier records. The band that started off with "Takin' a Ride" concluded their discography with "The Last," a piano ballad of all things. The closest song approximating a "rocker" is "My Little Problem," a duet with that Concrete Blonde woman, and these kinds of Don Henley/Melissa Ehteridge vocal exchanges where each verse has the singer representing their gender's side of the story whilst looking into each other's eyes is the only thing in rocknroll I hate more than Marshall stacks.

In spite of all that, the charming, "loveable loser" aspects salvage it from being totally horrible, and there are worse examples of great bands trying to make commerically-viable records (i.e. Beefheart's "Bluejean's and Moonbeams").

I actually saw the Replacements on their last tour in 1991 at Visage in Orlando. Tommy was the only one onstage doing anything close to "rocking out." They attempted a cover of "Walk On the Wild Side" they stopped halfway through more because they were bored with doing it than due to being too drunk to play it, which they weren't. Somebody requested "Fuck School," and obviously Paul declined, saying "We don't play those anymore." In hindsight, they were clearly a band sick of being a band and on the verge of calling it quits, and it showed in both the performance and "All Shook Down." Chris Mars wasn't even in the band by that point.

At the time, I loved it, because I didn't really know any better. Now, a part of me wants to forget ever liking this band, but, at the Cal's show we played last weekend, they played "Let it Be" between bands, and I listened to "Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash" the next day at home, and it's impossible for me to write them off. Enough of it holds up to where it's listenable, and enjoyably so ("Customer" alone makes up for the later "smart guy" stuff) as burned out on relatively straightforward rocknroll (and its myriad redundancies, especially in the drums and guitar solos) as I feel these days. Besides that, I still like the drunken heart and soul Bob Stinson put into his solos, and he even ended up playing with Sonny Vincent, a perfect match.

Part of me wonders why I even care in the first place. It's just music, and I'm kinda feeling like, after this year's Blackout, my show attendance rate is going to drop even more than it has in the past year, unless it's a show where I'm drumming. Seeing Gris Gris on Saturday night at Sub-T made me so disinterested I hurled my 3/4's full PBR tallboy at them and stumbled out of there in true Coppens fashion (short of waking up the next day covered in bruises I have no recollection of getting). I was having fun up to that point, but seeing them kinda reminded me of shows I went to when I first moved to Chicago, where everybody just stood there and the bands looked so damn serious and I felt like the only guy not stoned on codeine. I could be missing something. I probably am. Or, maybe I'd rather sit at home with my girlfriend and read a book instead. Or, maybe one of you will pull me out of this musical malaise and make me a kickass CDR mix (hint hint); or the Blackout will renew my interest in rocknroll again. Hearing Frustration and Plasma Drive for the first time this past weekend alone gives me hope.

I don't know. But, to bring it back around to The Replacements: "I hate music/sometimes I don't/I hate music/got too many notes."