Chicken Out of Hell
An Andrew Hamlin Joint

 

Everything I Know Is Wrong Dept.: The Replacements, All For Nothing/Nothing For All (Reprise). My Replacements moments are not yours, of course. For the several pages of stories that might belong here I'll substitute the one where a friend of mine in college spent a whole party with a tape recorder inside his sweater coaching the drunk people, one by one, to recite the "ich lieb dich nicht du liebst mich nicht" refrain from "Da Da Da Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Uh-Huh Uh-Huh," then went home, punched a Casio preset, and recorded his own version of "Da Da Da Don't Love You You Don't Love Me Uh-Huh Uh-Huh," with our various sampled stabs auf Deustch popped into the right spots. He didn't have a guitar for the guitar part and that spoiled the verisimilitude for me, at least, when he proudly displayed the finished work, "Da Da Dada," for his unwitting victims--but true glorious ruination came in how he'd forgotten to turn off the other tape player at the part; this left our daintily labored German vowels overpowered at every sample by the Replacements' Let It Be blasting through cheap speakers to his cheap muffled microphone. Midway through "Da Da Dada" its creator cedes to the riptide; a whiskey sour inflection suspiciously like mine tears through bellowing triumphantly, "RIP RIP WE'RE GONNA RIP 'EM OUT NOW!"

My college 'Mats moments materialized mostly through one friend in particular--not the one with the bugged sweater--a slightly older guy already out of school and into a dead-end government job who'd do things like eat two Dramamine and jump on a motorcycle or barrel down the freeway with his car windshield completely frozen over or, when asked by some snotty doorman at some fetish club if his tattoo was real, shot back, "Why don't you lick it and find out?", and who wasn't adverse to huffing DMT fresh from the freezer while somebody winched Steve Reich's "Come Out" backwards at 8 1/2 RPM. He had scads of LPs lined up in those college-era brick-and-board shelves, and great hardwood floors, and he gave his slightly younger friends the Replacements, the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Pogues, the Roches, Billy Bragg and the Anti-Nowhere League (in a righteous potlatch fervor we gave him Big Black, the Pixies, Negativland, the Happy Flowers--which he tried to give back-- Nick Cave and They Might Be Giants). He was what I wanted to be when I grew up. So when he said he nearly didn't become a 'Mats fan because Tim, which he bought first, was a dull, fake record with a picture on the back that made them look like a hair band, I bought the album in the name of a stab to completionism and dutifully heard a dull, fake band. Probably stuck out my tongue at that bubblegum-blood hued cover too.

First year of college was the year of Pleased to Meet Me, my idol's pick for Album of the Year (not that I wasn't capable of nonidolating ferment; my Album of the Year was Yo! Bum Rush the Show). Don't Tell A Soul and All Shook Down, the last two albums, plucked no ping from my sonar, mostly since I'd decided that anything post- original lead guitarist Bob Stinson (who may also have been what I wanted to be when I grew up insofar as he was able to go through life wearing a dress and vomiting) was out at the plate. I remember Soul for yet another friend's proselytizing over "Rock and Roll Ghost," (not included here) and Shook for "Somebody Take the Wheel" (included) playing out on the balcony of the dorm I lived in fourth year, the year I decided I was having my first major mental breakdown in several years and decided to take another year of college.

So when I stuck in disc one of the thin, liner notes-less preview copy of All For Nothing/Nothing For All, knowing none of the winners from Twin/Tone, the band's first label, made the cut, not the agonizing testimonial of "Within Your Reach" nor the magically right drunktake called "Mr. Whirly" (songwriting credit went to "mostly stolen"; think I've spotted him scribbling napkin love notes to Justine Frischmann) none of the flashfire of Stink (the late Mr. Robert Stinson's finest quarter hour) or the sanguinity of Let It Be (Mr. Stinson's other finest quarter hour hitched to Mr. Westerberg's barest nerves and most desperate mouth), I was ready to flick it in the "sell to Cellophane Square" pile, not ready to be knocked out of my seat. Every single one of these songs I'd ignored and scorned rasped to me of chances taken and regretted, of women I'd never pleasured--and certainly never lost--this artfully, songs I longed to sing in the karaoke bar in the finest kimono west of Kyoto.

I've always found "Skyway," from Pleased To Meet Me, a perfect song in the general sense of containing absolutely nothing superfluous and in the more specific sense of advancing image and feel with each line of each verse until each verse becomes a pristine origami construction parked gently next to its companions (for comparison purposes I offer some other examples of perfect songs in both senses above: "Yesterday," "I've Just Seen a Face," "You Might Think" by the Cars, "Legal Tender" by the B-52's, and "When You Were Mine" by Prince and "When You Were My Baby" by the Magnetic Fields). Elsewhere pristine perfection is thrown up and run over with a station wagon; even with big-label money in fist and Bob slowly slipping to the floor, Westerberg could muster memorable howls to match his even-the-losers-plug-in lyrics ("Bastards of Young"). But a modulating howler; the success and terror in Westerberg is accentuation--"You press your LUCK"--with a knee to the groin, or a hip--"Against his BODY"--depending on your sex and his beer goggles--"Now you're STUCK"--and whether you've got a boyfriend--"but you like it DOWN AND DIRTY," wiping his hands in excited vindication, West Side Story traced back to Romeo and Juliet in Heileman's Old Style on a desecrated shuffleboard.

The howl could soften into a childlike yelp of communion, running with the Memphis horns on "Can't Hardly Wait" (an earlier version on the second disc fries up grits in spunk but forgets the line about holding a pen), sketching angels in cashmere sweaters ("Achin' to Be," and how predictable, how resonating, that he can't do anything with girls except draw wings over the shoulders or shove them against beer-hall walls), and by "Someone Take The Wheel" from the swan song All Shook Down (an album which I only now discover features John Cale, Terry Reid, Steve Berlin, and a cast of thousands), he's shriveled to a tired whisper, afraid he'll fall asleep on the road, more afraid of waking up whoever's riding shotgun. And at that point, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Westerberg was simply transported to Yuggoth by the minions of Azathoth from William Browning Spencer's Resume With Monsters, folks who whisk away every company's Employee of the Month, anyone who might strike a special spark. "Jesus," whispers the protagonist. "That's sharp," the security officer holding him hostage replies. "Jesus was taken to Yuggoth. He got away from them briefly. You want to see an Elder One oscillate and turn purple, just mention Jesus." Westerberg got away long enough to yell "fade it!" at the end of "Black-Eyed Susan."

As for the disc of rare stuff, one amazing moment amongst its many lines up nothing I've diagrammed above. "Ayeah Bob, c'moninhereand playyerguitar," someone slurs, and Bob Stinson, gone from the band five years, due to be gone from earth in less than that from here, hovers over the funereal drums and idly-bashed guitars with the veneration of someone already gone on to Yuggoth. The voice here bangs at the speakers like a V-8 running on concrete. "To be on your own," it spits, "with an erection...like a rolling pin." Somewhere Robert Dylan (as he's credited in the notes) is shaking Robert Stinson's hand, before they all go girl-watching with m. stolen.

 

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