Pleased to Re-Meet Me...

As I stated in an earlier post, i've really been enjoying the recent batch of re-mastered Replacements albums. I didn't pursue Rhino's re-release of all the Twin/Tone stuff earlier in the year outside of 'Let it Be'...love it, but I don't go back to it nearly as much as the Stuff from the Sire -era. Needless to say, I was nearly 'kid on x-mas morning' giddy over revisiting the more-polished second half of their career.

'Tim', 'Pleased to Meet Me', 'Don't Tell a Soul' and 'All Shook Down' all get the deluxe treatment with 35 freaking bonus tracks distributed between the four discs. I would have been happy enough w/ the 'superior to my CD's still from college' audio quality, but some of the expanded material included is a lot of fun to hear as well. Some tunes are more interesting than others, but there are some fantastic audio nuggets on each release. I've thrown up a few of them in the sample area for you to enjoy.

More importantly, if you've never taken the time to really sit down and listen to this band...these albums are a great opportunity to get an understanding of what makes them so special to me and countless others. Even if you are a long-lost fan, it's a perfect way to rekindle your love of Paul Westerberg's oft-amazing lyricism on 'Here Comes a Regular', 'Skyway', 'Valentine' and/or the entire band's ragged pop rock glory on classics like 'Bastards of Young', 'Left of the Dial', 'I'll Be You'. Pure, pure bliss.

If anything, these albums will make you feel young again...and maybe challenge the notion you have life any more figured out now than you did then. That's what made the Mats so awesome, they were so uncool it was cool...so blatantly normal it made them anything but. I know a lot of people connect more w/ the earlier stuff, but for me 'Tim' marked the real beginning of what made them great...'PTMM' is still in my Top 5 albums of all time ('Alex Chilton' my favorite song EVER)...so on and so forth.

They are all up on iTunes, but I may have to pick up the CD's for the new packaging/liner notes...to further recapture the full experience of when rock'n'roll could really mean something to me. Something less disposable and something just as much a part of who you were than what you listened to.