Answering Machine - The Replacements - Let It Be - 1984

Oh the answering machine...it's rather quickly become a dinosaur hasn't it? With people increasingly relying on cell phones, and those that still have land lines switching to telecarrier operated voicemail the beat up old tape recorder has basically become a thing of the past. It's kinda sad in a way. Granted voicemail is 10 billion times more useful, but don't you miss being able to screen calls live? Like hearing someone on the other end saying "Joshua, I know you're there, just pick up the goddamn phone" and being able to say "No, I'm not going to do it. You can't make me, you can go fuck yourself, Mom"

And thus passes another era.

None of that changes the unquestionable power of this song though. Granted singing "I hate your Vooooooiiiiiiiccccceeeee Maiiiiiiiillllll" wouldn't have quite the same ring, but it still doesn't change the feeling of needing to talk to someone and instead talking to a recording. How do you say "Good night", "I'm Ok", "I Love You", "I Miss You", or "I'm Lonely" to an answering machine? Voicemail may have given us a better technology, but it hasn't given us a better answer to those questions Paul...bless you're high functioning-alcoholic, constantly broken heart.

Androgynous - The Replacements - Let It Be - 1984

The Summer of 1984 was the first time I can remember having a great time, the first time I remember thinking "Wow, summer is awesome!" I was 9. The movie theater had been playing such treasures as Ghostbusters, Gremlins and Temple of Doom (I was too young to realize its shortcomings). I spent a lot of time at the pool or cruising around the neighborhood with my cousin Ryan. I was too young to be stressed by girls or grades or any of the crippling self consciousness that would plague my junior high years.

Sadly, I was an oldest child so I had no older siblings to play Replacements records for me. I would only discover them backwards through Nirvana. (I don't know if anyone remembers the relentless Replacements comparrisons they received prior to Cobain becoming St. Kurt). Not that I had gender identification issues...that and acne are the two adolescent traumas I escaped...but an older brother might have at least ensured that I was listening to better stuff than Axel F, Summer of 69, and the theme from the aforementioned Ghostbusters.

Alex Chilton - The Replacements - Pleased to Meet Me - 1987

What's almost better than a first rate Big Star song? A fantastic Replacement song about Big Star, that's my answer...also, I love that Westerburg's vision of Chilton is slightly unhinged (Appropriately, on both men's accounts): Chilton is from Mars, children follow him like the pied pipper, he rapes and pillages through villages...only slightly less absurd is the idea, that actually existed for a few days, that Chilton had been lost in Hurricane Katrina...turned out not to be true, but it would have been an appropriately Westerburgian end to a man who was a legend to a depressingly small following.

One final note on the song itself, you can't go wrong with handclaps in a song. Much like cowbells, synchronized stops, and "na-na-na" choruses, it just always works.

Incidentally, this is song #100 in this little project. I'm 1% finished...swell...

Achin' to Be - The Replacements - Don't Tell A Soul - 1989

These acoustic ballads filled with adolescent yearning were once the hidden gems on a 'Mats album. Now they are all that Westerburg does. And they aren't half as charming.