Note: The mailings from this mailing list are meant to be viewed in a monotype font, such as Courier New. (Otherwise the following may look like somebody fell asleep on their keyboard.) ______________________________________________________________________________ // // The \\kyway \\ // skyway@novia.net Issue #68 July 26th, 1999 ______________________________________________________________________________ (c) 1999 Bastards of Young (BOY/BetaOmegaYamma) Productions list manager: Matthew Tomich (matt@novia.net) always thanks to: Bob Fulkerson ______________________________________________________________________________ SKYWAY SUBSCRIPTION/LISTSERVER INFORMATION Send all listserver commands in the body of a letter to "majordomo@novia.net" To subscribe to the //Skyway\\: subscribe skyway To unsubscribe from the //Skyway\\: unsubscribe skyway THE //SKYWAY\\ WEB PAGE Check here for back issues, lyrics, discography, and other files. http://www.novia.net/~matt/sky/skyway.html ______________________________________________________________________________ Send submissions to: skyway@novia.net ______________________________________________________________________________ 0. Kids Don't Follow (m@.) I. New (PJ, Paul Broadhead, Dragonfly, Meyer, Andrew Rumble, Joye) II. No tour, but a film. (John Anderson/Lori Dolequist) III. At least we can still listen to the concert tapes. (Tony Buechler, Mark Timmins, Brett Schwartz) _____________________________________________________________________________ 0. KIDS DON’T FOLLOW (1999) I’m sitting on the back porch of my house looking over the wasteland that used to be my yard after the back-to-back parties we threw this weekend. It’s the first weekend in a month and a half that I’ve actually spent home in Chapel Hill and not on tour, vacation, or some other crazy wandering, so sorry it's been late since you've heard from the Skyway. I thought I was finally going to get some sleep Friday night when the cops showed up at 3 a.m., but they ended up staying and hanging out for an hour and a half . . . so much for ‘Kids Don’t Follow’! There’s something nostalgia-inducing about the combination of late nights and fireflies and humidity and summer. When I first started putting out the Skyway in the summer of ‘93, I was in college, pushing a lawnmower in the Midwestern wastes of Nebraska listening to the second Chris Mars solo record and waiting for Westerberg and Bash n’ Pop to come to town on tour...all the while trying to figure out what I was going to do when I hobbled out of school. Six summers later, Westerberg doesn’t tour anymore, Tommy is probably learning the bass line to 'Mr. Brownstone' tonight, and Chris Mars doesn’t make records anymore. And I work as a computer guy at a biotech company in the forested wastes of North Carolina, trying to figure out how to quit work so I can tour full-time with the bands I’m in while still having health insurance. (Sucks not to be Norweigian.) So what’s everybody else doing? In the past six years, the majority of addresses on this list have gone from .edu to .com. Also, back then, many of the subscribers had seen the ‘Mats, sometimes as far back as ’82. Now frequently people who are writing about how Paul and Co.'s music saved/changed/narrated their life never saw them live and just got into the band in the past four years. Would it be wrong to think that the ‘Mats are bigger now than they ever were when they were together? Oh, yeah, hey, I found my new housemate on the Skyway: Matt Kelley. (The party Friday was a going away party for my future ex-roommate.) So, anyways, what else can you ask fro ma housemate who would not care at hearing "Answering Machine" blared at 4 a.m. Matt’s band, Late Night Television, plays big pop rock songs too. Yet another day each week of band practice in the living room. I also found out about my job from somebody who was on this list...what the hell would I have done if I hadn't started this thing? (Probably not have come back from Costa Rica.) So yeah, really, last month Spin confirmed for the twelfth time that Tommy Stinson is playing bass for Guns and Roses. With Josh Freese on drums. Maybe Paul can open ‘cause they’ll already have the piano out for "November Rain". - M@. (with all the empties you want in my backyard) _____________________________________________________________________________ I. EVERYTHING YOU DREAM OF IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU From: "P J" To: skyway@novia.net Date: Wed, 26 May 1999 10:24:04 PDT I just found this site yesterday and I loved reading all the old issues. I thought I was one of the only ones out there who still loved The Replacements. A little bit about me. My name is Patti. I live in a suburb of Minneapolis. I've loved the Replacements since the mid 80's. Unfortunately I never have seen them in concert. I lived in a small town so I didn't get into "the big city" to see them. When I was 19 I worked in a local music store and I had the opportunity to go to a Replacements concert and then a party at Paisley Park afterwards. Unfortunately, I didn't get to go. (The things you do for boyfriends.) Anyway, I'm still a huge Replacements fan. Here is my story about Paul. I work with his cousin. I sit right next to her. When I found out she was his cousin I thought it was so cool. She now always tells me what he's up to. It's funny cause she will say, "Oh, I just talked to Paul, or Paul's mom". I always think that sounds so funny. Anyway, that's my sort-of-brush with fame. Thanks for the skyway. It's great hearing stories from other people who love The Replacements. From: BROADHEAD PAUL R Date: Tue, 1 Jun 1999 15:36:31 GMT Subject: Finally, after 3 years, London calls In my final month of university (Greenwich, Woolwich, supposed to be London) and I finally get round to sending in my Replacements story. I've been reading the Skyway for nearly three years now but have never gotten round to writing in so here goes. I actually got into The Mats through a weird combination of Soul Asylum and MTV! I'd been into SA a while, and kept hearing the name Replacements cropping up in articles. I'd already checked out Husker Du and liked what I heard, although they were a little too knarly to fall in love with to the same degree as the Mats. I then saw the Bastards Of Young video on MTV's Alternative Nation, and picking myself off the floor at the hilarity of the video, no band, no storyline, no rawk chix, no glorified live footage (this wasn't the usual Bon Jovi rubbish I was used to seeing on MTV!) I realised the beauty of this f**ked up anthem. I soon had a copy of Tim and heard 'Here Comes A Regular for the first time, this song is still my Mats fave (although it can sometimes hit a little bit too close to home), along with Unsatisfied. I then got All Shook Down and from there on there was no stopping me. I have plenty of rarities now on CD and vinyl, including live concerts (CBGB's '84 is a particular fave when drunk) and interviews and outtakes. Things is, I've searched and searched and still can't find a video. Seeing Paul on Jools Holland was the first time I've seen the guy animated, with the exception of the video material on All For Nothing. If anyone can help me out over here in England, I would be soooo grateful and I am more than willing to cover costs (not much left of my final student loan, but still!). I will enclose my address seeing as probably by the time my posting is printed, I will no longer be at the current one. A few other points; Westy's new one is one of the most beautiful records I've heard in my life. OK its not the Replacements but neither is Paul anymore. I guess you either love it or hate it and personally, I'd marry it! Also, could people please stop slagging off the Goo Goo Dolls for ripping off the Mats. There was a recent article in Uncut magazine over here where Paul said Johnny was one of his best friends these days and his final statement in the article was that if he had the choice, he'd ask Johnny to single-handedly carry his coffin when he died. I don’t think (!) Paul's bitter about the Goo Goo's success so why should we be. They're a great band who are great live and seem nice blokes. Come on, if your hair would look as cool as that, wouldn't you let it!!!! Other bands I like are 60Ft Dolls (a great Replacements influenced Welsh band, who split up after just one great record), Wilco, 3rd Eye Blind and the aforementioned other American college bands! I thought Bash & Pop were better than Perfect but Perfect's still better than GnR! Please please Paul come over and play, I think I speak on behalf of any other Mats fans in England when I say you’d be very welcome. I think I know about 6 and 5 of them were converted by me! Congratulations Matt and keep up the good work, I'll keep reading somehow. To anyone who may have a video of the Mats or anyone who just wants to talk Replacements and the life that comes with being a like-minded rock n roller, (i.e. drink, loss, heartbreak, confusion etc. etc.) in the UK or anywhere that's better than here, here's my address ; Paul Broadhead 36 Home Farm Way Westoning Beds MK45 5LL ENGLAND (!) All my best Paul P.S. Many bands can rock, but few bands can rock and roll! [Remember when trading videotapes, remember that there's two formats: PAL (Europe) and NTSC (North America). Make sure that you have a player that can read what is being sent to you or have a place where you can have it converted. - m@] From: Drgnfly51@aol.com Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 01:20:14 EDT Okay, is this the part where I spill my guts? It was a boring Friday night a friend said pick a direction, I said east so we drove from Columbus, OH to Washington, DC that night. On the trip we must have heard " I'll be You" about 18 billion times. I had no choice, I became a fan. Upon returning to Columbus I had to hunt down a copy of "Don't Tell a Soul" (because nobody was playing it in Columbus!) which I promptly played to tatters. I've been hooked ever since. I've gotten friends and family hooked. It's like a sickness I'm telling you! Well, I think I've hit my limit on verbosity. Thank you for posting lyrics as that's one of those 'Mats things that's always driven me nuts... Date: Wed, 23 Jun 1999 16:54:55 +0800 From: Meyer I was walking by my local grocery store here in Beijing last week when the proprietor, a wire-haired middle-aged woman, smiled and told me she got a new box of CDs in. What often happens here is that Target, HMV and other chains somehow get their return boxes of cut-outs sold in China. Maybe somebody steals them off a truck, or maybe there's a legitimate market for it, I don't know. But I can buy CDs for 10 yuan ($1, or the price of a Big Mac here), so I'm happy. I wandered into her store and flipped through the box of music when, lo, the All for Nothing CD appeared. I have been in China the last four years and though I've been able to amass Paul's solo work, the early Twin/Tone stuff and even a Slim Dunlap album, I had no idea a new release had come out -- and a double disc, at that. So I concealed my glee and bargained the price down and headed home immediately to pour over the liner notes and listen to the B-sides. (Turns out, that's the only disc that was in there.) What a great afternoon. My Chinese girlfriend even got into it; "Beer for Breakfast" did the trick. This was all sometime during the protests/riots going on down at the Embassy here over the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. I went to another music store through a crowd of university students singing and chanting "Blood for blood," only to meet a young kid with long hair who wanted to know if I ever saw Soul Asylum live. Picked up "Let it Be" on tape from him . . . So I'm a native Minneapolitan who discovered the Mats through my step-brother, who used to "live" with Bob (and I use that word loosely, as he is still recovering from the addictions that killed Bob). My first album was Tim, which I bought at the old Great American Music outlet at Lake and Hennepin. I got it the day after seeing them play SNL, which my step-brother told me I had to watch. I only could keep awake to see one song, "Kiss Me on the Bus." I thought they were saying "butt" and to a 14-year-old, that was pretty cool, or at least a nice break from spinning The Unforgettable Fire again. I remember being very disappointed in the cover art. It looked cheap and goofy. What was with those tube/arch things, and who was shielding his eyes, and why? U2 had glossy shots of castles and stuff . . . this was something different. Of course, the music rocked. I stayed hooked through the next disc and used to drive around wondering what came after "Jesus rides beside me." I never could get that line. In high school I worked at the Record Shop when Don't Tell a Soul came out (again, bad cover art). It was part of a store promotion called "Buy it and Try it." If you didn't like it, you could return it for a credit for another album. Previous selections were Edie Brickell and a Sinead O'Connor; no one returned those. But that first couple of weeks after the album came out, a lot of teens were returning it. I assumed they had simply taped it. That's what I did, though not the whole thing. It wasn't until I went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that I understood exactly what the Mats were or what they meant to people. To me, they were a band that didn't get played enough on local radio but that you would always see playing around town or at Northern Lights, in the same vein as Soul Asylum or Husker Du or the Gear Daddies or Jayhawks or Lamont Cranston . . . and so on. The Mats were like an adjective used in Reader/City Pages previews of First Ave. acts; I went and saw Social Distortion for the first time because someone wrote that they were an "LA Mats." (They weren't, but it was a hell of a show.) When I got to Madison, though, the Mats' albums choked jukeboxes and boomed out of apartment speakers. People talked about them. It was weird. I didn't really understand it. So then I started listening to the lyrics, and well, there you go. Many events of my life have involved them. The first article I wrote for the Badger Herald, a campus daily, was a review of All Shook Down. I got a free poster of the cover when I bought the CD. I wish I still had that. The review was poorly done. I didn't even know that not all of them played on it. The editor wrote that in. A year later, after I learned how to write, when I became editor, I invoked their name as much as I could, urging, pleading people to buy their music. (I skipped the Grant Park show thinking it would be too crowded. Dumb.) I had a weekly column called The Mouth, and it always contained a reference to the band. Seeing Paul live at the R&R Station was a blast. He came out with a big red polka-dot bow tie on and did "Turning Japanese." I interviewed Social D not too long after that and Mike Ness, the singer, was shocked to hear that someone had compared them to the Replacements. He had recently gone on the wagon. I also saw Bash n' Pop that year. What happened to that? My best friend's brother, Dan, only has one nipple now after being hit by a drunk driver as he walked out of an 80s Mats show in Madison. The car dragged him and scraped one clean off. He still swears it was an awesome show. Once I was in a movie theatre in Seville, Spain. I was about to watch Home Alone (merely for the listening practice). I had on a Mats T-shirt. A Spanish kid my age turned around before the movie started and said, in Spanish, "The Replacements. That's Winona Ryder's favorite band, no?" Spanish radio played them regularly, way more than Twin Cities radio ever did. "Valentine" was in the rotation a lot there. I used their songs in teaching poetry both at high schools in the States and colleges in China. "Nobody" is the most popular for students, followed by "Skyway." They tell stories and have an ambiguity that's not too hard to figure out, but fun when you do. Last month I went to London and had stuff to do at Oxford. When I told people I was from Minneapolis, they'd say, "Isn't that where that famous band is from?" I'd say Prince, but that wasn't it. One student from Sweden actually mentioned Winona Ryder again. The Replacements have been a big part of my life, as is true for anyone reading this. They introduced me, in a roundabout way, to Memphis, to Big Star, to Television. A girl in college actually wrote me a note that said that if no one was on my canvas . . . Someone already was. They have accompanied me on countless roadtrips and many many flights in dozens of countries. When I joined Peace Corps and was leaving for China, I could only bring a big duffel bag of stuff. The first thing I packed was my Mats tapes. I'm a writer living in China. I write articles for newspapers, guidebooks and am working on a book of my own about experiences here. While in London, I was so happy to see "Suicaine" at a listening post in Virgin and HMV. I stood and listened to the whole thing and liked it pretty much. My dad sent it to me for my birthday and I play it regularly. It's a very nice album that sounds very little like the Paul I grew up with, and that's nice too. I wish "Best Thing That Never Happened" was faster . . . much faster. The Minneapolis press was kind to it, which hasn't been the case with Mould or Soul Asylum. This summer I return back to the States for grad school at Berkeley. I wonder if they listen to the Mats there? Sure they do . . . there are pockets of fans everywhere. It's funny. It's just a band. From: andy@ajrumble.freeserve.co.uk Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 14:09:20 +0100 I'm a 16 year old student from Hampshire, England studying for A-levels (like a high school diploma) in psychology, computing, maths and philosophy. I first started listening to the 'mats about a year ago when I brought the 'All for nothing' compilation. I fell in love with the music on the first listen, since then I have been searching for albums, live recordings etc. with no luck until last week when on my way to Earl's court to watch REM I found 'Let it be'. I am currently listening to 'Unsatisfied' as I write this. Basically the mats have meant a lot to me since I started listening they have accompanied some of the happy times in my life (leaving secondary school with 11 passes) and the sad ones (girls I fancy getting boyfriends). Anyway I am going to end this letter now with a request for any live recordings or T-shirts people can sell to me. Andrew Rumble Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 22:07:37 -0700 From: jlo I don't really remember how I got into The Replacements - I was working at a cafe and it just seemed everyone would start singing a song when a particular lyric came up. The first time I saw them live was in Berkeley, CA at the Berkeley Square. Hmm...I think it would have to be 1986 or so, I believe LET IT BE had either just come out or was about to (sorry, long term memory's going). I wore these blue sorta tights thing with a black dress. I thought I was cool but for some reason the blue tights raised the ire of the crowd. All night it was like "move blue tights", "outta my way blue tights" and then when I was leaving the club someone yelled "blue tights" from a car and then threw a bottle at me. No harm done, and I still loved my blue tights. Despite the aggro. fashion incident the whole live thing was completely fun - other words or sentences fail me. It may not be the most brilliant thing to say ('fun') but I think that's part of the Replacements brilliance - profundity in simplicity. Let it Be rocks and if memory serves me correct Hootenanny was the best album to get drunk to. Joye Portland, OR _____________________________________________________________________________ II. RATTLE AND HUM From: LADolqueist@SWIDLAW.com Forwarded by: JohnFA2@aol.com Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 10:33:17 EDT No it's not a the long overdue VH-1 "Behind the Music" on the 'Mats.... this is what we get in lieu of a tour. http://www.mtv.com/news/headlines/990524/story1.html WESTERBERG PLANS DOCUMENTARY ON LATEST SOLO EFFORT Former Replacements frontman and current solo artist Paul Westerberg has captured the making of his latest album, "Suicane Gratifaction," on film and is piecing together a short documentary on the subject. Westerberg has hooked up with Grammy-nominated filmmaker Ondi Timoner for the project, which will also feature footage shot by Don Was, who co-produced the album. Westerberg's camp says that the film will feature candid interviews, as well as footage of Westerberg toiling on his home turf of Minneapolis. There's no news yet about the distribution of the film, but we'll keep you posted. _____________________________________________________________________________ III. DON'T BUY OR SELL Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 12:09:47 -0500 From: Tony Buechler Subject: Mats/Paul MP3's Here is just a suggestion since we had the posting of the link to the 33rd of July MP3 last issue. Why don't we thrwart the bootleggers and encode most of the Paul/Mats rarities in MP3 and trade them amongst ourselves? There are lots of b-sides/rarities that frankly are too hard to get a decent copy of on cassette these days and we won’t be hurting Paul or the band since we buy all of the official releases on top of trying to get expensive import bootlegs. I say if you have some rare ‘Mats stuff, encode it and post the links to the Skyway! Tony ---------------------------------------------------------------- | Tony Buechler |Webmaster of: | | tb8@bigfoot.com |http://www.mellencamp.com | | tony@mellencamp.com |http://www.wonderdrug.net | | Freelance Webmaster based in |http://www.bigfoot.com/~tb8 | | Celestine Indiana |http://www.vitaminw.com | ---------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark_Timmins@bdhq.bd.com Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 09:25:54 -0400 Subject: The Fans Hit Back CD Matt was kind enough last month to promote the compilation CD I put together featuring 22 original songs by 11 //Skyway\\ bands. I lent a copy to a 40-something colleague of mine who grew up in Memphis and knows nothing about the Replacements; unprompted by me, he said it reminded him a lot of Big Star, who used to get a fair amount of airplay in Memphis in the 70's. If you'd like to know more about the CD, feel free to email me. Rob Stevens of SEP, if you are out there, send me an email so I can get you your CD's! Thanks. -Mark Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 22:51:01 -0400 From: Brett Schwartz Subject: LUSH AND GREEN Can anybody help me out? I would like to learn how to play the chords to "Lush and Green." I'm not very good at figuring songs out on my own. If anyone knows it and would like to send me the chords, I would be grateful. Thanks! -Brett Schwartz fin. ________________________________________________________________________________ The //Skyway\\: The Replacements Mailing List (digest only) http://www.novia.net/~matt/sky/skyway.html Matt Tomich | 117 Green Street | Chapel Hill NC 27516 | USA ________________________________________________________________________________ They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. -Carl W. Buechner