The Replacements For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986

A live album from the Replacements is a must-have no matter what.

Disc: 1

  1. Hayday (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  2. Color Me Impressed (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  3. Dose Of Thunder (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  4. Fox On The Run (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  5. Hold My Life (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  6. I Will Dare (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  7. Favorite Thing (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  8. Unsatisfied (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  9. Can't Hardly Wait (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  10. Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  11. Takin A Ride (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  12. Bastards Of Young (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  13. Kiss Me On The Bus (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  14. Black Diamond (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

 

Disc: 2

  1. Johnny's Gonna Die (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  2. Otto (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  3. I'm In Trouble (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  4. Left Of The Dial (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  5. God Damn Job (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  6. Answering Machine (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  7. Waitress In The Sky (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  8. Take Me Down To The Hospital (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  9. Gary's Got A Boner (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  10. If Only You Were Lonely (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  11. Baby Strange (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  12. Hitchin' A Ride (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  13. Nowhere Man (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  14. Go (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

  15. Fuck School (Live at Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ, 2/4/86)

There are twenty more of these out there that I would love to hear, if not a thousand. I would like something definitive from their last tour and I would really like to see that documentary one day.

The Queen is Dead

This is long overdue:

The Smiths have announced a ‘Super Deluxe Edition’ of their iconic album ‘The Queen Is Dead’.

The iconic Manchester band teased the release last month, after the official Smiths Facebook page posted an archive image of a coffin being carried, along with the caption: “#TQID 16.06.17″

As Stereogum points out via Morrissey fan-forum Morrissey-Solo, the re-issue was available to pre-order via Amazon’s UK store, but has since been taken down. Available as both a two CD box set and a CD/DVD set, the first disc of the release features a fully-restored version of ‘The Queen Is Dead’, while the second features a number of b-sides and rarities.

The full tracklisting for ‘The Queen Is Dead’ Super Deluxe Edition is as follows:

Disc 1
01 “The Queen Is Dead” (2017 Master)
02 “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” (2017 Master)
03 “I Know It’s Over” (2017 Master)
04 “Never Had No One Ever” (2017 Master)
05 “Cemetery Gates” (2017 Master)
06 “Bigmouth Strikes Again” (2017 Master)
07 “The Boy With The Thorn In His Side” (2017 Master)
08 “Vicar In a Tutu” (2017 Master)
09 “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” (2017 Master)
10 “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” (2017 Master)

Disc 2
01 “The Queen Is Dead” (Full Version)
02 “Frankly, Mr. Shankly” (Demo)
03 “I Know It’s Over” (Demo)
04 “Never Had No One Ever” (Demo)
05 “Cemetery Gates” (Demo)
06 “Bigmouth Strikes Again” (Demo)
07 “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” (Demo)
08 “The Boy With the Thorn In His Side” (Demo Mix)
09 “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” (Take 1)
10 “Rubber Ring” (Single B-Side) [2017 Master]
11 “Asleep” (Single B-Side) [2017 Remaster]
12 “Money Changes Everything” (Single B-Side) [2017 Master]
13 “Unloveable” (Single B-Side) [2017 Master]

Okay, I'll take it, but I do have numerous complaints to air because that is my role in all of this.

Two discs is not exactly a "super deluxe reissue" or a really special edition. At a minimum, you release this on vinyl and you include something along the lines of a special book or something to tell the story of the album. A reissue of the poster that featured all four band members in front of Salford Lads Club--that would be fantastic.

I think they should have included at least one live album's worth of material from that era. I know that we have "Rank" out there, and it's a great album, but I think what we need is a different show recorded during the tour for this album. But that would hinge upon whether any of those shows were recorded in a salvageable way--you never know. There are tons of bootlegs out there, and I'm sure there's something worthwhile, so I would have boosted this to at least three CDs. A fourth CD of rarities, perhaps? BBC Sessions, and the like? That's where I would have gone. Something for the obsessives.

A War Upon the Arts is Brewing

One of the inherent dangers of normalizing the Trump Regime is that it will be possible to attack the arts when they reflect the evil that has been unleash on America:

An inflatable pig with Donald Trump's face on the side. Screens that show doctored images of the President throwing up. Photos of Trump with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a big baby, and as Hitler.

They're just a few of the images music fans can catch on Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters' 54-date North American tour, "Us + Them," which kicked off on May 26 and coincides with the release of Water's first studio album in 25 years, "Is This the Life We Really Want?"

The political nature of his show, Waters told CNN, is a calculated and defiant response to what he calls the "charade" of the American presidency.

In an interview with Michael Smerconish, the 73-year-old Waters said he has no regrets about turning parts of his 2 1/2-hour performance into what the CNN host described as just "as much an anti-Trump rally as a rock concert."

"It would be a lot easier to be on tour if I wasn't doing any of this, if I didn't have opinions," said Waters, a longtime Trump critic.

The positions that Waters has taken are no different than they were in the early 1980s. He is an artist who has consistently skewered politics and fascism and cults of personality. The danger for Waters is that his stance on Israel can be weaponized against him. The Trump people could easily paint him as an anti-Semite (quite a few people have tried over the years) and the media will probably let them get away with it.

Why would Waters sit down with a turd like Michael Smerconish? I have no idea. But the demonization of anyone who uses art to explain the damage Trump has done to America is well underway.

Belly

Tanya Donelly says that there might be a new Belly album on the way:

We’ve only recently hit the midway point of 2017, but here’s a good reason to look all the way into next year: There’s a good chance we’ll be getting a new album from Belly. 

The reunited Boston alt-rock band — who returned to the stage exactly a year ago in Newport, Rhode Island — have announced they are headed back into the studio in coming weeks to record a new album. The as-yet-untitled LP will be Belly’s first in 23 years, the follow-up to 1995 sophomore record King. 

“We very much appreciate all the patience regarding the new Belly material we’ve now promised several times!” they band writes on its website. “We really have been busy writing and demo’ing new songs since the conclusion of the reunion tour last year, and we’re happy to reveal that we’ll be going into the studio in just a couple of weeks with our old friend Paul Q. Kolderie working the knobs and faders. It is our hope that we’ll have a new Belly record ready for release sometime in 2018, and in the meantime we’re laying the ground-work for some touring to coincide!”

More touring, new music--this is what good new sounds like. We need more of this. Damn, I can't believe how depressed I've been lately. It's as if this is the lift a lot of people needed, myself included.