The Replacements – Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (Deluxe Edition) (1981/2021) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

The Replacements – Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (Deluxe Edition) (1981/2021)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 03:47:10 minutes | 4,61 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Ryko – Rhino

The Replacements’ 1981 Twin/Tone Records debut, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, heralded the Minneapolis-based band’s competing tendencies toward indelible genius and reckless abandon. With now classic songs including ‘Takin’ A Ride,’ ‘Shiftless When Idle,’ ‘Customer’ and ‘Johnny’s Gonna Die,’ the ‘Mats’ legendary founding line-up of lead singer/songwriter and guitarist Paul Westerberg, Chris Mars (drums) and brothers Bob and Tommy Stinson (lead guitar and bass, respectively) unleashed a shambling, dynamic sound. Loose, live, and brimming with energy, Sorry Ma… is a lesson in chaos.

The 40th anniversary of Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash is celebrated this fall with a 4CD/1LP set that offers a remarkable document of The Replacements’ formative years. Of the set’s 100 tracks, 67 have never been released before, including the first demos the band recorded in early 1980, as well as a professionally captured concert from January 1981. Along with a newly remastered version of the original album, it also uncovers many unreleased rough mixes, alternate takes, and demos from the band’s first 18 months together. The LP included in the set, titled Deliberate Noise, presents an alternate version of the original album using these previously unreleased tracks.

Funny thing about The Replacements; after every album, a certain percentage of their fans could be counted on to complain that they’d changed for the worse, betraying the true spirit heard on their previous album. Their debut Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash reissued here in a 100 track, 5-disc version that includes many unreleased demos, outtakes, alternate takes and a complete live show, is where that dynamic began. This is as close to a punk rock album as the band ever made which means those who despise the later, poppier, work, like the penultimate Don’t Tell a Soul, for example, and feel the real Replacements died when Bob Stinson left the band, consider Sorry Ma to be their grail. And yet, despite the band’s rhythm section of drummer Chris Mars and 14-year-old bassist Tommy Stinson being supremely tight, and Bob Stinson’s schizo-guitar thunder—the band’s original foundation—casting chords and notes in every direction, Sorry Ma is also where singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg’s songs and evolving vocals first become the star.

From the opening rush of “Takin’ a Ride,” Sorry Ma, recorded between 1980-81 at rudimentary Blackberry Way studios in Minneapolis for Peter Jesperson’s Twin/Tone label, is riffy and raw. Based around Westerberg’s guitar artifacts that emphasize volume and abandon, tunes like “Don’t Ask Why,” and “I’m in Trouble,” are pure blasts of punk-leaning hard rock energy suffused with the band’s insouciance and the irrepressible pugnacity they’d built up over years in their basement rehearsal space. The spark of the Replacements’ bright future to come is also present, particularly in their first less-than-headlong-rush near-ballad, “Johnny’s Gonna Die.” Written for one of their earliest heroes Johnny Thunders—who was indeed doomed—this is where Westerberg dips his toe into pop songwriting for the first time. Thunders, who Westerberg has admitted was an early model for his songwriting, is alluded to in numerous musical gestures on the album like the grand reprise ending of “Rattlesnake.”

In addition to a band coming into its own musically, Sorry Ma is also audible evidence of the determination among these four dogged, obsessive underdogs to succeed. In the liner notes by co-producer and journalist Bob Mehr, who won a Grammy for his notes for 2019’s Dead Man’s Pop, an earlier entry in this series of Replacements reissues, Tommy Stinson pegs the band’s state of mind: “We basically became the gang of hoodlums that didn’t have anything else to do. We weren’t thieves and hoodlums per se. But we had a hoodlum mentality in terms of, let’s go into the basement and make a bunch of racket.” For Westerberg, however, there was a lot more to it than just creating a din: “…it took me a long time to find guys who had no other fucking options in life. I needed desperation. ‘Cause that’s where I was coming from.” Sonically, the original album is heard here in a cleaner, more dynamically rich new remaster that still can’t completely rescue the canned sound of “I Bought a Headache,” which was recorded during a 1980 tryout concert for Twin/Tone co-owner, Paul Stark. The collection of demos on the second disc is unusually telling as Westerberg works on song ideas, gaining confidence, getting better even in shards that never made a Replacements album like the “She’s Firm,” “Get on the Stick” and “Raised in the City.” There are also flashes of the band’s infamous sense of humor like the shave-and-a-haircut coda to the demo of “I Hate Music.” These early recordings even include a taste of the hours the band spent rehearsing in the basement of the Stinson house as Westerberg flips into lounge singer mode in “Basement Jam.”

Confirmation that this band was growing in material and professionalism is provided by a muscular but surprisingly disciplined nearly 30-song live show taken from a radio broadcast recorded in January 1981 at Minneapolis club, The 7th Street Entry as the band was finishing Sorry Ma. Although they’re famed for their unhinged live shows where the music often changed on the fly, this concert is audible evidence of how serious they could be when it counted. Even the covers of Slade’s “My Town” and The Kinks’ “All Day and All of the Night” are restrained. Throughout this pivotal, revealing package there’s a sense of a band discovering itself, testing its powers, finding a method to the madness. As Chris Mars marvels in the liner notes: “We’d just kinda listen back and say, “Hey, that was great. How did we do that?” – Robert Baird

Tracklist:
1-01. The Replacements – Takin a Ride (2021 Remaster) (02:23)
1-02. The Replacements – Careless (2021 Remaster) (01:08)
1-03. The Replacements – Customer (2021 Remaster) (01:29)
1-04. The Replacements – Hangin Downtown (2021 Remaster) (02:07)
1-05. The Replacements – Kick Your Door Down (2021 Remaster) (03:12)
1-06. The Replacements – Otto (2021 Remaster) (02:09)
1-07. The Replacements – I Bought a Headache (2021 Remaster) (02:25)
1-08. The Replacements – Rattlesnake (2021 Remaster) (01:47)
1-09. The Replacements – I Hate Music (2021 Remaster) (01:49)
1-10. The Replacements – Johnny’s Gonna Die (2021 Remaster) (03:28)
1-11. The Replacements – Shiftless When Idle (2021 Remaster) (02:19)
1-12. The Replacements – More Cigarettes (2021 Remaster) (01:20)
1-13. The Replacements – Don’t Ask Why (2021 Remaster) (01:57)
1-14. The Replacements – Somethin to Dü (2021 Remaster) (01:41)
1-15. The Replacements – I’m in Trouble (2021 Remaster) (02:09)
1-16. The Replacements – Love You Till Friday (2021 Remaster) (01:53)
1-17. The Replacements – Shutup (2021 Remaster) (01:23)
1-18. The Replacements – Raised in the City (2021 Remaster) (01:59)
1-19. The Replacements – If Only You Were Lonely (2021 Remaster) (02:35)
2-01. The Replacements – Try Me (Demo) (02:22)
2-02. The Replacements – She’s Firm (Demo) (02:33)
2-03. The Replacements – Lookin for Ya (Demo) (02:18)
2-04. The Replacements – Raised in the City (Demo) (2021 Remaster) (02:16)
2-05. The Replacements – Shutup (Demo) (2021 Remaster) (01:37)
2-06. The Replacements – Don’t Turn Me Down (Demo) (2021 Remaster) (01:57)
2-07. The Replacements – Shape Up (Demo) (2021 Remaster) (02:11)
2-08. The Replacements – I Hate Music (Studio Demo) (02:01)
2-09. The Replacements – Careless (Studio Demo) (01:20)
2-10. The Replacements – Shutup (Studio Demo) (01:31)
2-11. The Replacements – Otto (Studio Demo) (02:07)
2-12. The Replacements – Get on the Stick (Studio Demo) (2021 Remaster) (01:38)
2-13. The Replacements – Oh Baby (Studio Demo) (2021 Remaster) (01:18)
2-14. The Replacements – Raised in the City (Studio Demo) (02:10)
2-15. The Replacements – Shiftless When Idle (Studio Demo) (02:19)
2-16. The Replacements – More Cigarettes (Studio Demo) (01:30)
2-17. The Replacements – You Ain’t Gotta Dance (Studio Demo) (2021 Remaster) (02:24)
2-18. The Replacements – Don’t Turn Me Down (Studio Demo) (01:55)
2-19. The Replacements – Rattlesnake (Basement Version) (01:53)
2-20. The Replacements – Takin a Ride (Basement Version) (02:33)
2-21. The Replacements – Lie About Your Age (Basement Version) (03:04)
2-22. The Replacements – We’ll Get Drunk / Customer (Basement Version) (04:56)
2-23. The Replacements – Johnny Fast (Basement Version) (01:53)
2-24. The Replacements – Mistake (Basement Version) (02:58)
2-25. The Replacements – Basement Jam (Rehearsal) (2021 Remaster) (03:30)
3-01. The Replacements – Careless (Alternate Version) (01:12)
3-02. The Replacements – Takin a Ride (Alternate Version) (02:22)
3-03. The Replacements – Shutup (Alternate Version) (01:30)
3-04. The Replacements – Otto (Alternate Mix) (02:12)
3-05. The Replacements – Raised in the City (Alternate Version) (02:08)
3-06. The Replacements – Rattlesnake (Alternate Mix) (01:56)
3-07. The Replacements – Love You Till Friday (Alternate Version) (02:03)
3-08. The Replacements – Customer (Alternate Version) (2021 Remaster) (01:31)
3-09. The Replacements – Somethin to Dü (Alternate Version) (01:48)
3-10. The Replacements – Johnny’s Gonna Die (Alternate Version) (03:16)
3-11. The Replacements – I’m in Trouble (Alternate Version) (02:10)
3-12. The Replacements – I Hate Music (Alternate Version) (01:51)
3-13. The Replacements – We’ll Get Drunk (02:30)
3-14. The Replacements – More Cigarettes (Alternate Mix) (01:24)
3-15. The Replacements – Get Lost (Instrumental) (02:27)
3-16. The Replacements – Hangin Downtown (Alternate Version) (02:05)
3-17. The Replacements – Shutup (Alternate Version 2) (01:18)
3-18. The Replacements – Somethin to Dü (Alternate Version 2) (01:37)
3-19. The Replacements – Don’t Ask Why (Alternate Mix) (01:53)
3-20. The Replacements – Kick Your Door Down (Alternate Mix) (03:09)
3-21. The Replacements – Love You Till Friday (Alternate Mix) (02:09)
3-22. The Replacements – Johnny’s Gonna Die (Alternate Mix) (03:33)
3-23. The Replacements – Like You (Outtake) (2021 Remaster) (01:44)
3-24. The Replacements – Get Lost (Outtake) (2021 Remaster) (02:26)
3-25. The Replacements – A Toe Needs a Shoe (Outtake) (2021 Remaster) (02:10)
3-26. The Replacements – You’re Pretty When You’re Rude (Solo Home Demo) (02:49)
3-27. The Replacements – If Only You Were Lonely (Working Version) (Solo Home Demo) (04:18)
3-28. The Replacements – Bad Worker (Solo Home Demo) (2021 Remaster) (03:56)
3-29. The Replacements – You’re Getting Married (Solo Home Demo) (2021 Remaster) (04:35)
4-01. The Replacements – Careless (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:21)
4-02. The Replacements – Takin a Ride (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:29)
4-03. The Replacements – Trouble Boys (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:35)
4-04. The Replacements – Hangin Downtown (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:34)
4-05. The Replacements – Like You (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:52)
4-06. The Replacements – Off Your Pants (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:42)
4-07. The Replacements – Get Lost (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:39)
4-08. The Replacements – Excuse Me (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:17)
4-09. The Replacements – Customer (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:06)
4-10. The Replacements – I Wanna Be Loved (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:11)
4-11. The Replacements – Mistake (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (03:52)
4-12. The Replacements – My Town (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:24)
4-13. The Replacements – Shiftless When Idle (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:58)
4-14. The Replacements – Oh Baby (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:52)
4-15. The Replacements – I’m in Trouble (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:33)
4-16. The Replacements – Johnny’s Gonna Die / All by Myself (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (05:06)
4-17. The Replacements – More Cigarettes (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:49)
4-18. The Replacements – Otto (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:23)
4-19. The Replacements – Don’t Ask Why (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:20)
4-20. The Replacements – Slow Down (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:37)
4-21. The Replacements – Somethin to Dü (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:00)
4-22. The Replacements – Love You Till Friday (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:10)
4-23. The Replacements – Raised in the City (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:12)
4-24. The Replacements – Rattlesnake (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:15)
4-25. The Replacements – All Day and All of the Night (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (02:53)
4-26. The Replacements – I Hate Music (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:48)
4-27. The Replacements – Shutup (Live at the 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis, MN, 1/23/81) (01:43)

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