Skips A Beat To Say Good Night

"Soil Samples" was a promo-only series launched by Warner Brothers in the early '90s, usually involving colored vinyl 7"-ers limited to 1000 or so, no doubt to capitalize on the brisk underground demand for Strangulated Beatoffs and Thrown Ups 45s. And what could be better than a brilliant and obscure Bash & Pop song, right? If Ron Wood still needs a bass player for the Faces reunion, he should look no further than Tommy Stinson.

I've never bothered listening to the flip side, His Name Is Alive, which is some kind of 4AD suck, I'd imagine. Feel free to go ahead and tell me I'm wrong.


Bash & Pop -

"Harboring a Fugitive"

(this file is now listen-only)

Sometimes I Think It's True

While Bash & Pop were practically soaked in the Faces and the Stones ("Friday Night Is Killing Me" is the best 98 cents you'll ever spend on Amazon, I swear), Tommy Stinson's next project, Perfect, dropped almost all hints of the 70's and barrelled along with a more 90's Replacements-style of rock.

"When Squirrels Play Chicken" came out on Peter Jesperson's Medium Cool label, which was a subsidiary of Restless, which became a subsidiary of Enigma, which was a subsidiary of Capitol or Warner Brothers or Dunkin Donuts or something and certainly not a real record label. What you see above is the "advance copy" that I got back in '96, which I've cleverly retouched to get rid of all the marks that were on it (must've dropped it in a puddle). I've never even seen a copy of this CD with the actual artwork, although if you want to see what it looks like I guess you could just Google it. (Alright, alright-- I'll do it.)

One of the funny things I remember about this CD is when Perfect played at Toad's Place in New Haven not long after it came out; the so-called music writer for the Waterbury newspaper at the time, Kellie Lambert, must've mistaken the CD title as being a part of the band's name, because in her article she kept referring to them as "Perfect When Squirrels Play Chicken". Hey, that's how I remember it, at least. I think this was also the year that Kellie asked people to send in their personal highlights for a "year in review" article, and as a joke a couple of the guys from Nevertheless wrote that Tori Amos joined them onstage at a show in New Haven to sing "Love Will Keep Us Together", and the paper actually printed it.




Perfect -

"Makes Me Happy"

"Sometimes"

"Don't Need To Know Where"

(these files are now listen-only)

Never Aim To Please

For someone to whom The Replacements were the primary gateway drug into the indie/punk world and whose first fanzine (Run It) was named after a Replacements song, the break up of The Replacements meant as little to me as anyone. I'd stopped paying close attention to the band years earlier; I sold my copy of "Tim" almost immediately, and only begrudgingly bought "Pleased To Meet Me" (a great fucking album, it turned out) because it was on cassette and I was looking for something to listen to on a train ride into Manhattan later that day. Other than bothering to stand in front of the TV for a few seconds whenever "I'll Be You" or "When It Began" made an infrequent appearance on MTV, I almost completely lost track of what The Replacements were up to for a couple of years.

When the post-'Mats solo albums started coming out, I didn't jump into buying mode right away-- still feeling a little burnt, I guess-- but what came out was thankfully way better than those final miserable Replacements records (though I sorta made friends with "Don't Tell A Soul" a couple of years ago, oddly enough). "14 Songs", the first two or three Chris Mars records, the two Perfect CDs and "Village Gorilla Head"-- all of them well worth owning. And then there's Tommy Stinson's Bash & Pop: one of the first, and most likely the best of any of the post-'Mats output.

Jim Dickinson said "Tommy Stinson is rock 'n roll", and "Friday Night Is Killing Me" is an awesome rock 'n roll record from start to finish. I have this thing where the songs that Keith Richards sings on the Stones records usually end up becoming my favorite ones, and there are songs on "Friday Night" that, sight unseen, you'd swear are Keith Richards playing, or Ronnie Wood; listen to "One More Time", and you'll see what I mean.

The songs on here are great hard power pop/rock, I love the way Tommy sings, the lyrics hit all the right spots, and the band sounds top notch. Why this record didn't find more success is totally beyond me, but whatever. Screw everyone else. Each of the five songs I'm posting here is a 10 out of 10, as far as I'm concerned. ("Fast & Hard" is maybe only an 8 out of 10, but the line "I played it as fast as I could/You just heard it slow" earns it the two extra points.) Years later, this is still one of those CDs that I go back and listen to every so often and it still sounds just as good as the first time I heard it.




Bash & Pop -

"Never Aim To Please"

"Loose Ends"

"One More Time"

"Fast & Hard"

"Friday Night (Is Killing Me)"

(these files are now listen-only)