(Twin/Tone TTR 8441)
Released 1984
I Will Dare
Favorite Thing
We're Comin' Out
Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out
Androgynous
Black Diamond
Unsatisfied
Seen Your Video
Gary's Got A Boner
Sixteen Blue
Answering Machine
The Mats were one of those classic combos whose music, looks and personalities fit together perfectly, the stuff of which legends are made (Ira Robbins (presumably), Trouser Press Record Guide)
In January, 1985, just a week or so into the new year, I picked up a paperback "year-in-music" for 1984, published by Rolling Stone. I have long forgotten the title, and a web-search yielded no results. But, suffice it to say, pick it up I did.
And in said book, there were several mentions of some new bands that had bubbled up out of middle America. Bands that I was not aware of, not, at that particular time, being a regular college radio listener (that came later). Among them were The Meat Puppets, Jason and the Scorchers, The Minutemen, and two from Minneapolis - Husker Du, and The Replacements.
Intrigued by what I read, I began to seek them out. There was only one way, in those pre-internet daze, to hear new music. You hadda go out and buy the records. And so, armed with some remaining Xmas money, a few weeks later, I had Zen Arcade, Double Nickels On the Dime, and Let It Be under my arm.
All of these albums have a story with me. And all of them became favorites (both albums and bands) (Jason and the Scorchers became a favorite, too). But this is Let It Be's story, and so I will tell it.
First impression: it was a weird mish-mash of an album. It kicked off with an odd, jangling, shuffling toon that couldn't be called "punk" (weren't these guys supposed to be a punk band?), but had way too much edge to be called "pop". It had a couple incredibly hooky fast rocker that would put all future "pop-punk" to shame (and again, way too much edge to fall into that not-yet-invented category anyway)(one of them was about a tonsillectomy), a hardcore number that turned into a moody piano piece before turning into avant-garde noise, a piano ballad about cross-dressing which for years I took only as a joke, a Kiss cover, a sort-of Faces-meets-The Ramones rocker about an embarassing hard-on, a mostly-instrumental attack on MTV, and three numbers that seemed to have beamed in from some alternate-universe AOR ("classic rock" that is, young'uns), where they undoubtedly sat in heavy rotation next to "Behind Blue Eyes" and "Free Bird" and "Layla", and they kicked with the same magic those aforementioned did before you heard them fifty-bazillion times.
In other words, this was a very odd album. And frankly, I didn't think it was all that good. For some time, I had a mind to just toss those three definite winners onto one of those mix-tapes I was always compiling of singles, b-sides, and good album tracks off of otherwise duff albums.
But something dissuaded me.
I kept coming back to Let It Be.
I used to stare at the album (the great albums have covers worth staring at). That odd, understated photo of the four dudes on the roof. The back cover with some scattered photos of the band members. But nothing to tell you who was who. All I knew was, they were four guys, not much older than me (I was 19). One of them looked like one of the Mexican-American kids from the wrong side of town who constituted the underclass of my high-school. One was a spiky-haired, snotty looking baby-face. He looked the most rock-star-ish, and I took him for the lead singer, though somehow he didn't quite look right for it. One, the guy looking away from the camera - just-got-outta-bed hair, big nose, skinny ... he looked like ... I dunno. Was he the singer? It didn't add up. Actually, he didn't seem to fit anywhere. Was that him on the back cover, singing into the mic? With his hair slicked down? He seemed indescribable and inscrutable and somehow intimidating. And finally, peering out, was a big, goofy-looking guy. Frankenstein-ian. The kind of guy who gets nicknamed "Moose." On the back cover, he was wearing a grin and a glint that looked, well, almost impish ... but with a heavy dose of malevolence mixed in. This was definitely an odd bunch.
I kept coming back to those three winners ... and oh yes, those were indeed winners - that was clearer every listen. The lyrics were sharp and clever and right. Whoever was playing lead guitar (don't tell me it was the "Moose" guy?!) was one hell of a guitar player. His solo at the end of "Sixteen Blue" picked up where the vox left off and carried the song into the stratosphere. The singing was passionate and right in every way. This was the real deal, baby.
But I couldn't quite understand why, with songs like that, they'd clutter up an album with dumb jokes and throwaways and such (this is not an uncommon attitude when encountering the Mats for the first, or hundredth time).
But I kept coming back. Things began to come clearer. "Favorite Thing" was everything a catchy punk track should be (and had great lyrics). "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out" was a close second even if it was a joke. "We're Comin' Out" kicked off as a hardcore song, but the second half was weird and original and memorable and unexpected (that last is key). "Gary's Got A Boner" might've been dumb but it had drive. The Kiss cover is amusing and at least an honest nod to their roots. "Seen Your Video" really got great the more you listened to it - you sat through the amusing surf-oid instro just to get to the good part - when Westerberg starts screaming "Seen your video! Your phony rock and roll!" in a voice thats all passion and contempt. No greater f.u. has ever been directed to the empty pop and rock of the 80s, and Westerberg, to quote Nine Simone, meant every word of it.
The great albums reveal more secrets with age. I said that for years I thought of "Androgynous" as merely an odd joke. Today, when more and more Amurricans whose gender and preferences are far more fluid and unpredictable than we'd ever imagined back in the Raygun era are out of the closet and challenging the status quo, it seems moving, and true, and prescient, and brave. Paul Westerberg, prescient? Who'da thunk?
I mentioned before that I didn't understand why they would clutter up an album with jokes and throwaways. And that this is not an uncommon attitude for those unsold on the greatness of the Mats. Similarly, there are those who maintain that Let It Be (or, for some, the even more chaotic predecessor, Hootenanny) were the last gasp for the band, before they sold out to the big money and became professional entertainment. I do not share that opinion, but I do understand the perspective. Because, of course, what made them special was exactly the fact that they would put something as dumb as "Gary's Got A Boner" cheek by jowl with something as great as "Sixteen Blue". And even more than that - they'd make you like it that way. In one of the slickest entertainment eras evah, the Mats were willing to dare, to get it half-right, to get it all wrong. For many, that alone was revelatory.
And the fact that they made astonishingly great rock and roll; rock and roll that was clearly influenced by, but not derivative of, the established classiques, "proof that those who missed the '60s could still build something great on the crass and hollow corpse of '70s music" as Ira Robbins (again) put it. Well that just made it all the greater. And maybe the fifth or the twelfth or the twentieth time I put on Let It Be and just let it roll, through the tracks I knew I dug and the tracks I'd initially given a pass but was now digging more and more, and it all came tumbling down again in the roaring/chiming guitars of "Answering Machine," and Paul Westerberg howling out the final lines over and over and over again as his voice cracked and shattered, well I knew I'd found a new love.
