This fall has been a tough one on the wallet, as occasional Pencil Storm contributor Scott Carr said as he opened the new KISS Alive! Box set. I haven’t picked that one up yet, but it’s tempting. What has landed on my porch or at my local record store this fall are four box sets highlighting my favorite eras from some of my favorite-ever bands and artists: Hüsker Dü, Bruce Springsteen, Drive-By Truckers, and The Replacements.
Numero Group has outdone their previous foray into Hüsker-land (Savage Young Dü - 2017) with this 4XLP of live tracks from 1985, their artistic peak, supporting new albums New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig, and working out material that would become Candy Apple Grey. The first 2 LP’s are from the great First Avenue in their hometown of Minneapolis in early `85 as the Flip material was more than taking shape. The next 2 LP’s include tracks from Salt Lake City, Boulder, Long Beach, Newport, and DC (among others). Sound quality ranges from “Holy Smokes, is this great!” to “Pretty good for a bootleg,” but even at it’s most challenging, it’s an easy listen after a half-song ear-adjustment.
If a newbie asked me where to start with Hüsker Dü I probably wouldn’t send them here, but if someone who loves the band hasn’t heard it, well, you’d best get on it, because it’s a great look into what they were like on stage at their most prolific, cohesive, and creative. As a mega-fan since the mid-80’s, it’s not even a question for me. There are rumors of similar releases around their subsequent Warner Brothers years. Keep `em coming, Numero!
GET THE BOX SET HERE (sold-out except digital)
Nebraska has always been my favorite Bruce Springsteen album. It’s Bruce’s too, for whatever that’s worth. I had to work a bit to get into Born to Run, The River, and the rest of the catalog (though I certainly came around), but Nebraska spoke to me right off. The box set was conveniently timed with the polarizing movie Deliver Me From Nowhere, which I am dying to see but haven’t yet, based on the great book by Del Fuegos’ leader Warren Zanes.
In addition to a fantastic remaster of the original LP, there’s an LP of outtakes, a 2025 live-solo-performance of the album, and what I expect most people were especially excited about – Electric Nebraska - with back-in-the-day band arrangements that were shelved for the official release in favor of the bedroom solo demos. There’s also a Blu-Ray of the live set and a great book of photos, liner notes, and lyrics.
Unlike The Miracle Year, I think just about anyone with a passing interest in Bruce would love Electric Nebraska. It doesn’t feel unfinished or half-realized at all. It took Nebraska awhile to garner the respect and place in Bruce folklore that it has, but when it was released, most fans weren’t sure what to make of it, following up The River and Born to Run. One has to wonder if Electric Nebraska would have made a bigger splash at the time. I’m glad things played out as they did, because I’ll still take the original release, but the electric set has been in steady rotation since I got it. The rest of this set is equally great. The Nebraska box comes highly recommended to anyone with an interest in this pivotal era of Springsteen’s career or Bruce fans looking for some unheard rocking versions of these songs.
Athens, Georgia by way of Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers were touring in support of their epic, but very-indie 2001 2LP opus Southern Rock Opera when an unknown kid stepped in to play a few tunes at a house party. Jason Isbell was far from the Grammy-winning household name he is today, but Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and the rest of them saw his talent as he soon joined the band and helped craft what many consider their masterpiece: Decoration Day. Each of the three contributed great songs to the record (Hood’s “My Sweet Annette” and “Sinkhole” and Cooley’s “Sounds Better in the Song” are personal favorites), but Isbell’s title track and his career-defining “Outfit” were standouts. The Truckers were taking that next step, and it was a big one.
What an exciting time that was. It had been a decade since anything that exciting hit my stereo. Not since Nirvana, SUGAR, Superchunk, Afghan Whigs, and the other great bands of the early-90’s alternative boom had I been so excited about, addicted to, and engaged with a new band. Two decades later and on tour today, every third band I share a bill with emulates DBT and Decoration Day to some extent, and I find myself guilty of it as well.
The set includes a 2xLP remix of the original album and a live acoustic set from Athens a few months prior to the release, one of Isbell’s earliest shows with the band. Remixed albums are a polarizing topic, some feeling that it’s a betrayal of the art that was made at the time, but I am all in, especially when it’s a record that I’ve heard a million times. My condition is that the original mix remain available, because, yeah, “of the time” matters, and F.U. George Lucas. Anyhow, the new mix pops and exposes parts previously buried and unheard, breathing new life into it.
The live set is fun, and as an acoustic set, a nice departure, setting itself from other Truckers’ live/legacy releases. It’s not exactly MTV-Unplugged quality, more like a really good audience recording, but a great look into a band entering into its most exciting and prolific era. There’s unworked-out harmonies, incomplete endings, and other to-be-refined elements of the songs that would become Decoration Day, but the material is mostly there, and not too far from where they’d end up.
The accompanying book is beautiful and full of great photos and the amazing artwork of the late, great DBT collaborator Wes Freed. If you are a DBT fan, it’s very unlikely that you aren’t familiar with Decoration Day, but you may or may not be hip to this release. 3/5 of this lineup are not in the band anymore, Isbell is sober and (visually and admittedly) significantly healthier than he was back then, and the Truckers have gone on to release many more fantastic albums, but Decoration Day will always hold a special place in fans’ hearts.
Speaking of bands’ landmark albums, “what a time that was!”, and fan favorites-revisited, the next installment of The Replacements’ Deluxe Editions dropped last week with the fantastic Let it Be. It’s their best album (ok, it’s debatable, but that’s a topic for another day), capturing everything that made them great; the goofiness, the silly covers, the visceral, raw performances, the unbridled genius of Bob Stinson, and most notably and most prevalent for the first time: the amazing songs of Paul Westerberg. Let it Be has it all. `Mats fans like me were excited for this one.
The set includes a remaster of the album, opting not to remix as they did with Don’t Tell a Soul and Tim. I think this is the right choice – those two albums suffered from poor, dated mixes and the remixes were amazing, but Let it Be does not suffer from that fate – it sounds like broke dudes tracking loud-as-hell guitars in a house-converted-studio, looking to wrap it up when the beer ran out. I’ve long maintained that Let it Be is the best sounding Replacements album. This remaster, though? Where’s the bass? The record sounds brighter and more in your face, but there’s a distinct lack of bass/low-end in the remaster, and I’m not sure it’s an improvement.
Also included is an album of rarities and a recently surfaced live set from Chicago’s Cubby Bear. A bonus 10” ep has 6 songs form a New Jersey show of the era. The rarities are - consistent with the other sets - interesting for a listen or two, but nothing I would sub in for anything that made the album. Most of them have been floating around internet trading circles and previous reissues for decades; others - alternate versions mostly - are fun, but not a big departure from the album versions.
The Cubby Bear show, while an unknown treasure for hardcore fans, and a fantastic, spirited performance, is the poorest sounding of the official live releases to-date. As I fall into that hardcore fan category (and let’s be honest, who else is buying these things?), I’m cool with it, but I have to wonder if they considered an official remaster/reissue of The Shit Hits the Fans, as released on cassette in 1984. I expect the royalty fees alone would have made that cost-prohibitive (it was a mostly-covers show), but as a relevant part of that era, and sonically superior, it seems it would have been a worthy inclusion here.
The real treasure here is the 10” live ep. The sound is considerably better than the Cubby Bear show and the performance at least as good. “You’re Getting Married,” a seldom played early Westerberg track from a solo set, played by request of manager Peter Jesperson on his birthday, is probably my favorite moment from the whole box. “Hayday” is cowpunked up a bit, perhaps influenced by pals and tour-mates X. “I Will Dare” and “Color Me Impressed” are Westerberg’s vocals at their most raw and best. What a shame Jesperson only had a 30 minute tape and was only able to capture 6 songs, but what a gift that we got them at all.
Replacements’ fans are a spoiled bunch, to be honest. This set follows similar sets for Tim (Let it Bleed), Don’t Tell a Soul (Dead Man’s Pop), Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, and Pleased to Meet Me, leaving only a couple left to do. When we get into the minutiae of complaining about the sound quality of new, unearthed live shows and the lack of excitement generated by never-heard rarities, we need to take a step back to early 1986, before they were on Saturday Night Live, when all we had were the albums, an occasional blurb in Rolling Stone, and, from where I was living at least, a minimum 6-hour drive to catch the band live, and just enjoy what we’re getting here. 17-year old me would kick today’s me in the nuts for such heresy.
Jeremy Porter lives near Detroit, fronts the rock and roll band Jeremy Porter And The Tucos, and plays acoustic shows all over the place. Follow him and them on Facebook to read his road blog about their adventures on the dive-bar circuit.
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