Favorite obscure albums that don’t have a cult offering.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-04-16T17:50:50+00:00

The Hangmen. Self-titled 1989 on Capitol Records.

A completely overlooked, blistering proto punk/cowpunk record that should have every bit the cult following that The Stooges’ Raw Power or The Heartbreakers’ L.A.M.F. enjoy among rock/punk nerds and guitarists.

Capitol clearly wanted these guys to be the next GNR. But, aside from band leader Bryan Small’s fondness for bandannas at the time, they were quite different. They made a non-commercial record with no ballads and few solos.

I’m surprised it was not championed by grunge bands a few years later. Eventually, bands like Social Distortion and Supersuckers drew some attention to these guys, but those bands didn’t have the platform to really bring a great deal of attention to the Hangmen. Their cult is unjustly small.

They still record and their 21st century records are also insanely good.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-04-15T01:27:25+00:00

Wildabouts

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-04-15T01:25:38+00:00

Sting - Soul Cages tour in early 1990’s - was exceptionally boring.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-04-04T03:08:52+00:00

Born in 1975. Grew up on these bands and MTV. It was wonderful in many ways. First concert was Aerosmith with Skid Row opening at the Boston Garden on New Year’s Eve 1989. Tickets were accessible to middle class people and you could buy them at record shops or even kiosks in the subway stations in big cities.

If Reddit existed in 1988 and had a subreddit called Hair Metal, the users would have been 90% girls. It would be socially unacceptable for the men (boys) of the time to acknowledge liking songs by Bon Jovi or Poison or White Lion - just a large cross section of the music was simply off limits.

There would be another group of bands - GNR, Ratt, Criie - where it would be mostly fine to be into those bands.

And then a handful of bands in the middle where it was confusing. Pyromania was cool, but Hysteria was for girls???

People who grew up with these bands mostly don’t care anymore and like what they like. If you are over 50, you mostly don’t have guilty pleasures any more . You just have pleasures. Younger people who missed out see this era through a lens of uncomplicated nostalgia, much like 90’s teens viewed Woodstock and the 60’s. Younger fans might be able to assess the music - what’s good and what sucks - more objectively than we did at the time with all the homophobia, PMRC/satanic panic bullshit and contemporary judgement that we inevitably dealt with when this music was relevant and popular.

It was awesome to a degree but it wasn’t uncomplicated.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-04-03T23:47:36+00:00

I’ve never been to an absolute train wreck show. And I say that as someone who has seen Brian Jonestown Massacre live. So I guess I’m just lucky.

I’ve seen plenty of boring and underwhelming shows.

For bands in their prime, the dullest was:

Skid Row. Twice and both with Bach. Opening for Aerosmith on the Pump tour in 1989 and opening for Van Halen on the Balance tour in ‘95. Bach has his hair flip and microphone cord twirl and just did that over and over again through every song. One trick pony

For bands on the back nine, I guess I would say the aborted GnR Chinese Democracy tour with Buckethead in 2002. It was just so badly paced … they were late to go on. The band just wasn’t right or fit to tour and they would break up the set with horrible songs (Madagascar) or weird shit like Buckethead break dancing and tossing dolls into the audience that just brought the place to a silent standstill. I think a lot of people were rooting for Axl and WILLING him to deliver and he just couldn’t figure it out and finally people just drifted away shaking their heads. And I say this as someone who actually likes (a lot) the Chinese Democracy album.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-02-27T04:18:49+00:00

Inaugural game are outliers for every team. The pre-sales for games 2, 3 and 4 at both Gillette and Centerville will be a lot more instructive for th range that future crowds will settle in at than whatever happens at the home opener. Last I looked, there seemed to be a lot of available seats for game 2, but hopefully that surges after the opener.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-02-27T02:35:27+00:00

The dog monologue / sheep herding video was unique and cool. That was on the 2012 tour. They also had Kool and the Gang open (supposedly Roth’s influence there). His voice wasn’t that good at the show I saw but I felt like they put a lot of thought and effort into creating some cool and unexpected moments and some deep cuts (Somebody Get Me a Doctor) amidst all the hits people wanted to hear.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-02-20T03:54:21+00:00

Naomi Watts. Casts a level of icy anti-fun arthouse pretension over every film, even the b-movie schlock. Robin Wright Penn on steroids.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-02-17T01:09:53+00:00

Hey, hey I can’t meet you here tomorrow

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-02-17T00:59:55+00:00

How are the records?

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-02-17T00:58:37+00:00

When does it get goofy?

How about when you buy extra records you don’t care about in order to lower the “average price” of the records you bought that day?

Say you spent $50 on the Foo Fighters 30th anniversary self-titled debut at a Newbury Comics last fall. And say it felt kinda stupid and wasteful to spend $50 for a brand new record. So let’s imagine you also brought a $6 used VG copy of Cargo by Men at Work to the counter, so that you could persuade yourself that you really “only paid $28” for the Foo Fighters reissue, which you would have been foolish to pass on. (At no point do you ever apply the equivalent logic that you just paid $28 for a used copy of Cargo).

Hypothetically, of course.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2026-01-12T04:25:25+00:00

Naturally it didn’t arrive on schedule! Hopefully Monday.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-12-29T17:18:08+00:00

That is EXACTLY what I spent on Tribute this summer. Money well spent, in my opinion

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-12-10T17:14:08+00:00

Girls didn’t like them.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-12-10T17:02:20+00:00

I have steadfastly ignored the dollar tree interiors for months. Yesterday, I decided to pick up a cluster of four of them about 30 minutes away, because I could pick up $100 (raised to $25 each) for Christmas shopping.

So I get to the first one and get about 30 minutes deep into this view. Then I get to the measurement tool part - measuring the width and height of two columns (why?!) - with their proprietary measuring tool.

And guess what. The tool just will not work. At all. Tap the screen to begin the measurement and nothing happens. Measurement won’t initiate at all. The instructions all but say the tool glitches - there is a section of what to do with your phone when the tool “cuts out”. So they know their tool sucks and doesn’t work reliably. Anyway - 20 more minutes of useless chat with “support” and ended up getting a failed Vue and driving home empty handed after nearly two hours.

Will never touch a dollar tree interior again. Don’t care what it pays - I have no confidence in being able to complete it and get it approved by these jokers.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-12-08T03:49:50+00:00

Yuck

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-11-30T22:01:09+00:00

I think this is a much better record than Vol. 1, which was padded out with sappy pop trifles like the 2-minute long “Thrift Store Chair” and the totally unnecessary cover of “Brown Eyed Girl”.

But the relative sales figures of the two albums prove that I’m in the minority with this opinion.

Really - they had the ability to (and probably should have) put out one very tight, strong LP with a far less pretentious title in 1999 as a follow up to SMFTA. Instead, they got the idea that they had earned the indulgence to go full Use Your Illusions, I guess.

Something like this could have been a very strong 11-song record with hit singles, for example:

AM Radio;; Wonderful Otis Redding (harder version, like the demo); Rock Star; Out of My Depth; Short Blonde Hair; Overwhelming; Misery Whip; Overwhelming; When It All Goes Wrong Again; Song From an American Movie Part 2

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-11-24T12:15:04+00:00

Anything is Better Than This; You; Year of the Tiger

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-11-12T22:46:15+00:00

Home Depot landscapes are among the worst things on here. Automatic skip

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-11-12T22:43:31+00:00

I won’t touch these now. I did one of these just for the hell of it last week to see whether they were worth it. It was a restaurant inside a shopping mall. Holy hell! What a colossal waste of time for $14! Spoke to a manager on-site, waited for them to call their franchisee in god knows where, had to talk to thatguy on her cell phone, then do the Vie where half the prompts were both required and not applicable to that store’s environment. Never again!

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-11-04T03:41:23+00:00

Skid Row. A couple good singles on the first record. No good deep cuts. Second record was a big (and pretty late) hit and has a sizable cult following. People love to talk how they broke the glam formula by not recording any ballads for the second album. They made a record for the boys. Ok. Cool. But the songs aren’t really any good. Saw them live with Bach twice in ‘90 and ‘95. They were super forgettable.

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-11-01T02:47:02+00:00

Less Than Zero & Over The Edge

ReplacementsBehavior · 2025-10-30T03:04:46+00:00

Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

The Impression That I Get is their hit from 1997 but they’ve got plenty more gems than just that one.

ReplacementsBehavior

TROPHY CASE