Friday, September 3, 2010

Perfect - Seven Days a Week (1997)

After the Replacements dissolved on July 4, 1991 in Chicago's fabled Grant Park, bassist Tommy Stinson (who along with frontman Paul Westerberg was the only other continuous Mat during the groups sordid tenure) still had to eat, if you know what I'm getting at.  His next meal ticket was a rollicking and fitting successor to the Replacements called Bash & Pop who's 1993 platter, Friday Night is Killing Me, turned out to be their last.  A noble effort, but not much of a commercial smash.  A couple years on, Stinson relocated to L.A. and sought to forge a more "Perfect" union.  Aided and abedded by bassist Robert Cooper, guitarist Marc Solomon, and the eponymously monikered skin pounder Gersh, Perfect was born, and a 1996 ep dubbed When Squirrels Play Chicken was conceived via Medium Cool/Restless Records. Perfect's muscular power pop, was no "replacement" for Minneapolis' fab-four, but consistently satisfying in their own right. 

Met with critical acclaim and a slowly blossoming fanbase, Stinson and Co. had even higher hopes for the debut Perfect full-length, Seven Days a Week.  With a slightly altered lineup which found Stinson back on bass guitar but still on lead vocals, 7 Days a Week was tracked in 1997, but due to shifting priorities with their label, the album was shelved and never released in it's original configuration.  2004 finally saw the release of most of these tracks on a slightly retooled version of Seven Days a Week, rechristened as Once, Twice, Three Times a Maybe, courtesy of Rykodisc Records.  So what of the original version of the album?  It's rumored that a few advance copies of the CD that were printed up had actually made it's way into the ether, but the MP3s I'm presenting strike me as being derived from a low generation cassette.  Much has been talked about the absence of a track called "Peg Song" on the official Rykodsic release, but my version of Seven Days... features yet another song that didn't make it onto Once, Twice..., namely the excellent "Don't Look Down."  Other bootleg versions tack on tracks from a 1995 Stinson solo performance at the Uptown in Minneapolis.  The mixes here deviate slightly from those on the posthumous '04 release, so perhaps the real incentive is the inclusion of "Peg Song" and "Don't Look Down."  Once, Twice, Three Times a Maybe is still available from Amazon (physically and digitally), and likely from iTunes as well so if you like what you hear consider spending a little green and support Perfect!

01. Turn it Up
02. Better Days
03. Little Drum
04. Seven Days a Week
05. Me
06. Making of an Asshole
07. Catch Em Where They Land
08. Thing I Call My Life
09. Don't Look Down
10. Flap
11. Yap Yap
12. Peg Song

10 comments:

Rinjo Njori! said...

Spot on to my tastes on the last two posts. In case you don't know-- you got a great thing going here. Keep it coming. God I love Bash and Pop

Brushback said...

I still own both "Squirrels Play Chicken" and "Once Twice Three Times a Maybe", so I'm definitely grabbing this. Thanks!

YankeeBoy said...

Great post< "Once Twice..." is definitely available on Amazon for pretty cheap and also on Emusic.

joseph kyle said...

thanks for this! hey, may i make a request that you do a 20th Century Masters singles collection for the wonderful Lilys? i'm having a helluva time finding their Sub Pop singles, or any of their mid-to-late-90s singles/EPs....

Nazz Nomad said...

good stuff hanx!

eric said...

Thanks for the tunes and the info. I have "Once, Twice..," but didn't know the history. It's crazy that a record that good can get shelved. I'm surprised to realize this, but I think I might actually be more of a fan of the post-Replacements work from Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars than I am of Paul Westerberg's solo releases.

I believe jm's got the right idea with that Lilys suggestion.

bob said...

great band. thanks. do you have any ike reilly.

Brushback said...

Agreed w/Eric that Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars have better post-Mats stuff than Westerberg... maybe Westerberg has the better solo career on a whole, but none of his solo albums are as good as "Friday Night Is Killing Me", for instance...

spavid said...

I don't know about a Lily's singles deal. I'll have to see what U have. In the meantime you can check out In the Presence of Nothing:

http://wilfullyobscure.blogspot.com/2008/10/lilys-in-presence-of-nothing-1992.html

Jaime said...

Great post, unfortunatly it seems I'm quite late... Any chance you can reactivate the link? That'd be amazing. The Replacements are my favorite band and I've never had the chance to listen to this gem. Thanks!