Westerberg Interview - The Craft

You can listen to just the interview portion of The Craft show here, many thanks to Small Town Vice from the board for providing this.

"Let It Be" on "Sound Opinions"

Listen to the podcast of "Sound Opinions" doing a "Classic Album Dissection" of "Let It Be", with guest Jim Walsh. Grab the file here, the Mats discussion begins at about 18 minutes in. It's funny to hear them talking about this record as a "lost" classic since pretty much none of "us" (those who care enough about PW and the Mats to be reading this) think of it as an obscure album, but rather, as music that's practically encoded in our DNA at this point.

The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting

Jim Walsh, author of the upcoming oral history of the Mats, "The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting" will be a guest on "Sound Opinions", a syndicated public radio show featuring Chicago writers Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot talking music. The Oct. 5 show will be a "Sound Opinions Classic Album Dissection", this time focusing on "Let It Be". You can get more information, like what stations the show can be heard on and how to listen to it online at the show's web site.

Speaking of web sites, the Mats book has its own MySpace page. There's lots of stuff to check out there, including a list of Jim's upcoming appearances, a bunch of glowing blurbs from the back cover ("The Replacements were superheroes: They rescued a whole planet from ’80s music. Jim Walsh’s loving, engrossing oral history is the book they deserve."— Nick Hornby), and a few choice excerpts from the book.

Those of you in MPLS should keep Nov. 28th open for the book release party at First Avenue, with Twin Cities bands doing Mats covers. Bands include: We’ll Be You (featuring Jon Eller, Kevin Bowe, Steve Price and Jerry Anderson), The Alarmists, The Honeydogs, Birthday Suits, One For The Team, and many, many more.

Paul Westerberg/The Craft BitTorrent

For those of you who have an account on DimeADozen (aka EZTorrent), the audio for Paul Westerberg -slash- The Craft show has been uploaded as a torrent. If you don't have an active account, it can be tough to get in because they cap the site at 100,000 members, but do keep trying. I got my account a few months ago after a day or two of trying. (If all of this is sounding like a lot of mumbo jumbo to you, check out the DimeWiki for more info on BitTorrent in general and Dime in particular).

If you aren't able to get the show via BitTorrent, visit the Message Board, where some of us will be weeding out copies of the show the old-fashioned way: on CD.