So my “How I Got Into The Mats” story takes place a year ago and isn’t as interesting as some of the ones I’ve read. I needed some new music and I was curious about the Replacements. I read about them lots of times, but I never really heard their songs. I ended up buying Pleased To Meet Me because it had the only song I knew: “Can’t Hardly Wait”. If I thought that they sucked, at least I had one song that I liked. If I liked the album, I could go and buy the other ones.
After hearing “Alex Chilton”, I decided that the CD was definitely worth the 12 dollars. I went out and bought Tim that same day, but I didn’t like it as much as Pleased To Meet Me. Around this time, I was living on campus at my college and taking a summer painting class in order to graduate on time. My school is in the middle of the woods and 2 hours from friends and family. I felt like I was going crazy from the isolation so I spent a lot of time doing extra work for that painting class. I always listened to Tim and PTMM while I was in the studio, and, eventually, I only listened to Tim and maybe 3 of my favorite songs off of PTMM. I don’t know why, but a lot of the songs off of Tim, especially “Left of the Dial”, made up the perfect soundtrack to all that alone time. Later that summer, I bought the rest of the albums off of e-music (OK, that’s a lie. I signed up for the e-music trial and was able to download all the Twin Tone albums for free. I’m waiting for a box set!) and spent most of my out-of-studio time looking up whatever I could find of the ‘Mats.
and here’s a song to listen to because it’s been over a year since i started listening to the mats… and it’s my birthday today.
(man, i hope this mp3 thing works out…)
Happy birthday! That actually is an interesting story – I am always curious to find out how people got into the Mats. It’s also cool that a lot of younger folks are discovering the band as well. Speaks to their good taste;)
i love that song. happy birthday.