Rhino’s got a listening party going for the next four Replacements’ reissues due out next week. And according to one Mr. Jay Taco the demo of Kiss Me on the Bus is good (fuckballs good, apparently).

In case you missed it in the comments, Robert from Mulberry Panda has an extensive (and good) piece about 49:00, 5:05 and working with record labels and producers.

The wonderfully-named Model Citizen . . . Zero Discipline has an engaging piece called The Nils & The Sad, Sad Story of Alex Soria (who was apparently called the Canadian Paul Westerberg).

I am not sure what a Fool’s Brigade is or what their benefit is for, but you can vote for The Replacements to be honored at it.

Sonic Slang thinks Bored of Edukation is the best of the downloads Our Man Paul has released this summer.

Goodnight to the Rock & Roll era compares Westerberg’s recent productivity to Ryan Adams and asks a great question about why blogs are hailing the low price of the music and still hosting free mp3s.

In other tangential news, my nephews came over this morning and immediately discovered Chris Mars’ Tolerance on my coffee table. As I mentioned the paintings are a bit on the dark and scary side.

At first I tried to grunt my disapproval because I try not to speak before 9 a.m., and it was 7:30 a.m., but they were either ignoring or misinterpreting the grunts.
“Guys, you might not like that,” I said. “It’s a little scary.”
“We love scary!” They said and started flipping pages.
“Ohh look,” Liam, who is 3, said. “It’s a bat!”
“It’s a Halloween book,” Nolan, who is 4, screeched in delight. “I love Halloween.”

Soon after my lap was full of little boys and a big artbook that wasn’t really about Halloween but that they loved discussing any way. It was weird, that little kids could see something so different than I did. The counted pumpkins and skeletons and basically thought the book was the best thing ever, and it caused them to jump up and down with great gobs of glee shouting “Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!”