The Replacements will release a newly and properly mixed version of their 1989 Don’t Tell a Soul alongside a slew of rarities and previously unheard tracks on an upcoming box set, Dead Man’s Pop, out September 27th via Rhino.
Don’t Tell a Soul became the Replacement’s best-selling record, but upon its release, the band was unsatisfied with the way it sounded. For Dead Man’s Pop, the band tapped the LP’s producer Matt Wallace to completely reimagine the record based on the 1988 master tapes the Replacements snuck out Paisley Park studios.
The rest of Dead Man’s Pop will include a disc of unheard tracks, We Know the Night: Rare and Unreleased, and a two-disc live album, The Complete Inconcerated Live. The rarities disc boasts unreleased early versions of Don’t Tell a Soul cuts from the first sessions for the album, which took place in June 1988 with Tony Berg at Bearsville Studios. The set also features five songs the band recorded with Tom Waits, including a cover of Billy Swan’s “I Can Help” and a rendition of Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash b-side “We Know the Night.”
Meanwhile, The Complete Inconcerated Live discs captures the Replacements’ June 2nd, 1989 show at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. A few songs from the show originally appeared on a 1989 promo EP, Inconcerated Live, but most of the 29 tracks have not been previously released. The show was newly mixed by Brian Kehew.
Along with the four CDs, Dead Man’s Pop will come with an LP of the newly mixed version of Don’t Tell a Soul, pressed on 180-gram vinyl. It will also boast a hardcover book filled with rarely seen photos and a detailed history of the Don’t Tell a Soul era written by Bob Mehr, who wrote the Replacements biography, Trouble Boys (Mehr also produced the box set with Jason Jones).
Dead Man’s Pop is available to pre-order and the first 500 people to purchase the set through Rhino will receive a 14-track cassette featuring highlights from the box set, as well as an unreleased outtake of “Asking Lies” and an instrumental version of “I Won’t” from the Bearsville sessions.