The Shit Hits the Fans


The Shit Hits the Fans is a Twin/Tone Records cassette-only live album by The Replacements which was released January 25, 1985. It was recorded live at The Bowery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on November 11, 1984. The cassette J-Card cover art is by Chris Mars. According to the Twin/Tone website, 10,000 copies were produced, of which 9,276 sold immediately. The rest were given away as promotional copies.
Roscoe Shoemaker, manager and DJ at The Bowery asked Paul Westerberg, if he minded if he recorded the show, to which Westerberg replied, "Why? We suck." Shoemaker hung two microphones from the front of the deejay booth and recorded the show, which was performed in front of approximately 30 patrons. Without Shoemaker's knowledge, the tape was removed before the end of the show by soundman Bill Mack, who then gave the tape to the band. Despite Shoemaker having previously asked Westerberg for permission to record the show, both the label and the band denoted it a bootleg, writing in the liner notes, "Anyhoo...what you've got here is most of a live show. Our roadie pulled it out of some enterprising young gent's tape recorder toward the end of the night. ".
Of the twenty-four songs on the album only five songs are actually written by the band. The remaining nineteen are cover versions of songs by other artists, some of which were requested by the small audience. This includes the song "Merry-Go-Round" which was a track from Mötley Crüe's debut album Too Fast for Love, not the similarly-named song which would open the Replacements' final studio album All Shook Down. The audio dropout heard during "Hear You Been to College" is caused by Paul Westerberg who accidentally pressed the record button on a Walkman while listening back to the master copy. If you listen closely he can be heard saying "Stop, 's' enough".
The Bowery was demolished on March 22, 2007.

Track listing

  1. "Lawdy Miss Clawdy"
  2. "Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus"
  3. "Lovelines"
  4. "I'll Be There"
  5. "Sixteen Blue"
  6. "Can't Hardly Wait"
  7. "I Will Dare"
  8. "Hear You Been to College"
  9. "Saturday Night Special"
  10. "Iron Man"
  11. "Misty Mountain Hop"
  12. "Heartbreaker"
  13. "Can't Get Enough"
  14. "Jailbreak"
  15. "Breakdown"
  16. "No More the Moon Shines on Lorena"
  17. "Merry-Go-Round"
  18. "Left in the Dark"
  19. "Takin' Care of Business"
  20. "I Will Follow"
  21. "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
  22. "Radio Free Europe"
  23. "The New World"
  24. "Let It Be"