The Replacements' music has been called clever, sloppy, uneven and even brilliant. It's been almost 20 years since the Replacements first gathered in a basement in their Minneapolis hometown to create the cleverly sloppy and uneven rock songs that would make them one of the pioneers of '80s rock.

With that anniversary a little more than a year away, the group's surviving members -- singer/guitarist Paul Westerberg, bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars (founding lead guitarist Bob Stinson died of a drug overdose in 1995) -- are proceeding with plans to release a multi-disc compilation that will focus on live performances, rehearsal material and outtakes of the Replacements' early work.

" I talked to Paul, Tommy and Chris and so far we've agreed we don't want to do anything until the fall of '99 at the earliest," said Peter Jesperson, founder of the Twin/Tone label that signed the Replacements to their first record deal. "One of the reasons for that is I thought it would be poetic to have a Replacements anthology of the early years as a century closer and Paul agreed with that and said it would be 20 years since they first got together in Ma Stinson's basement."

At this point, an estimated 25 of 150 cassettes have been transferred to DAT, and Jesperson said there will be a minimum of three discs in this anthology. Specifically, he cited the B-side "If Only You Were Lonely" as one of the tracks sure to land on the disc, along with some material that fans of the band's early work might not be expecting.

" All the time the public was hearing songs like 'Fuck School' and 'God Damn Job,' Westerberg was slipping me these private tapes he was making that he wasn't even playing for the band," Jesperson said. "They were him just playing solo acoustic things, solo piano things. He was doing these amazing ballads. It was a funny dichotomy."

With its emphasis on the band's early period, the new compilation will cover a time period not included in last year's Replacements set issued by Reprise, All For Nothing/Nothing For All. That compilation included a disc of outtakes and rarities from the group's later period and a second disc that was, for the most part, a greatest-hits set drawn from the Replacements' final four albums.

Jesperson said at the time of that release that he was disappointed he had not been contacted by Reprise to work on a comprehensive retrospective, and that without the Twin/Tone material there was a "gaping" hole in the collection. The Twin/Tone era includes the album's Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, The Replacements Stink, Hootenanny and Let It Be -- which featured the tracks "Androgynous" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Answering Machine".

Kathy Shine of Boston, webmaster of Paul's Page, which pays homage to all things related to Westerberg and the Replacements, wrote in an e-mail that she's looking forward to the upcoming compilation and listed several of the tracks on her wish list for inclusion.

" Without a doubt, the compilation has to include the original, acoustic, melancholy version of 'Can't Hardly Wait,' " Shine said. "This is one of Paul Westerberg's finest songs and it's a shame it isn't readily available. Other things I'd love to see included are 'If Only You Were Lonely,' 'Nowhere Is My Home' and some of the great covers from the Let It Be era -- 'Twentieth Century Boy,' 'Hey, Good Lookin,' and (my favorite) 'Temptation Eyes.' "

Additional material that Jesperson pegged as likely to get picked for the album includes "Shape Up" and "Don't Turn Me Down" from the quartet's original four- song demo that helped convince him to sign the band. The group released eight full-length albums in its more than decade-long career.

Jesperson said the majority of the material that he's unearthed thus far revolves around the time that the band was recording its third and most diverse LP, Hootenanny.
" There's more unreleased songs from Hootenanny than any other," he said. "I remember somebody hearing an advance of it when it came out and they said 'Man, it sounds like a compilation album, but it's all by the same artist.' "