Trouble Boys (2016)

The book we always thought had to be written about the Replacements has finally been written, and I have finally read it. Bob Mehr’s sensitive and meticulously researched biography might be one of the great rock biographies. It’s hard for me to judge. I was close to the action, a Twin Cities music journalist from 1982 to 1985. As someone scarred by alcoholism, my instinct was to keep my distance from such shenanigans. It wasn’t a big hilarious joke to me. But I saw my share of terrible shows and great shows and I heard a lot of the stories. Not all of them—there were some new ones for me in this book. I followed along with the albums, which got exponentially better from Stink through Let It Be and stayed pretty good even after that. All Shook Down is where it flattened out for me and never recovered. I was aware of the first Paul Westerberg solo album and of Tommy Stinson’s foray with his own band, Bash & Pop. I even knew Chris Mars’s solo album, on the brink of his painting career. I appreciated their potential to become a legendary great rock ‘n’ roll act—I appreciated that they were, to some extent, certainly on some nights. But Westerberg is the first to say they never scored a hit, a reasonable metric for any wannabe legendary rock ‘n’ roll act. In the end their underachieving and self-sabotage was a disappointment. I was disappointed—but check out their reactions here. There’s enough heartbreak to go around. I had to wince at some of their antics—setting per diem cash on fire, as one example. Drinking, drugging, defiantly playing their worst shows when it was important to be better, as when they knew the music industry was in the building. They often followed their terrible shows with great ones, coincidentally when they knew they didn’t need to make an impression on anyone. The greatest knock on them may have been their talent as consummate contrarians. The story of the Replacements is fun and exciting, full of laughs and great music, but it’s also sad, as illustrated by the fortunes of Bob Stinson (the soul of the band) and, later, his replacement Slim Dunlap. Tommy went on to become a real-life rock star, playing for years with Guns ‘N Roses. Even if he never had a hit, Westerberg wrote a handful or more of the best songs of the era, all of which should have been hits, as they say. It pained me to read how many of his song demos Westerberg has destroyed in fits of pique and self-doubt. But, well, it’s also the epitome of the Replacements too. All the glory and all the troubles are in this great biography.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.

Husker Du and the Replacements in Minneapolis in the '80s

(Requested by reader Skip D. Expense)

I don't like the term "Amerindie," it's nearly as ugly of a word as "blog," but it's the scope you need to start with for Husker Du, the Replacements, and Minneapolis in the '80s, which I was fortunate enough to be around for (until 1985 anyway). Husker Du and the Replacements would make their lasting outsize impacts on pop music and rock 'n' roll currents, but there was another powerful stream of Minneapolis music in the '80s coming from the north side of town, in the person of Prince Rogers Nelson, who contended with them for ultimate supremacy of influence, musicianship, songwriting, guitar playing, hip cachet, future of rock 'n' roll, what have you. It's clear now who made the biggest dent—and more importantly, by implication (especially when you factor in those Amerindie dominations of Husker Du and the Replacements), just how much fun it was to be in Minneapolis at the time. Note: As a native more or less of the Minneapolis environs, I unfortunately come with all the in-built prejudices. Please read "Twin Cities" or "Minneapolis/St. Paul" whenever I say "Minneapolis."

Within that Amerindie scope, there was a vaunted Minneapolis tradition that traced through soon after the beginnings of rock 'n' roll from the Trashmen ("Surfin' Bird"), Castaways ("Liar, Liar"), and Novas ("The Crusher") in the mid-'60s, and then carrying on into the '70s with acts such as Skogie & the Flaming Pachucos and the Suicide Commandos. Aided and abetted by a nightclub in downtown Minneapolis called Jay's Longhorn, all this led to the Twin/Tone label in approximately 1977 and a rash of often worthy acts: the Suburbs, Curtiss A, the Hypstrz, and others (Big Hits of Mid-America Volume III is the essential document here). Besides the Longhorn, much of this activity was hived around a record store in south Minneapolis named for Skip Spence and Roy Harper albums, Oar Folkjokeopus. And here it was that arrived one day a fabled demo tape which became a record contract for the Replacements. An instant legend too good to be true, they were impossibly young—Tommy Stinson, the bass player, was 14 when the first album came out in 1981, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash.

Replacements, "Alex Chilton" (1987)

(listen)

A lot of time gone by since I'd had occasion to give this one-time staple of the late '80s another listen, and something about it didn't sound exactly right. I thought at first it was the tempo, seemed rushed, but according to Scott Miller in his indispensable Music: What Happened?, "the CD mastering ... sounds like someone lost the thread of a grand compression plan." He swears by the vinyl version. Sure enough, the original music video I turned up sounds more like it. It's a gushing fan letter before it is anything else, by design, and interestingly not only Paul Westerberg but also Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars get songwriting credit. It is thus so much a group effort it is practically heartwarming. If they can't help themselves with the title, they play it more coy in the song itself. Westerberg blurs the name-checking so it doesn't exactly jump out, but there's no mistaking the sentiment in the chorus: "I'm in love with that song." It's perfect. It's exactly the point—the love, not the song. Which song? Any song—this song even. That's up to you, and a good part of what makes this work. It also sounds more like a Replacements than an Alex Chilton song, another nice point. When I manage to stop thinking and parsing so much, however, and let it play as something that wells up and pricks insistently at one's ears, then it really starts to become apparent what they have managed here. It's a song about being in love with music, admirably overcoming any tendency toward striking the pose of disaffection, and simply giving in to the pleasures of a good song.

Replacements, "Kiss Me On the Bus" (1985)

(listen)

For someone who spent a lot of time projecting a world-weary and wizened cynicism, the Replacements' Paul Westerberg was actually, and not so secretly, a puppy dog running circles at one's feet, begging for a treat (or a drink, if you don't want to pound the metaphor too hard). The breakthrough album Let it Be was full of such gestures, and so was the follow-up, 1985's Tim (produced by Tommy Ramone), which neatly consolidated all the advances of their first five years. Bob Stinson was still on hand, and in fact this is one of the best periods for the band. A show I saw in Seattle in late 1985 was absolutely transporting, one of the best by them I ever saw, and I'm pretty sure this larky little love song was part of that long set, as I was waiting for it and nothing about that night disappointed me. One of the best features of "Kiss Me on the Bus" is that it works loud and raw and also at softer, gentler volumes, where the playfulness of the whole scene emerges. It seems to be the kind of idle fantasy one indulges when packed with strangers, as on public transit. Or maybe, less likely, he's riding with a girlfriend and wallowing in the pure pleasure of being with her, playing his part in the obnoxious "shmoopy shmoopy" beeswax of those freshly in love. Whatever it is, it's also a perfectly lovely moment, innocent and carefree, in both conception and execution. Stinson's solo at the break is one of his best—nimble, lyrical, frothy with pub-rock, and done so quickly that it almost invisibly propels the momentum more intensely. "Smooth move, Ex-Lax." At just about three minutes even, this one is very hard to beat.

Replacements, "Rock 'n' Roll Ghost" (1989)

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I had the great good fortune of being in the right place at the right time for the humble scruffy rise to legend on which the Replacements embarked in Minneapolis in the early '80s—the original Replacements, with Bob Stinson. But the album by them that I have listened to most over the years is Don't Tell a Soul, the oft derided and frequently overlooked first, in 1989, of two all-but-swan-song late entrants. My reasons may not be good but they are honest. Yes, there's a sound of resignation and defeat. That's part of what I like, it virtually shipping itself into my life at a moment of particular crisis, a separation begun that would lead to divorce and all that. In a way the album was exactly what I needed (with its companion Spike by Elvis Costello), manifesting as a kind of self-healing template cycle where I could feel like I could travel daily, where redemption, as in this song, posed in affectation, for example here the cobwebby haunted manse, shuffling about sleepless at night in robe and nightcap, tempting the fates of self-pity. Rheumy old Edgar Allen Poe and the bottle or opium dens in the small hours. Vaporous dark time passing and lost. It's not pretty, and it's a little bit of a joke, but it fits a certain mood to a tee. There's a few songs on Don't Tell a Soul operating at such levels for me—"Achin' to Be" and "They're Blind" fit that bill nicely. But this one goes ahead and dares the obvious gesture of making of itself an eternal legend, the naked love for the image of one's own fame in the reflection written into the grains of it. It haunts many of the compeers but it is also what makes it a joke. It's the "ghost" that gives that away. No, it's the "rock 'n' roll" that gives that away. No, it's the mirror that gives that away.

10. Replacements, "Unsatisfied" (1984)

(listen)

The Replacements seemed vaguely comical at the time for their sundry vainglorious pretensions to rock immortality. Oh, hell, they were hilarious—they named the album this comes from Let it Be, and included a KISS cover on it as well as this quasi-defiant gesture in the direction of the theme that broke the Stones wide open in their time. It was a good joke, and still is today, but listen close and it's apparent that songwriter Paul Westerberg anyway was playing it for laughs not least as purposeful deflection of his deepest, fondest desires. Ambitions this big are hard to face up to in cold light of day, let alone own plainly as such. But the modesty and bashful toe-kicking was just another of their manifold charms as well. "Unsatisfied" is as big as nations. The Stones sound positively peevish by comparison. It thunders with a kind of power to make mortals tremble as it articulates the wracking emotional frustrations simply of being born into the world. "Look me in the eye and tell me that I'm satisfied" unfolds and unpacks all the way to distant horizons. Once again I have had some trouble over the long years penetrating the densely constructed walls of mythos and adoration and worshiping overstatement thrown up by fans—the loss is entirely mine, I know this—but "Unsatisfied" has always, always got through. If he had never done anything but this Westerberg would have made his bones as one of the great rock vocalists and one of its great songwriters, and this is certainly as good a place as any to hear what brooding, powerful, deeply felt music these self-conscious misfit artistes of the shambolic were capable of when they tuned up and got over themselves and actually started playing together.

Don't Tell a Soul (1989)

"Rock 'n' Roll Ghost" It's fair enough to call this Paul Westerberg's first (or second, or third) solo outing. Viz., the cover. Me, I don't go that route, and I don't see the break until the next one, All Shook Down. Meanwhile, for any number of purely personal reasons, this is one of my favorite Replacements albums. Westerberg goes wading hip-deep into the swamps of bathos and comes back with a bunch of beauties: "Back to Back," "We'll Inherit the Earth," "Achin' to Be," "They're Blind," "Rock 'n' Roll Ghost." Did I say hip-deep? He had to be in it up to his neck.

Pleased to Meet Me (1987)

"Alex Chilton" Dead horse metaphor alert: So where were the spiders while the fly tried to break our balls Just the beer light to guide us, So we bitched about his fans and should we crush his sweet hands? All of a sudden the referents aren't so clear now are they? Sooner or later, from Hootenanny to All Shook Down, you have to make the call. Where does it all go wrong for the Replacements? This has to be a candidate, but come on. Bob Stinson or not, Westerberg's songs carry it -- no matter how coldly you might want to reduce the band to journeyman/faceless status. Hey, Chris Mars is at the top of his game. Winning lyric: "Jesus rides beside me He never buys any smokes."

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Tim (1985)

"Kiss Me on the Bus" Expectations for the Major Label debut ran high, but these guys were never going to be stars. Nobody wanted it enough. So, like a sports team on a losing steak, here's where they started to tear apart at each other. Overlooked by all of them, maybe, was the incredible run they were on. This was at least their third great one in a row. Some, even in retrospect, sniff that it's a notch off, but to me it feels loose and warm and fun and stuffed with inspiration. They whip up the most beautiful little bittersweet things: "Kiss Me on the Bus," "Here Comes a Regular, "Hold My Life." They go to the roar dependably on "Bastards of Young" and "Left of the Dial." And shot through all of it, that sad, hangdog personality, radiating pain and sweetness with his darts of line and melody, whom we would soon know as Ziggy Stardust. Er, I mean, Paul Westerberg.

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Let It Be (1984)

"Unsatisfied" Most consider this far and away the best Replacements, which is interesting given the KISS cover, the instantly outdated "Answering Machine," and throwaways like "Gary's Got a Boner" and "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out." But what's good here is not merely good but magnitudes of superlatives: amazing, awesome, unparalleled, hairs at the back of your neck, however you want to put it. "Unsatisfied" takes a respectable shot at anthem for a generation. "Androgynous" is as fresh as a minute ago and 6,000 years in the making. "We're Comin' Out," "I Will Dare," "Sixteen Blue" -- for that matter, "Answering Machine" -- all of them. Timeless. Searing. Poignant. Dramatic. Real. Don't let the shambolics fool you.

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Hootenanny (1983)

"Take Me Down to the Hospital" Glory days, glory days. Except for "Johnny's Gonna Die" I never much cottoned to the debut, and Stink was for the laughs. But this is where the legend of the Replacements locked down: the sound of a band furiously trying to escape collapse, the collapse itself at some of the shows, the brilliant nights, the many and various excesses, sets of some or all spontaneous covers, Bob Stinson in a dress, Tommy Stinson the perennial Boy Wonder, and the whispers and hints of Paul Westerberg, said to be one of the Great Ones. The only thing left was the watchful wait for fame.

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