My brother Brendan has just written a fantastic “Expert Essay” on the band The Replacements and Paul Westerberg. I know there are a ton of Replacements fans out there … and people who love The Replacements are, in general, obsessive about them. I do believe, though, that my brother Brendan is THE obsessive among obsessives. I still remember going to a concert in Philadelphia with my brother and my boyfriend – we were there to see Elvis Costello, and Westerberg opened for them. A magical night.
EXPERT ESSAY: The Replacements – by Brendan O’Malley
Whenever I hear people talk about how the ’80’s sucked, I have to argue. How, you ask, could you argue for a decade that spawned all those horrible songs that we all know by heart even though we hate them?
The answer to that question dates back to a rainy night I spent driving around my hometown. I had just gotten my driver’s license and it was late at night. I remember the streets being rain soaked, sparkling. It was cold. And I was a teenager. An American teenager.
I was raised listening to the Beatles, folk music, and show tunes. A few years earlier, I’d been wrenched into puberty by Purple Rain but this night I discovered the underbelly of that blockbuster. I was listening to the local college radio station, something I had only recently been doing because I hated hair bands and synth pop. I heard a song.
For those of you who haven’t heard ‘Unsatisfied’ by the Replacements, your shame ought to crush you. I won’t dwell on that particular song only because it launched my lifetime musical obsession, but suffice it to say that the Replacements sound like what it feels like to be 16 and driving a car late at night on rain soaked streets in America.
To give you an idea of how ballsy, hilarious, tragic, sexy, wasted, and brilliant this band was, they named their third album ‘Let It Be’. Paul Westerberg, the poet rock’eate of the band said that if it was good enough for the Beatles, it was good enough for them. This album is so good that it is better than the Beatles ‘Let It Be’. Yes, I said BETTER THAN THE BEATLES.
In fact, if you took the Beatles, smashed their tour bus into the Rolling Stones’ hotel (crazy sidenote…listening to my itunes randomly and the Beatles ‘Let It Be’ came on just this fucking second so maybe their ‘Let It Be’ is better than the Replacements)
Where was I? Beatles bus, Stones hotel, then sent them to American high school, gave them shitty fast food jobs, stuck them in the most disaffected era of American history in the midwest where you pretty much had to kill someone to get noticed, fed them a steady diet of cigarettes, cheap booze, punk rock, and the explosion of the mass media culture…well, you get the drift. The result is
ASTONISHING MUSIC…
Some highlights…
Color Me Impressed: Begins with the lyric “Everybody at your party/They don’t look depressed/Everybody dressin’ funny/Color me impressed” while the music careens like a joyride.
Androgynous: A jazzy piano shuffle that imagines a time in the future when men and women are virtually indistinguishable. Remember, this was a punk band. This was akin to Bob Dylan going electric at Newport. Piano? Androgyny?
Bastards of Young: A searing scream at the adults who’d abandoned them…”God, what a mess/On the ladder of success/When you take one step/And miss the whole first rung/Dreams unfullfilled/Graduate unskilled/Beats pickin’ cotton and waitin’ to be forgotten” (the band, when forced by their record company to produce a video for the song, filmed a kid putting the needle on the record, listening to the entire song, then kicking the speaker in)
Gary’s Got a Boner: This was on the same album as Androgynous. Contains the gem “Gary’s got a soft-on!”
Treatment Bound describes an early tour through the neighboring cities of Minnesota and ends with someone banging on beer bottles.
Waitress In the Sky: An hilarious, nasty attack on the poor souls who serve us as we fly…”Sanitation expert and a maintenance engineer/Garbage man a janitor and you my dear/Re-unified attendant myohmy, you ain’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky”
OK, I could literally go on forever. The lead singer/songwriter Paul Westerberg is on a par with Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, Chuck Berry, Costello, Joni Mitchell, ah, fuck that noise. He crushes them.
If you listen to every release, you hear a nation going from Christopher Cross to Kurt Cobain. The man behind the curtain was Paul.
— by Brendan O’Malley
Bren – send this to “Rolling Stone” or something – thanks for the joni mention…
Jean – ha!!
Brendan is right. Allow me to expand: Minneapolis was the hotbed of American popular music in the 1980s, and you don’t even have to include Prince–but you can if you want to. In addition to the Replacements, Minneapolis had Husker Du (sorry about the umlauts, rather the lack thereof, but I’m lazy) and Soul Asylum. You won’t find three better bands in one place at one time.
Great review, Brendan. Having seen the ‘mats at First Avenue on the “Tim” tour (and jammed with Chris Mars) (and had Bob Stinson hit me up for coke), you really summed ’em up nicely.
But more than just the teenage stuff. I remember in between careers in 1991, working as a DJ at a gawdawful bar. I did a slow-dance set (had to let everyone close the deal), and played “Here Comes A Regular” for the second song. Amazing – everyone shut up and listened; it was a song about THEM.
Probably not a third of them knew who the ‘mats were, but in the throes of booze and hornitude at 1:40AM on a Sunday morning, they figured out what HCAR was all about.
(And no list of ‘mats classics is complete without “Little Mascara”, but I’ll give you a pass…)
Ken: And let’s not forget “The Supreme Soviet of Love”.
(nods at the acclaim)
The mid eighties were an amazing time to be in the Twin Cities and playing guitar.
Great essay on my favorite band. And I concur with mitch on ‘Little Mascara.’ ‘Valentine’ is on my list as well.
Great post, Brendan.
Waitress In The Sky, Unsatisfied, Bastards Of Young, Left Of The Dial, Here Comes A Regular, A Little Mascara, Answering Machine, Someone Take The Wheel – The Replacements added a sadly but gloriously beautiful, indispensable chapter to the rock & roll story.
Paul’s been doing quite a bit of recording in the last few years. I have to admit I sort of lost track of him in the period after 14 Songs came out, but I got a copy of Come Feel Me Tremble a while back and I absolutely love it. Excellent songs like Dirty Diesel, Hillbilly Junk, Wild & Lethal, Crackle & Drag, Pine Box and Meet Me Down The Alley can’t help but remind me why I fell in love with The Replacements in the first place. There’s also a cool behind-the-scenes DVD for Come Feel Me Tremble…
“Answering Machine,” yeah. Also “Alex Chilton,” “Seen Your Video,” “Androgynous,” the list goes on and on…
must correct something…’let it be’ was their third FULL album, with ‘stink’ being an ep. as far as westerberg’s solo career is concerned, i didn’t care for ‘eventually’, dismissed ‘suicaine gratifaction’ at first, was blown away by ‘stereo/mono’ and back to sheer idolatry with ‘come feel me tremble’ and ‘folker’. after being sucked fully back into the fold, i revisited ‘eventually’ and found that while i don’t enjoy the production, the songs themselves are quite amazing.
to describe his latest incarnation, paul has gone so far back into the underground that he doesn’t even have a band. he records every instrument himself in his basement. which isn’t heated properly. imagine another giant talent doing the same thing…
paul mccartney releases the stuff he does in one take in between dinner and lunch? wouldn’t that be infinitely more interesting than a produced final product? you bet.
Mitch – I love the story about everyone shutting up to listen to “Here comes a regular”, at 1 a.m.
That’s pretty fucking intense.
Oh and Bren – I think my favorite sentence in this essay:
“Replacements sound like what it feels like to be 16 and driving a car late at night on rain soaked streets in America.”
Damn. That’s some good shite.
Unfortunately, in northeastern Ohio it’s usually some crap Michael Stanley (don’t even bother asking) song.
Im buying “Let It Be” tomorrow. Thanks Brendan..i miss you.
I object to the very premise that there exist a significant fraction of the populace who think the 1980’s sucked.
Where are these people?
Brendan – You’re probably right about McCartney – he couldn’t possibly do much worse than the crap he’s been putting out over the past quarter-century. But in his case I think he probably needs a collaborator to achieve greatness, and his collaborator is gone.
There are some amazing scenes in that Come Feel Me Tremble DVD showing Paul down in that basement, in the process of actually inventing/writing songs while the tape is rolling. It’s chilling, thrilling stuff to actually see a genius in the midst of the creative process.
Did you know that Joan Jett has been playing Androgynous in her live shows (I got to see her twice in 2004 – first times ever – and was profoundly impressed)? I think it’s supposed to be on her new album that hasn’t been released yet in the U.S. I read somewhere a long time ago that Paul wrote “Someone I Once Knew” about Joan. It’s a beautiful pairing – there aren’t many people, much less many rock stars, who are more authentic and less concerned with all the BS and the trappings of success than those two.
I’m with Brendan on the Replacements… I hadn’t thought about “Waitress in the Sky” in years :)
LOVE The Replacements.
Tommy gets his tonsils out was another favorite but Unsatisfied!!!! man what a song.
Hi Brendan!
Paul … yes yes yes. My friends are down on his new “Folker” but I like it…
It was also great to hear “Inherit the Earth” -lip-synched by the faux band ‘Godflight’ – and “Skyway” in the movie “Saved.”
another trivia note: Paul and Joan Jett once did a duet of ‘Let’s Do It’ (Cole Porter) – I think it was for ‘Tank Girl’ or one of the ‘Red Hot’ comps.
And don’ forget ‘Alex Chilton’!!!
I’m in love… with that song.