The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

I remember the exact moment I read that Winona was a Replacements fan because I was like ME TOO. I was in my backyard reading a magazine in a hammock. I've got enough distance to admit that PW was my imaginary dreamboat. He was cool and understood my problems :-/ I also invited Bob Stinson to live in my attic. I think I even posted my idle notebook doodles of the lettering on PTMM here years ago. Teenagers and their obsessions, no? Sorry Ma is still my favorite album of theirs but I can't really listen to any of them much. No band compared to this band has ever been remotely as appealing as this band was at the time.

Winona Ryder was really good in one of the better Jason Statham movies (which also features a great performance by Kate Bosworth - alongside, unfortunately, James Franco).

Xpost

omg was it sassy cuz I'm showing my age but that shit was formative

"I'll Be You," "I Won't," fine -- the rest is OK or garbage.

unbelievably wrong. "anywhere's better than here" alone

W Ryder is fine in Experimenter; for starters, i wasn't sure it was her for 20 mins

and "darlin' one"!

Ryder was terrific through 1995, after which some spark died.

Xp I was a Sassy subscriber, yes.

I liked WR in this Bill Nighy/David Hare thing about a retired MI5 agent, in which she seemed to be playing a version of herself, but yeah. I mean, her character displayed a nervousness that I imagine she has in real life.

Fun fact: Sassy staff writer Kim France and Charles Aaron, author of the famous Spin article about Bob, were a couple for several years in the 90s.

Winona was enrolled at my college, Macalester, fall of '88, but didn't go after the success of Beetlejuice (BTW supposedly she's going to be in the sequel). I liked to think I might have had a shot to have been her pre-Pirner bf, ha.

'91 to '92 when I lived near Garage D'or (Mpls record store), I used to see Bob Stinson hanging out there all the time. He was very nice and humored my trying to turn him on to The Jesus Lizard and other stuff I was into. I also saw him play guitar with some long-forgotten local band at 7th St Entry, and was as great as I imagined he was with the 'Mats.

'91 to '92 when I lived near Garage D'or (Mpls record store), I used to see Bob Stinson hanging out there all the time.

that was a bit before i moved up to the Cities but Garage D'or was the greatest record store ever, owned by Terry Katzman who was running sound the night the cops raided a Replacements party and capture the audio that is the beginning of Stink

http://blog.thecurrent.org/2016/01/the-replacements-stink-show-a-true-story-from-minnesota-music-history/

Katzman also owned Reflex Records and produced the early Huskers stuff and is generally amazing

Lol at pun that it took me a second to parse Garage D'or

Somewhere there's gotta be a clip of Keanu Reeves and Cameron Diaz singing along with "I Will Dare" in a car from the forgettable "Feeling Minnesota."

the rest is OK or garbage
I mean I'm a DTAS hater myself and I won't go that far.
Picks: Talent Show, Achin' To Be, I'll Be You, and I think I'm the only fan of Askin' Me Lies, but I think the backing vocals on a lot of their songs are underrated sweet spot.

They're Blind is probably his first truly terrible song though.

'91 to '92 when I lived near Garage D'or (Mpls record store), I used to see Bob Stinson hanging out there all the time. He was very nice and humored my trying to turn him on to The Jesus Lizard and other stuff I was into. I also saw him play guitar with some long-forgotten local band at 7th St Entry, and was as great as I imagined he was with the 'Mats.

― Fastnbulbous, Thursday, March 10, 2016 12:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ha, the one time I "met" him it was at Garage D'or, I had no clue who it was just thought it was another dude looking at records. I would see him in there on & off until he passed way.

and I think I'm the only fan of Askin' Me Lies

that one's great too! "they're blind" is bad, yes. "i won't" is also awful, no idea why alfred singled it out

I w-w-w-w-w-w-w-onn't.

i like when the fake band in the movie Saved! covers "We'll Inherit the Earth"

excellent example of mediocre song sounding sort of decent in context of mediocre movie

Is any of Bob's non-Replacements stuff worth hearing? I'm guessing no, but curious (just cued up Static Taxi on Spotify). Every single thing I read about him is heartbreaking.

Assuming that he's playing guitar on this, the idea that he couldn't function as a guitarist is insane, but I'm not sure what the deal is.

I knew the anniversary of his death must have been recent as I tend to subconsciously remember things like that. The facebook page is just really hard to read without crying. https://www.facebook.com/Bob-Stinson-35135237355/?fref=nf

I know where that bench is, nice little spot to sit

Thanks. All I see is photos, mostly. Still made me a little sad as well, though.

You know another thing that got me? After I reached the end of the book proper and kept going on into he notes section and saw:

Author interviews with Lonnie Stinson, Tommy Stinson, Anita Stinson, and Robert Flemal. Other Sources Minnesota, State of, Department of Corrections. Uniform case report: “Robert Neil Stinson,” June, 30, 1975. ———. Monthly progress report: “Robert Neil Stinson,” October 3, 1975.

etc.

I started the book and, man, it's just heartbreaking from page one.

Oh no, factual error on page 26! Neighborhood Threat is on Lust For Life, not The idiot.

Send it back.

the goo goo dolls biography will be perfectly and pristinely fact-checked, edited, produced, mixed and mastered and will have no errors whatsoever.

This was my first exposure to them and looking back, Paul was the weakest link (in this performance):

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6yi30_what-a-mess_music

I'm not saying it's great, but listening to Static Taxi was not a complete waste of time.

Just found this and had to laugh. I guess I turned into Ned 12 years later:

Heh, yeah, Stink is still my favorite -- the first 'Mats I ever heard and really the only one I think I actively care about. One song too long, though -- "Go" was sorta useless. Just give me the noise (and the cop -- 'this is the Minneapolis police, the party is over!').
― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, July 11, 2003 6:56 PM (12 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kind of interesting to hear the Replacements filtered through San Francisco. I'm slightly fascinated at the moment about Replacements/San Francisco indie nexus, which I'd never thought much about. Not sure if that gets covered in the book, as I'm still near the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8DBpVdybwk

At the very least, the book has finally learned me the actual lyrics to "Bastards of Young."

I knew the Replacements were big drinkers, but I had no idea they carried it to such excess as detailed in the book (not to mention all the self-destruction when it came to their careers, despite their serious desires for a hit record). It’s a wonder any of them still have functioning livers. And it seemed that every new character Mehr introduced came from a family with a history of hard drinking and/or mental illness. One of the saddest rock bios ever.

otm. There were points where I just had to stop reading, as it was making me feel hungover (it didn't help that I read most of it while recuperating from an insane stomach virus). Had a similar experience with the Keith Moon bio.

Replacements are like a band with four Keith Moons.

Well, and a few Kenny Joneses toward the end.

Which is ironic, given where Jones came from.

I wrote this on FB yesterday: I don't read rock bios but this Replacements book by Bob Mehr is among the more enervating stories of its kind I've read. I keep thinking, "What is about America that turns the John Cheevers and Scott Fitzgeralds and Paul Westerbergs into mean infantile drunks?" Then I think, "Right, it's a touring van through north Louisiana and south Arkansas.'

Sure, but obviously he's also self-medicating. Depression, low self-esteem, better to preemptively self-destruct than to fail, etc., which is all in the book. Also, for most of the band's existence the drinking age was only 19, which is a bad temptation for a band of high-school dropouts from alcoholic and/or abusive and certainly negligent or absentee families. Like I got from the Motley Crue book way back when, these guys were all self-destructive and prone to substance abuse before they even formed a band.

Ya think?

Self destructive and self medicating is more or less the American Way. Westerberg is just better at communicating about it than a lot of his peers. Or through it. Or writing songs about it.

I think a lot about if there's something about living in the Midwest that explains this or if I'm just projecting.

i love the replacements but find most rock bios a chore (w/ obvious exceptions like tosches, guralnick, jon savage, stanley booth), so i never would've picked this up but i'm intrigued by the descriptions here. maybe i'll give it a shot.

It's not on the level of say, Chronicles or Careless Love, but it is certainly a fine rock bio. But as this thread makes clear, it's bleak as hell. And I'm only up to Sorry Ma.

I've been reading a bunch of these lately, and while I think it's better than the Grace Jones and the Elvis Costello (which is a weird sort of hybrid of ideas), it's not quite as good as Warren Zanes' Tom Petty book, which is quieter but just as sad at times.

I actually preferred this to Careless Love, which struck me as having a pretty dispassionate tone.

Huh, I actually think this one is pretty dispassionate, too, in a good, journalistic way. Not passing judgement, not rooting for anyone to succeed or fail. Just the facts, let the subjects interview make up their own minds.

Only prob I have with the book is the use of "said" when attributing quotes. I'm not sure what the correct verb tense solution was/is, but I would have liked to know which quotes are what the parties involved are saying *now* (from new interviews), and which are quotes they said *then* (in past interviews). Book doesn't always clarify.

There's something about the way Mehr lays out the story and sets up various dramas that I found missing from Guralnick's book (though, significantly, said qualities were not missing from Last Train to Memphis). Mehr seems more engaged with/invested in the subject matter.