The Replacements: Classic or Dud?

Jimmy Fallon (wearing glasses): Cool, Tina.

Tina: That's right, it's... Jimmy! You don't wear glasses!

Jimmy: I-I don't?

Tina: No! What's going to happen next!

(Winonna Ryder runs out)

Winonna Ryder (VERY HOT): One of you is the father of my child!

(shocked looks as they all freeze for the camera. Winonna Ryder cracks up. Scene falls apart)

Oh, and I grew up in and around the Twin Cities, too, so I figure my line of bullshit is just as qualified as anyone else ranting around here.

Virtually from the time they signed to Twin/Tone, the Replacements were hated by many other local musicians, probably from jealousy as much as anything else. Which is the way it's always been up there (or anywhere else on earth, I imagine) and why it's such a pathetic "scene." The same thing happens to every band that sells any records or gains a scintilla of popularity: they get ragged on. The hissing and backbiting for Trip Shakespeare, the Geardaddies, the Jayhawks, even Prince...if a band could fill the main room a couple of nights at the First Avenue, they definitely were too popular for the Twin Town cognoscenti. Time and time again I endured bitching by worthless other bands about how Westerberg sold out, couldn't write good songs, couldn't play for shit, and the worst offense--that he quit drinking and lost his talent with his habit--whenever crawling the racks at the various record stores and clubs around town. Sick.

The Replacements had some great, great moments in their released work, though live they were generally spotty. Westerberg's songs were not groundbreaking or sonically challenging but to refer to The Replacements as representative of the "worst" that the Twin Cities has or had to offer is just plain bullshit. It smacks of the immature jealousy that ruins any potential music scene. And it's all based on the fact that more people bought 'Mats' albums than Walt Mink's. And while I didn't get into all the other bands proffered up by Perry as better than the Replacements, I saw more than a few bad nights by a few of them to know that they were far from perfect. Or more relevant in any way.

The Replacements are a classic.

I'm not at all jealous of The Replacements. I just don't like them. Surely that isn't very difficult to comprehend?

At least, not any more than you are.

It's not that you just "don't like them." It's that you posit that they were the *worst* of what the Twin Cities had to offer. I mean really, you can't think of dozens of other bands who were worse? Or, as I posit, do you just think they represented the nadir of the scene because a) so many people knew who they were and b) so many more people bought their records?

There were and are plenty of reasonable people who think that the Replacements were a dumbed down version of Thin Lizzy or a lazy version of Bad Company. There are also plenty of reasonable people who think that the Replacements had some damn great songs. But you're part of the group who is intent on spinning their success (?) into something much more negative than that, something that the local music scene never needed. If anything, the attention the Replacements brought on to the indie scene in Minneapolis gave a lot of bands deals that they likely never otherwise would have had. The cancer on any scene is resentment, and whether you will deny you had any towards the Replacements, a lot of bands did.

RIP Paul Wellstone.

I freely admit that my stance on The Replacements as put forward in this thread is blatant hyperbole. I'm certain that there are many TC bands I want nothing to do with who are *objectively* (if you can measure that) worse than The Replacements. My issue with The Replacements is that they don't hit any of my emotions or any of my "ooh, that's neat!" buttons. The bands I listed do. I think _Miss Happiness_ is one of the most underrated albums of the 90s, Husker Du were phenomenal, and most of the other groups I listed outside of the Prince Axis are dance/industrial groups whose core audience probably wouldn't have had anything to do with The Replacements, anyway. I mean, the entire focus of Savage Aural Hotbed was performance art featuring kodo drumming, PVC tubing, guitar squalls, woodwind abuse and tricks with rhythm; if that's the type of thing you're looking for in your music, you're going to find The Replacements wildly uninteresting. (Likewise, the first Walt Mink song I heard was "Croton-Harmon", with its super-syncopation and absolutely killer 4/4:7/8 hook between verses; once I heard that, I was ready to dive into the rest of the album full steam.)

So, you can look at my stance from a particular viewpoint and say, "Well, he hates them because he's jealous of their success," but that's woefully inaccurate. It's much closer to "He hates them because he's not at all disposed towards the style of music they embody, but people latched onto it and he had to hear them everywhere he went because of his older brother."

(kidding)

For the record, I think and thought that the Huskers were overrated, and that Bob Mould's ego kept them from being a better band. And, while the Huskers were overrated, I loved them just the same. And since we're playing full disclosure, I will readily admit that the legacy of the Replacements is just as overrated as their live shows were. That hasn't kept them from being one of my favorite all time bands, either. If I had to measure artistic credibility or musical ambition on everything I loved, my record collection would be pretty tiny.

And that's sort of my point, actually. Within every music scene there is snobbery, and more than often than not, this snobbery is directed at bands who encounter success or at the very least, notoriety. On a larger scale--say nationally or worldly, for example--it's not all that destructive to detest the success of, say, Creed and blame it all on the mooks or other knuckle draggers. But on a local level it's quite destructive, especially when virtually any local success that translates beyond the immediate realm brings more attention to acts that normally would never see an audience. Maybe Nirvana was too rockist or too commerical for your taste, but they introduced a lot of kids to the Wipers, the Raincoats, and even Sonic Youth. The Replacements had the same effect on me; without them, I never would have ever bothered with many of the other local bands of the day, whether it was the Suburbs or the Hang Ups or 24/7 Various or any of the other wannabes who never made it. It's hard to imagine AmRep ever having a life at all without the attention the Huskers and Replacements brought to Minneapolis in the mid 80s.

That's why, to read your post, even though I knew it was hyperbole, disturbed me so. It reminded me of when I was younger and living up there and participating in a scene that so clearly measured quality by a lack of quantity in records sold. I'm sure *you* were objectively not interested in whatever the Replacements were doing in those days, but so many others who hated the Replacements did so out of jealousy and little reason else. At least you aren't interested in that style of music. Every other hata I knew based most of their anger on the fact that the Replacements got great ink wherever they went.

I guess the short version is that you, who aren't predisposed to even like music like the Replacements, couched your argument two separate times in the context of how the band represented the Twin Cities. That kinda hurt, and jackasses like me are predisposed to fly off the handle.

BTW, the Suburbs were a great band.

Classic, so ya know. (though Dan's got me doubting some songs on Tim if not Let It Be, which IS perfect - the best rock album evah, goddamnit).

I usually never tell people I like em - statements like "If you never liked the 'Mats (GOD I hate that name) you never liked rock'n'roll" piss me off too - but I adore the seemingly (genuinely?) tossed-off feel of those records, their goofy, un-self-conscious humanity. Let It Be is like a classic Howard Hawks film, or an old issue of Spiderman, or a great Fitzgerald short story: both shallow and strangely deep, timelessly rewarding in a very mysterious way, and very American.

The Black Diamond cover is HI-larious and great IMO. But Let It Be is simply my fave album ever, so I'm kinda biased.

-- Anthony Miccio (anthonymicci...), June 15th, 2003.

You are quite obviously a man with marvelous taste. I only prefer The Clash's s/t and Funhouse to the glorious Let It Be.

Clash and Fun House both make my top ten, Francis, but I think the Mat's side 2 is stronger than the Stooges, and some of Mick Jones's songs on the Clash keep them from upstaging the Mats.

In the movie, two Replacements songs are used by the prom band..

I had this to ask on the ILE thread (no answer yet..)

I was wondering if Michael Stipe used that [Replacements song] because for 20 years he may have been saying that the Replacements were the ultimate teen movie prom band. .. Or was it just that they were looking for some music and decided that "Inherit the Earth" was a good song to use. I'm choosing the former because they used "Skyway" also.

Is this the first ILM hive mind accusation? (Not that I haven't made similar comments from time to time.)

but, um, stipe didn't direct the movie, so he may have had nothing to do with it. or maybe he just suggested it to the director, who was also the writer, who did the writing before stipe had anything to do with it.

but then again the movie really sucked, and the idea of the christian prom band playing "we'll inherit the earth" was one of the only things about it that got even a half-smile out of me.

Yeah that album sounds like shit even though there are some good songs on it. I don't know if they got Huey Lewis to produce it or anything, but it should not be anywhere near anyone's canon. (x-post)

Also I find sorry ma...the trash to be classic. Better than any Ramones album to me, even.

And and and...but hell, I was a white suburban American teenage male in the mid-1980s, my judgment is hopelessly skewed...

Totally. 'sorry ma' was my first placemats album, purchased at Big Star Records, a second hand place that opened in Wimbledon just as i hit 15 or so. The place sold me my first Dinosaur and Husker Du albums too, just as the rise of Grunge piqued my interest in these bands, and got me into OBSESSING about Stevie Wonder and Funkadelic, as opposed to merely being aware that they existed.

But 'sorry ma' is killer. i was 17 or so when i got it, and had the time on my hands to completely immerse myself in it. and, yes, it is 'power trash', a messy speedjag of a record, but there's so much heart to it as well. 'don't ask why' is an *amazing* love/break-up song, while the sense of pig-headed youthful frustration that pervades the album is so killer; and 'johnny's gonna die' is a perfect slice of nihilistic melancholy...

still prefer 'let it be' now, though.

The worship that surrounds them also smacks of the worst sort of Beatles fan, the type of stuff that makes me wanna just sit down and listen to the records by my own damn self, with my own damn thoughts, without any Greatest Of All Time mythos. "Mats," indeed.

Fave story about these guys: My friend Carol (R.I.P.) and I once watched them from a staircase beside the stage at a place called Going Bananas under an ice cream shop in Richmond, Va. Tommy's bass strap broke a few minutes into the show and he called for a shoelace. Carol pulled one of hers out, and he tied everything up after handing her some crumpled ones from his pocket. He sought her out after the show, and they traded back.

TS: 'The Shit Hits the Fans' v. 'Like Flies on Sherbert.'

"The worship that surrounds them also smacks of the worst sort of Beatles fan, the type of stuff that makes me wanna just sit down and listen to the records by my own damn self, with my own damn thoughts, without any Greatest Of All Time mythos. "Mats," indeed."

PHHHHHHHFFFTTT.

The 'Mats were about as classic as classic gets. Their best stuff was so brilliant, so much better than so many other bands of the same genre that they more than made up for their own mediocre stuff.

Take the hatuhz outside in the backyard and let them have their own darn thread!