Gettin' Nowhere, but with Gusto: Revisiting The Replacements

Filter Magazine has a really good article on the Mats and an interview with Paul that is worth checking out:

It likely had something to do with the wide-smiling revisionism of the Reagan era, but the 1980s foisted some bizarro visions of the Heartland on the rest of America. Looking back and taking stock was a drag amidst the new cowboy optimism, and it seemed like the tumult of the ’60s and the malaise of the ’70s would no longer penetrate the cornfields and sleepy Main Street drags of that magical American dawning—the only drip of discontent permeating the farmer’s cup of Folger’s might have been the latest small-town hit from Johnny Cougar or Don Henley.

Completely unwittingly, and without equal, The Replacements were the closest thing to that missing voice for middle-America’s wayward children. Forming in 1979 and hailing from the seemingly unexciting city of Minneapolis, they caroused and slacked their way into being one of the best bands of their generation; just in time for the end of The Gipper’s first term.

A drunken foursome of loser kids—including a janitor (Paul Westerberg), a bully (lead guitarist Bob Stinson), a high school dropout (drummer Chris Mars) and Bob’s 12-year-old misfit-brother, Tommy, as their bassist—they could be rocking, snot-nosed, good for nothing, pissed-off and heartbroken; a song like “Color Me Impressed” (“Everybody at your party/ they don’t look depressed/everybody’s dressing funny/color me impressed”) could somehow manage to be all of these things at once. This is not to say that people actually heard The Replacements as generational torch-bearers (or even heard them at all for that matter), for in truth, their videos were evasive “fuck you’s” and their major TV appearances shambling puddles. But through the prism of retrospection, one would be hard pressed to find a band better suited to honestly address tiny-town isolation, or to sum up the decades of music that preceded them...

Complete Article Here

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