The Replacements Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
For the 2000 Keanu Reeves movie, see The Replacements (film).The Replacements were a seminal alternative rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota. They began as a punk rock outfit, but they style shifted to more mainstream, blues-influenced rock following the departure of guitarist Bob Stinson in 1987.
Loud and exuberant, the band featured guitarist and vocalist Paul Westerberg, guitarist Bob Stinson, bassist Tommy Stinson, and drummer Chris Mars. Tommy Stinson was 14 years old when the first 'Mats (fan name for the band, short for "Placemats") album (Sorry, Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash) was recorded. The band was famous, or infamous, for their rowdy, drunken shows. When they played CBGBs, the legendary Bowery club in New York, they decided that they couldn't be the BEST band that ever played there, but they could be the WORST band that ever played there. So, they did their damndest. Sometimes the band would show up too drunk to play their own songs, and instead play covers, which they were also too drunk to play. But their songs always reflected Westerberg's sly talent for perceptive lyrics about the outcast man and a disaffected condidtion. They released the four albums on Twin/Tone Records (from Minneapolis, MN, their home town) the last two of which, "Hootenanny" and "Let It Be", are widely considered classics by fans of what alternative rock was in the 1980s. "Let It Be" is often on lists for the best rock albums, ever. The title was typical Replacements: deliberately thumbing their nose at the legacy of, um, I don't know, the most famous band ever, and putting out a subversive, brilliant, melodic punk record that these days would/should go to #1. The Replacements first major label release, "Tim" on Warner, was produced by Tommy Erdelyi (aka. Tommy Ramone, of the Ramones). It contains classics like "Kiss Me on the Bus" and "Subway."
After Bob Stinson left the band owing to substance abuse problems he formed Static Taxi with three musicians from Uptown (Minneapolis, MN). They recorded two albums before folding in 1991. He died in 1995. Meanwhile, Minneapolis guitarist Slim Dunlap played some sessions on the Pleased to Meet Me Replacements album, and then joined the band for its remaining run. The later albums were more quiet, less punky affairs - which cost them the appreciation of hardcore fans, but produced a legacy of brilliant (and overlooked) rock songs. Of all the bands from the 80s, the Replacements were perhaps the most overlooked, the most deserving of widespread, popular appeal. And the fact that they never got it just made them all that much better.
Westerberg, Dunlap amd Mars have all produced solo albums. Stinson formed the short-lived Bash and Pop, then briefly played with Guns and Roses. Westerberg is currently signed to Vagrant Records, and under his alias, Grandpaboy, to Fat Possum Records, and has released both a DVD and a CD under the title "Come Feel Me Tremble". The DVD features some professional footage insterspersed with fan footage (for which Paul thanks his fans, left-handedly, in the DVD's titles). Both the CD and DVD are widely considered by fans and critics to be a welcome return to his looser (not loser), younger days. The DVD is especially notable for its footage of Westerberg in his basement studio."Folker", his latest, released in Sept. 2004, is a delightful return to the melodic low-fi brilliance of the Replacements - but a mature work relecting a man in his early 40s.
The Replacements' career is chronicled in Our Band Could Be Your Life, a study of several important American underground rock groups.
Discography
the Replacements were paid homage by "They Might Be Giants" on their album Miscellaneous T
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