If you feel the need to write about your origin story with Paul Westerberg and/or The Replacements (oh, and I know, the temptation just may be too great what with the release of this ridiculous live album – there could be someone left in the world who hasn’t yet heard your tale about that one time when Westerberg slipped on some barf onstage and it’s legend and you were there) please, kindly refrain from the using the following in your treatise:

– “shambolic”  – it’s been done. To death. They weren’t, very often.

– “like lightning in a bottle” – yeah, you could say that about Halen, too.

– “soundtrack to my disaffection/alienation/brooding/loneliness/tearful jerkoff sessions” – AND EVERYONE ELSE’S.

– “bought Tommy a beer/smoked a cig/did coke with Paul/Tommy/Bob” – EVERYONE DID.

– “self-sabotage” – these days we call it blind arrogance.

– “post punk drunks” or “clown princes” or any other vaguely preposterous linking of nouns and adverbs that avoids that which is “squandered talent.”

No amount of purple prose is going to make your hair less gray, your Chucks any cooler, inspire the Mats to re-reunite, or impress anyone under 30. These are delicate times. Most people are buckling from information overload every damn day regarding things that actually matter. Chances are whatever you experienced in 1984 while laid out on the carpet in front of your parents’ hi-fi is the exact same thing all the rest of us experienced. Just save it, snowflake.

Much love,

Venezuela MacNamara

via The Minnesota Mystique: Will our most famous musicians be forever inscrutable? | Local Current Blog | The Current from Minnesota Public Radio.

via Yes, college students have heard of the Replacements (well, some of them have) | Local Current Blog | The Current from Minnesota Public Radio.

Anyway, The Silks wrote a bunch of essays over at Rock Torch about the bands that influenced them. You should read all the essays, but if you scroll down to the end of Matthew Donnelly’s, there’s a nice little surprise: Westerberg covering “One More Try” with the band. Pretty sweet.

Check ’em out!

So I’ve been trying for a week to write about the night I decided the time had finally come to sit down, drink a Captain Morgan and Diet Coke like it was 1995 and Kelly McKnight had just given me a buck to put in the jukebox with the stipulation that I play something by The Replacements, and watch Color Me Obsessed, a documentary about The Replacements.

Before I get too far, you should that if you’re an Amazon Prime member in the US, you can watch it FREE! Right now for FREE! I know! If you’re not a Prime member you can stream the movie for like $4. If you’re in the UK you can get it at Wienerworld or preorder it from Amazon UK.

Okay, now that you know how to get your hands on this, I will exhort you to do so. For many, many reasons, not the least of which is that you can see my ol’ pal Vodo steal the fucking show in the movie. I’ll get to that later.

I vow to you now to refrain from typing every other word in all caps with multiple exclamation points as a shortcut way to convey how very much this movie made my heart glow like E.T. Serious, there is glowing in my chest as I type (because I restarted the movie when I sat down to write and honestly I’m doing more re-watching than writing). There’s also a small, tender smile that I can’t erase.

I could list all the people they talk to both local(ish) (Lori Barbero, Grant Hart, Craig Finn, David Carr) and famous (Colin Meloy, Tommy Ramone, David Foley, George Wendt). I could rehash the stories about Oarfolk and Peter Jesperson and getting banned from Saturday Night Live. But all this, this is not news. There is not a lot of new information in this documentary. The new thing I learned? The stamp on the cover of “Stink” was carved from a potato.

Here’s the charm about this movie: It’s a bunch of passionate music geeks talking about something they love. I believe this would be charming even if they weren’t talking about The ‘Mats. However, I am ridiculously biased because I love The Replacements. And I love this movie. It’s kind of hard not to.

At one point in the movie Johnny Rzeznik from The Goo Goo Dolls said, “For me it was just like a paradigm shift. My perspective on music and the world and everything changed in like literally in like a moment. I finally found a band I could completely relate to and make my own.” This was the exact same reaction I had that night at The Cam when I heard “Merry Go Round” for the first time.

And that’s a lot of what watching this movie is like, nodding your head and thinking “yeah, yeah, me too.” Also, if you’re a semi-sane passionate fan you will spend a little bit of time arguing with the TV, like I did with Robert Christgau a few times. I expect this is what sports fans do when they think a ref makes a bad call.

I have more to say about this, specifically about the women in the movie, but I’ll save that for another day. In the meantime, other Misc. Highlights:
Vodo ripping on Glass Tiger and talking about how his Geometry teacher made him a tape and left off “Gary Got a Boner” and then, eventually, saying this:
“Even to this day. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to talk about whether they’re good or not. And sometimes it’s even hard for me to talk about whether I like them or not. Or if they’re simply such a part of me. You know? It’s hard for me to talk. Do I like my parents?. . . I just, I wonder how much of it is them, and like if they hadn’t come around I think we would have had to invent them somehow.”

Carleen Stinson’s story of going to see her pizza chef boyfriend, Bob, play in his band and have him part the crowd for her.

“It made me want to tell the truth in a way that was beautiful,” Matthew Ryan.

Bil MacLeslie talking about the chance encounter with a taper that led to “Shit Hits the Fans.”

“It’s almost shameful to say ‘I Will Dare’, but it’s so obviously a brilliant song,” Brett Milano, writer.

Dave Foley talking about how one of the Kids in the Hall (I can’t remember which one) said they hoped to be The Replacements of comedy.

Jim McGuin of 89.3 The Current writing his mom an angry letter after she said his college band was better than The Replacements.

Every time someone’s voice catches in their throat when talking about how much they love the band or a song.

Also if you head on over there you can read more about why he loves The ‘Mats & listen to the song he wrote with Westerberg for the Natchez Trace.

P.S. I still think Black Diamond is the worst song on Let it Be.

As Erik mention in a comment earlier this month, Kevin Bowe has a new album out. Y’all remember Kevin Bowe from the Folker tour back in 05 (god that’s been a long long time now) right? RIGHT?

Anyway, his new album is Natchez Trace you can get it on iTunes or Amazon, and it features a song Bowe & Westerberg co-wrote called “Everybody Lies”

The album also include appearances by Freedy Johnston, Chuck Prophet, Tim O’Reagan (Jayhawks), Scarlet Rivera (Bob Dylan), The Meat Puppets and Nels Cline (Wilco).

Kevin will be doing a release show with Alison Scott at The Varsity on June 8. Tickets are only $15.

“Formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1979, The Replacements, led by singer-songwriter-guitarist Paul Westerberg, shot to underground-alternative superstardom thanks to a slew of critically acclaimed (if not commercially successful) albums and a notoriously unpredictable and rowdy live show, where the band’s very presence and inebriation level were anyone’s best-guess from night to night. Said Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong after seeing The Replacements for the first time: “It changed my whole life. If it wasn’t for that, I might’ve spent my whole time playing in bad speed-metal bands.” – Sean Patrick Dooley”

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