This is a band that has been with me my whole life (like a bad ex-girlfriend) but, have been a huge part of it for the past 3 or 4 years. Lets start from the beginning....
When I was a young boy my father made me a mix-tape of bands he thought I should listen to like The Ramones, Crowded House, and The Replacements. So the first songs I ever heard from The Replacements were on this tape. I know for sure that "Can't Hardly Wait" was on there and two or three more which I can't remember exactly right now but know they were all tracks from Pleased to Meet Me and Tim. Then a few years later I remember I started listening to Tim a lot, which is my favorite album from Westerberg, the Stinsons, and Mars.
Years pass...About four years ago I was really sick of all the music I was listening to and was reminded of my youth and The Replacements. I went out and bought Don't Tell a Soul and then went through my Dad's CD collection and pulled out Pleased to Meet Me and Tim, promptly made myself a copy and allowed Westerberg to begin his influence over and connection to my life. I of course had immediate connections with the songs I remembered from my childhood but, found that what Paul was saying was much more relateable, in all of his songs, to my life at this point in time, 22 and frequenting bars and parties with my friends.
I feel writing in list form would be much easier to describe all the connections I had to this music, rather than many jumbled paragraphs, so here goes:
"Bastards of Young"- There was a point in time when I was really connected with a great group of friends and this song always made me think of that group of friends and how we were so tight at the time. We always hung out together, went to parties as a group and didn't really care about anyone else but each other. This song made me feel a sense of unity that I felt in my group of friends at that time.
"Nightclub Jitters"- Whenever I go out to a bar, party, or club I always have this sense of nervousness and Paul wrote about exactly that and how to control it, "I take a drink before I hit the town." Thanks Paul. Also, this song seems to come up any time I talk to my father about The Replacements because he used to feel the same way, and hearing that from my father made me feel like less of a freak. There is also a line, "I'd be willing to wager that it don't matter much if we keep in touch," that I used to always think of when seeing old friends. There were so many times when people would come up and talk to me while I was out and be like, "Nick I miss you so much. We need to get back together. blah,blah,blah" and I would always think to myself that these people were full of shit and I probably wouldn't talk to them for another few months or years because it doesn't really "matter much if we keep in touch."
"Left of the Dial"- Is a song that reminds me of any band I've ever been in but mostly YourBestKeptSecret. When YBKS was playing around there were so many bands that were friends and everyone was supposed to do all these big things. You would become friends with all these bands and then not see them for a while and then bump into them again at some other show, so you would develop these weird relationships where you might start missing seeing these certain people, or hearing from them. "Heard about your band in some local page, didn't mention your name," reminds me of all these big headed kids who thought there band was doing something important, they were gonna be big. Then eventually our bands became competition for each other, "Whose side are you on?" We would get dropped from shows or we would make sure not to put certain bands on our shows and it all became this ridiculous joke that no one ever really talked about but we all knew it was there.
And then there is the line, "You grow old in a bar."
"Can't Hardly Wait"- A few years ago I was writing letters back and forth to this girl I had a crush on. I was hanging out at bars, or drinking and staying at peoples houses and sitting there thinking of what to write to her, so when Westerberg sings, "I'll write you a letter tomorrow. Tonight, I can't hold a pen," I could completely relate. I also felt really stuck at the time, doing all the same old things every night or weekend and the line, "...Ain't you had enough of this stuff, ashtray floors, dirty clothes, and filthy jokes," really helped make that connection for me.
"Kiss Me On The Bus"- I took a trip to Toronto by bus and secretly fell in love, for a few hours, with a hippie girl.
"Achin' to Be"- I have a friend who is an artist and one year she went away to some art school down south after we had grown pretty close. Anytime I heard this song it reminded me of her and always made me miss her a little bit.
"The Ledge"- I've crushed on a lot of girls who haven't even paid attention to me and this song seems to make sense of that. "I'm the boy she can't ignore for the first time in my life I'm sure..."
"Swinging Party"- See above, "The Ledge."
"Customer"- Often when I go shopping, dining, or drinking, I quickly fall in love with any pretty girl that helps me and it is obviously, completely unwarranted. " I'm in love with the girl that works at the store but I'm nothing but a customer."
The Replacements have many other great songs ("Alex Chilton", "Talent Show", "I'm In Trouble", "Answering Machine," "Unsatisfied," etc.) and I could probably write a little something about how I relate to each one of them. I have made some of my greatest connections with the songs listed above but, there are so many songs and some of them I don't feel like writing about.
In the end, The Replacements will always be a band that I can pick lines from anything they've done and relate it to any situation I'm in or have been in. I believe The Replacements will always be one of the biggest contributors to the soundtrack of my life.
Videos:
Bastards of Young (one of the best music videos of all time)
SNL- Bastards of Young (destroying it with Bob)
The Ledge ( they also used this footage for a video of "Alex Chilton")
Kiss Me On The Bus
Talent Show at International Rock Awards ("What the hell are we doing here?" They weren't supposed to sing about taking pills which is why that one line in the beginning is muted out but they later change (without telling the shows producers) the lyrics to the breakdown to "it's too late to take pills, here we go." so punk!)
Certain Replacements videos used to be really easy to find online but now I can't find them, something weird happened. So this is all you get.
