Favorite Album Friday: It's All About The Replacements

Well, after a good start, I've kind of dropped the ball with the Favorite Album Friday posts. But on the eve of this weekend's big Replacements reunion concert, I figure now is as a good a time as any to get back on track. Throughout the week here in Minnesota, there have been plenty of tributes to the band and reminiscences about their inconsistent and drunken live shows. And so tonight I pay tribute to my favorite album by one of my all-time favorite bands: Tim, by the Replacements. Because if there was ever a poster-band for failing to live up to expectations, it was the Replacements.

At one time, for many hardcore Replacements fans, Tim was more than just the first major-label for the band. It was a dividing line that separated what kind of fan you were. You were either one of the fans who loved their early, faster, more ragged period, culminating in Let it Be, or you were one of the fans who latched on to the band after Tim, a period that saw them make increasingly poppy, more slickly produced records as they tried to chase after the ever-elusive brass ring of pop stardom. That, of course, was the narrative of many Indie bands from the 1980s: low-fi beginnings, the establishment of small yet devoted fan bases, and the struggle to make into the mainstream. And in many cases, you had the fans who believed the early years were the truest iteration of the band.

In retrospect, the narrative is ridiculous. All bands change and evolve over time. Musicians get better at their craft and expect more from themselves. Songwriters become more introspective. Bands learn that better production can add depth to their songs. That's the path that the Replacements tried to follow but never really could. But for the Replacements, the one thing that never changed was the thing that people loved about them: their attitude, their spirit, and their sense of humor. And all of that is captured on Tim.
 
I know a lot of people who don't care for the Replacements, and they are people whose musical taste I respect. I hesitate to say that they don't "get" the Replacements, because that makes it sound Replacements fans are part of some club that has special insight into music. It's not that at all. Nor is it a Minnesota thing. I'm not from here, and even though I've lived her for more than a decade, I'll never be a Minnesotan. But I do think that many Replacements fans discovered the band at a particularly impressionable time in their lives, and for that reason they will always be special.

That was the case for me. I first heard the Replacements in the fall of 1986, when I was a shy 15-year-old who loved the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and was just beginning to discover Indie music. The song was "Kiss Me on The Bus." I heard it on WLIR, a long Island station that played a lot of new wave music. I couldn't get that song out of my head for days. I was intrigued. Who was this band? Who names an album "Tim"? Where's Minneapolis? So I went out to the "record store" and bought the "cassette" of Tim. And everything changed after that.

How? Well, I just heard music, and thought about it, differently after listening to Tim. There was nothing great about the musicianship. Paul Westerberg wasn't a great singer. But his songwriting was real, and his singing was heartfelt. He sang about wanting to be something, and about the fear that he would never be anything at all. That kind of vulnerability was unlike anything I had heard in pop or rock music, and for a 15-year-old, it was easy to relate to. Listening back to it now, Tim is the sound of a band giving it everything its got, and hoping that would be enough. You can feel it in every song.

I could spend a lot of time on every song from Tim, but I won't. They're all great. Whether he's pushing off adulthood in "Hold My Life," expressing adolescent cynicism and angst on "Bastards of Young," or wallowing in regret on "Here Comes a Regular," Paul Westerberg is at his best on this album. His humor, sincerity, anger and pathos are on full display. And the spirit of the music is undeniable.

There might be some Replacements fans out there who still don't care for Tim, who think it tried too hard to smooth the band's rough edges. If there are, I'd recommend they give it another listen. I try to listen to it at least once a year, and nearly 30 years after I first heard it, it still hits me in the place only great music can reach.

And with that, I'll leave you with my favorite Replacements song, and one of the greatest videos of all time. Here's "Left of the Dial". If you've never heard the band before, this will tell you everything you need to know.