I'm So Unsatisfied

The first time I heard The Replacements I was about 16. My sister scored a mixed tape somewhere, and my head about exploded with glee when "Bastards of Young" came scrawling out of our old, crappy tape deck. It was like God looked down on me and thought I needed a pick-me-up, so he reached down, grabbed that tape Himself, stuck it the box, and said upon to thee: "Blare that bad boy, kid, we need some angst around this place." And so there was angst.

The Mats were like me: from the Midwest (Minneapolis) and young. Where they were different was that they didn't give a flip about what you or I thought. I wasn't that brave. What they did better than any band I had heard up to then was combine just the right touch of the music I wanted to hear with lyrics that weren't juvenile or corny. Paul Westerberg's words were religion to me then, and they've remained the same as I've grown, and as he has, also. It probably sounds stupid to some, but his music and the music from the like-minded got me through a good deal of my teenage years. I used to think that was a melodramatic notion on my part, but I live with a 13-year-old boy in my house everyday who shows me it wasn't and isn't. Seeing up close how much music means to a kid each and every day in 2006 tells me I was right all along.

That's why I'm all over this when it comes out, and I'll probably review it for a magazine I write reviews for. I'm entirely biased on the subject, but that's OK. I've owned every song but the two news ones on this set for years and years anyway, and hearing them all over again in one setting isn't going to change that. I know the world will probably pass The Replacements over the way it did the first time around, but that's OK, too. I've found that the best things (at least to me) are the things that the general populace doesn't appreciate or know about. Too bad for them; good for me.

I've tackled The Replacements before in writing, and it wasn't easy. They mean a great deal to me. If you've ever had a favorite band, you know what I'm talking about. The same if you've ever had a favorite author, artist, filmmaker, poet, teacher, preacher, or creature. If you don't know of which I speak, I hope you find it someday.

One of my fondest memories is of a Friday afternoon one spring day many years ago when I was in my girlfriend's dorm room waiting for her to come back from class. The window was open, the day was perfect, and the night was waiting to creep in. The opening chords from "Alex Chilton" came floating into the room just as I was drifting off, and I distinctly remember thinking, "Cool. There's at least one other guy in the world whose taste in music doesn't suck." Pompous, elitist, and snobbish. Yep. But life gets no better than when everything falls into place even for one fleeting second. That was such a second. And they've come few and far between since.