The Replacements
Tim (Let It Bleed Edition)
As a young musician finding my way in the 80s, I was grateful for The Replacements, who taught me not to take failure or defeat so hard. Bassist Tommy Stinson once said the band’s goal was to be “The best worst band in the world,” and his view was a relief to someone scrambling for radio airplay, photo shoots, Graffiti magazine profiles, Sam’s in-stores and nooners at the Moose; Canadian stepping stones towards whatever represented Canadian musical success. We put such pressure on ourselves, gutting through opening sets for more popular bands and touring relentlessly in a relentless country, that the idea of prioritizing fun and noise (and, okay, booze) and songs that you played until you exploded was liberating. Our answer wasn’t found in the wreckage of live shows but, rather, in a career that lurched left when it might have lurched right. Failure, in a way, made us who we were; caring only when we had to, playing within ourselves and rising to our own expectations.
When The ‘Mats played on Saturday Night Live, there was a party at editor Nancy Lanthier’s house where all of the writers for (the 80’s music paper) Nerve gathered to watch the show. It was a big deal, signalling the arrival of independent-label guitar rock on a televised international stage. Still, the band’s two song set wasn’t a career coronation so much as an opportunity to fuck up in bold. They eventually got banned from the show for swearing off-mic — SNL producers claimed to trade in firebrand social commentary but they still were too chickenshit to allow impulse among its musical performers — and, in the end, the band treated the global stage like it was no better nor worse than the Cauldron in Rapid City, Iowa or the Double Door in Seattle or Larry’s Hideaway in Toronto, where Bob Stinson once went missing until someone found him in the morning just before the van departed. More than any other band — more than Nirvana, the Sex Pistols, or Ramones — The Replacements were the pallbearers for rock and roll. Across their career, they showed you a beautiful river of melody and hook and lyric while allowing garbage and sewage to float on the water.
The new Ed Stadium mix of the band’s pivotal album Tim has returned listeners to their youth, and a lot of the writing about it has dwelled on the band’s rejection of fame, which is old and tired news. People have asked: What if this mix had gone out to radio? What if the rejected album’s version of “Can’t Hardly Wait” was included? What if Paul Westerberg had cared a little bit more? But despite the gated drums, subdued vocal mix and muted guitar bark, Tim as it formerly existed was still central to the world of modern music, and these what-might-have-been theories ignore the fact that it’s always songs and never sound that create devotion and fandom. Sure, it’s nice to hear the album spritzed and souped up with exciter plug-ins — Stadium has undoubtedly done fine and detailed work here — but it’s nothing more than a curiosity to me. This album still lives in the radiant memory of a time when so much of my life was about feeling my way through the hot universe, which both narrowed and grew endless the more I lived in it. Rock and roll love is messy with sharp corners and tables turned over and bedsheets thrown on the floor. This version of Tim, no matter how many “Orghhhs!” and hidden guitar solos have been revealed, still arrives with a 21st century mop and bucket, and it’s natural to feel excited hearing all of this suddenly exist. But the original Tim shaped us, gave us plenty. It wasn’t perfect and neither are we.
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