Tag: The Replacements

  • More Trouble, Boys

    The biography I am reading for the Minneapolis band, The Replacements, is both lengthy and well done. I’m just crossing the half-way point and the tale has reached that point in their story where the band started to show their cracks with their lead guitarist, Bob Stinson.

    There was always a bit of tension there between Bob and the singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg. Paul was a little older than Bob and Chris Mars (the drummer) and all of them were older by quite a bit than Tommy Stinson (bass player). Paul used his age and experience to take over what had originally been Bob’s band, Dogbreath. [Side note: Tommy was very young and playing bars on a regular basis by 13 years of age.]

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  • Trouble Boys

    I’m currently reading through Trouble Boys: The True Adventures of The Replacements, a biography that I picked up on sale for Kindle a week or so ago. I’m less than halfway through it but, by golly, it is a great read already — although I might have to admit being biased because I lived in Minneapolis at the time that the story largely takes place and it fits with my memories fairly well.

    Growing up in 70s-80s Minneapolis, Minnesota was a fantastic time for someone who loved music such as myself. I didn’t really move beyond my family’s taste in music until 1980 or so (which, even by my eclectic standards, was abysmal), but the scene had only really started building up steam the decade before and was just coming to a head by around then anyway.

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  • Bob Mould concert tonight

    Well, I’m about off to go to a concert that I may or may not know enough of the music to really enjoy myself. It will be a great time, assuredly, but I have not been keeping up with Bob Mould as much as I probably should have over the years since his divorce from Hüsker Dü, a band that played a pivotal role in my youth. Hüsker Dü was one of two bands frequently cited by the next generation of “punk” music as having an outsized influence on their sounds. The other frequently-mentioned influencers were the Hüsker’s local “rivals”, The Replacements.

    Nirvana, Green Day, and nearly every grunge band from the 90s will mention Hüsker Dü as an influence on why they wrote songs like they did.

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