As I graduated college, I had two options laid out before me: I could go to graduate school, or I could be in a band. Unwisely for my future prospects, but wisely for my future debt levels, I chose the band.
We were a scrappy outfit. A foursome mostly in their early twenties, with one junior (read: underage) member. We doggedly practiced our loud, somewhat melodic, very punky music in the master bedroom of the house three of the four of us lived in (to afford this use of space, our drummer elected to sleep in the living room) and lived off of pizza from the barely a “job” job that I had at a local pizza joint.
We eventually made some VERY lo-fi recordings and, in a moment that now seems so quaint, I set off into the streets of Springfield, homemade CDs in hand, and started knocking on bar doors to get us a gig. Any gig.
As you can imagine, this did not yield very many results. Our recordings were so emblematic of everything described above that one local soundman, upon hearing them, wrote a less than enthusiastic review for a local ‘zine using language I cannot print in this article.
I’m still proud of that one.
But one bar owner actually bit. He would remind me for years to come that he never took the bait on unsolicited music that walked into his bar, but there was something about this recording he liked: it reminded him of “The ‘Mats.”
The Replacements (aka “The Placemats,” aka “The ‘Mats”) were a Minneapolis based punk band that formed in 1979. Over the course of the next decade, they would eventually become critical darlings, indie icons, and soulful tunesmiths who wrote some of the best songs from the 1980’s you’ve never heard - unless you had a cool older brother or something (I did not).
However, their earliest recordings, starting with 1981’s 'Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash", were everything our feisty little gang strived to be: raw, confrontational, catchy, and (frankly) drunk. (The Replacements were famous early on for frequently being unable to properly play shows due to…having a good time. So were we. Except for the famous part.)
We also had one other thing in common, a very junior member. Their bass player, Tommy Stinson, was a mere 14 years old when he joined the band. He would stay with them all the way through to their initial breakup, when he was the ripe old age of 25.
Stinson would go on to start two other short-lived bands in the 90’s and then, impossibly, wound up being the bass player for Guns N’ Roses for the next 16 years. He also became the touring bassist for Soul Asylum in the 2000’s and started a well-received solo career.
Somehow, and I still can’t believe this is happening, Stinson is playing in Springfield next Friday night. At Ruthie’s off C-Street. This is crazy. And this is no tail between the legs, fallen star moment. Stinson is celebrating the reissue of his widely acclaimed solo album "One Man Mutiny", and bringing along Seattle rockers Little Venom, and UK folk artist Karla Rose. Incredible.
Friends, here in the world of public broadcasting, we don’t endorse things. We don’t tell you what to do. We give you information and let you make your own choices. So, let me put it this way: I’ve given you the information. Make good choices.
We’ll see you next week!
