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‘Mats Summed Up Themselves and Ourselves

Posted May 7, 2009 by Clarisa Gerlach

Updated May 8, 2009 at 01:03 PM

“God, what a mess on the ladder of success, where you take one step and miss the whole first rung.”

The first line of The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” seems to sum up that band’s tenuous relationship with the big time. The truth, though, is that the ‘Mats planted the ladder in a pool of Crisco and put banana peels on every rung.

The Replacements were famous for pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. When success came knocking, they sprayed it with beer and ran away. They weren’t idealists, they were scared they’d never be as great as everyone told them they were.

No wonder their fans loved them so much.

If, in the 1980s, you were an underachieving male in your 20s who drank too much, sabotaged relationships, worked a go-
nowhere job and/or had a liberal arts degree and no idea what to do with it, the ‘Mats were your band.

That described me and the friends I saw the Replacements with at Jannus Landing in 1989. The band was a couple of years away from breaking up and had just released its next-to-last and worst album, “Don’t Tell a Soul.”

Regardless, the show was incredible, loud, funny and redemptive. And when Paul Westerberg screamed at the beginning of “Bastards of Young,” we all screamed with him. Because we were all on the verge of either growing up or getting lost and it scared us to death. It was the end of our world, and we knew it.