One of the overriding themes of this blog is the fact that, quite frankly, I’m getting on a bit. Yeah, sure, I’m not quite reading Q or Mojo yet, but I’ll be 40 in a few years and that mid-life crisis is going to start gnawing at my toes soon. If I start doing posts about my knees hurting or how I’m going to go out and buy me a Porsche, then you know it’s hit me right between the eyes.
In the interim I shall just do posts like these, in which I bemoan the fact that a great alt-rock record was released 25 years ago. 25 years! Sheesh, blimey, and so on.
Smoking Popes
But this one is a bit special to me, mainly because I only discovered it earlier in the year. During one of my jaunts through the Pitchfork 500, one song in particular jumped out, dragged me into a mosh pit, drank my beer and tried to get off with my missus. Yep, “I Will Dare” is that kind of song. So, of course, I went off and bought the extended version of “Let It Be”, and being something of a fan of The Hold Steady and the like, I’ve been rather enjoying it.
And it seems like I’m not the only one who’s still loving the record. Out in The Replacement’s home town, Minneapolis, there’s what looks like a top night celebrating the anniversary at First Avenue. Featuring a ton of bands, pick of the bunch being High On Stress.
Stress Live
Like their heroes, they’ve got that gift of mixing guitars, bass, drum and vocals, and turning out great tunes with that special magic touch. What is it with Minneapolis and great rock bands? Is it in the water or something? Anyway, here’s a video of them playing live with The Replacement’s own Slim Dunlap:
Here’s “Eyeliner Blues” from High On Stress and a couple of beauts from “Let It Be”, including a great cover of “20th Century Boy” from the expanded version. And if you live around Minneapolis, why not pop down to First Avenue next Friday night (27th November)? I would, but I’m off to The Gun.
So here’s the second part of the Alt-Rock 101 article I started last week. We’ve had Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü and The Meat Puppets, now it’s time for these three:
The Replacements – I Will Dare
Minutemen – History Lesson (Part II)
R.E.M. – So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)
The Replacements, like Hüsker Dü before them and The Hold Steady after them, hail from Minneapolis. There’s a reason I mention The Hold Steady. In this great article, Craig Finn talks of how they saved his life. As an awkward, slightly geeky teenager, he found The Replacements and they set him onto the path he’s still on today. There’s a great story in which his dad takes him to the local record store to buy “Let It Be”, from which this song stems, and the guy behind the counter turns down the sound on the stereo, points at his dad and him in turn, and says “Cool dad. Cool kid”. You know what? You don’t get that kind of thing downloading MP3’s from iTunes or BitTorrent.
So, after hearing so much about them from bands like The Hold Steady, would the real thing stand up to scrutiny? To repeat a phrase I used in part One, hell yes. It’s not quite as bad as the feeling you get when you read a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book and realise that Salman Rushdie and Louis De Bernieres are plagiaristic hacks, but this more than stands up to some of the best bands around today. And it kicks the ass of the landfill indie currently clogging up the airwaves in the UK.
This is one great, great song. It fairly grooves along, mixing Squeeze and Bruce Springsteen, with a devastatingly catchy chorus in which the singer appears to be trying to get a younger lady to do something inadvisable. Better still, it features a fantastic guitar solo before going off onto a REM-esque jangly bit. No shock there, given that the band’s Peter Buck plays it.
I like it so much I’ve played it about 25 times in the past few weeks. It’s fantastic. It’s power-pop heaven. It’s the best bar-room rock you’ve ever heard. Listen to it now and see if you disagree; I’m sure you won’t. And it’s the same with this next song, by The Minutemen.
Now, I always assumed The Minutemen were a bunch of shouty shouty earnest US hardcore punks, but this came as a massive shock. Over a lovely, jazzy guitar line, singer D. Boon chats laconically about the history of the band, starting with the immortal line “Our band can be your life”. Indeed, for many people they were; part of the hardcore scene that exploded in the early ’80’s, The Minutemen would show up in your town, play, drink and sleep on your floor. Understanding that there was a huge number of disaffected teens in an uncountable number of towns round the US, The Minutemen spoke directly to them, and went out of their way to reach out to them.
And even with 25 years between recording and now, it’s fresh as a daisy. Like all great songs it speaks directly to you, and even though my “fucking corndog” pogoing days are long, long gone, I’m taken straight back to jumping around like a fool to the bands of my teenage years1, and the friends I had then. Tragically, D. Boon would be killed in a van crash a year after recording this. What a waste of a great talent.
And going back to The Hold Steady, here’s their own tribute:
Up against these two songs, REM’s “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” really doesn’t stand up well. It’s that mid-tempo jangly alt-rock with opaque lyrics sung in a slightly irritating way that REM would release from 1983’s Murmur, right through to the present day. Whilst you simply can’t argue with the presence of “Radio Free Europe” on the list, I can’t think of a decent reason why this is on here. Maybe American alt-rock fans of a certain age look back on this song fondly, but for me, a number of their later songs would fit far more comfortably on this list than this song. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty good song, but one of the top 500? Nah.
That’s the Alt-Rock 101. These bands are influential beyond measure and there’s not a guitar band around today who doesn’t owe something to at least one of them.
On a personal level, I’ve gone from not knowing three of these songs, and not knowing anything by two of the bands, to absolutely loving the three songs I didn’t know. If I could go back in time, a thirteen year-old me would get a visit from a taller, slightly overweight, and rather older version of me, clutching vinyl copies of “Let It Be”, “Double Nickels on the Dime”, and “Zen Arcade”, along with a note reading “Play these. Play them every day, get a better guitar and practice it every day, and start that band.”. I dearly hope the thirteen year old would listen. This is music that can change your life, as the song says.
And now I’m off to Amazon to buy the CD’s for the adult me. I suggest you do too.
1 Dinosaur Jnr and The Pixies, since you ask. “Freak Scene” would get me out of a coma.
Loft And Lost 