Retrospective Replacements

Of all the singles, all the albums, all the compilations, reissues, greatest hits, etc; from 1979 to when they officially disbanded in 1992, the best The Replacements could ever do in the charts was in April 1989 when I'll Be You went into the American singles charts like something less than a bullet at number 51, only to drop out the next week. It's a dirty rotten shame that this wondrous Minnesota group never got what it deserved, but it seemed then, as it still seems now, that it was sacrificed at the altar of artistic integrity. Besides, like The Velvet Underground, not many people bought the records - but those who did went on to form their own bands and in some cases, to sell tons of records, thus exacting revenge from the gods for forsaking The Replacements. Not that the band ever matched up to a record company's idea of nice, pliable rock stars-in-waiting; nor did its individual members waste any of their quality leisure time reading the "How to sell records and influence people" rock manual. One example: when the band heard that their first label, Twin/Tone, planned to release a lot of their early material on CD, they were appalled both by the format of release (this was the 1980s) and the "cash-in" aspect of the exercise. After a few soda pops, they went down en masse to the Twin/Tone offices, gave the receptionist a line about working on some remixes, stole all the masters of their early work and threw them, joyously, in the Mississippi.

The important thing about this minianecdote is not that it inspired The Stone Roses to do exactly the same thing a few years later when Silvertone were lashing out loads of their early material, but that when asked about the purpose of such a gesture, songwriter Paul Westerberg replied that the records were thrown into the river because Prince lived in a big purple house downstream and they hoped he would see the CDs floating past his mansion, fish them out, play them and reconsider his whole musical approach. Which makes perfect sense - sort of. Formed in 1979, the Replacements (Tommy Stinson, Bob Stinson, Chris Mars and Paul Westerberg) were originally known as The Impediments, but because a lot of their early gigs were shambolic, were forced to change their name in order to get some work. The debut album, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (1981) was a power trash workout where they drowned all of Westerberg's mighty melodies under layers of loud, distorted guitars - and also led to them being compared to friends and neighbours Husker Du for a very long time. Slowly they relaxed their style, and when they went on to turn down the volume and allow bits of country and folk to seep through the sound, they began to produce the sort of music that R.E.M. could at that stage only dream of - in fact, individual members of R.E.M. guested on their albums over the years, as did Box Tops/Big Star man Alex Chilton. Their finest early moment was undoubtedly the Let It Be album, where ballads competed with heads-down, no-nonsense rawk'n'roll. A move to Seymour Stein's Sire records was supposed to see them become the first "alterno" band to break into the mainstream (these were preNevermind days) but despite some great albums in the shape of Tim, which includes Left Of The Dial and Pleased To Meet Me and Alex Chilton, they soon realised that great reviews don't pay the studio costs and by the time of their final album, All Shook Down (1990) they just weren't into it any more and it showed. Where are they now? Bob Stinson died of a drugs overdose in 1995, Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars are both walking footnotes, while Paul Westerberg did as expected and went on to have a solo career - he's currently working with Carole King and there should be an album out later this year. But all you really need to know is that a double CD retrospective of their work - cleverly, if bitterly, titled All For Nothing - is out now on the Reprise label. The first CD has 16 of their bestknown tracks and the second has 17 previously unreleased tracks, including a live version of Another Girl, Another Planet - which is nice. Buy it - if only to atone for the sins of the music industry.