“In Nashville, they played hard-core to a crowd of country music execs, until nobody was left but the punks. Then they played nothing but country and Western music.” — Stephen Metcalf, from his Slate.com article Young Bastards
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From a five hundred mile high bird’s-eye view The Replacements are like a second generation snow belt version of The Velvet Underground in terms of philosophy, as well as being northern precursors to R.E.M. in terms of their charter member status of the college/alternative genre. The onstage apathy and overall head-fucking-with towards the crowd in the quote above is like a page taken from the former—The Velvet Underground once came out on stage dressed in black, turned their backs towards the audience and played their whole set never facing the crowd—whereas their dotted line connection to R.E.M. stems from the fact that The Replacements’ first two major label albums (Let It Be, Tim) are held in the same type of “I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard them” reverence as R.E.M.’s first two LPs (Murmur, Reckoning), with all four albums forming a kind of defining quadrant of ’80s college/alternative music.
The Replacements were a punk band that formed in 1979 in Minneapolis, a city you most certainly have never been to unless A) you grew up there, B) went to college there, or C) have family that currently lives there. The winters can be nasty and overlong, but they do provide you with ample opportunity to hole yourself up and drink away the frustration of tomorrow’s snowfall and subsequent shoveling and snowplowing. The original lineup of The Replacements consisted of guitarist/lead singer Paul Westerberg, lead guitarist Bob Stinson, bassist Tommy Stinson, and drummer Chris Mars—four young gentlemen who enjoyed themselves some drinks and putting on that they were a dumb punk band from a city you wouldn’t want to visit unless you had to.
To the casual music fan who maybe doesn’t recognize The Replacements, the names of the band members, or the two albums mentioned above, if you were born between 1975 and 1980 there is a good chance you know the band from their video for “Bastards of Young”—a black and white video which consisted of an unbroken shot of a speaker that is kicked in at the very end. This video was a perfect totem for MTV’s nascent alternative music-driven show 120 Minutes, as well as being a brilliant bit of Warhol-ian creativity that was updated for a generation of youth now fully entrenched in television images and marketing. Amongst the sea of early videos on MTV that either yearned to be taken seriously or showed the band in nearly every shot, here was this video that, on the surface, had nothing to say but still elicited a “Did you see that video?” prompting to your friends afterward. It tapped into the head-fucking that outsiders could use to describe Andy Warhol (“Why is a Brillo box a piece of art?”; “Why do people like this speaker video?”) while also adequately explaining the band’s image: the faceless dude smokes and drinks a beer and kicks in a speaker—what more needs to be said?
Like Warhol, The Replacements had a sort of honesty that felt either genuine or clever depending on how you chose to digest them. The name of the band stems from the idea that their name should reflect a band that you don’t want to see. Their decision to name their album Let It Be was born out of a winking notion that The Beatles’ album should be seen as just another run-of-the-mill album by a good band (something that would probably be an affront to the diehard fans, even thought Lennon once referred to that album as one that contained “the shittiest pile of shit.”) Additionally, part of Replacements lore is that they initially wanted to name the album Let It Bleed—a playful middle finger directed at the Rolling Stones’ masterpiece.
So it is in keeping with the overall idea that The Replacements were a smart band disguised as dumb, a punk band far removed from New York City or London that was capable of producing an intensity that could rival any band’s output from either city, that the song I think best encapsulates their dumb genius is “Unsatisfied,” a no-filler, ass-kicking, ballad-sounding song on Let It Be that resides a few doors down from absurd and ironic track titles such as “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out,” “Gary’s Got A Boner,” and “Seen Your Video.”
“Unsatisfied” starts with a metallic-sounding ballad riff straight out of The Hair Metal Band’s Guide To Serious Songwriting playbook. It sounds like the type of intro that you think you’ve heard before, and even Paul Westerberg’s raspy angry vocals with his caustic delivery of “Hey, are you satisfied?” (and the other variations of it) sound like many other all-out anthems before it, but the difference is that “Unsatisfied” is just an ass-kicking angry song; a lyrically über-condensed and more passionate update to Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man.” (Bob Dylan being that other artist from Minnesota whose catalog and motive can either be seen as outright genius or con man level clever.)
One of the biggest problems I have with most ’80s music is that the production quality is significantly different (read: not as polished) than most of the music from the two preceding and suceeding decades. And even though “Unsatisfied” isn’t as polished as I would like,[1] Westerberg’s vocals cancels out any complaints. It’s guttural and perfect; the appropriate cadence that was worthy of a railing against an ex (or the Reagan ’80s). So with all due respect and any apologies to Replacements fans who think that a song off of Tim should be here, I think that “Unsatisfied” is not only the best song from the band’s catalog but it is also the best song to show off the band’s dumb genius.
Like the cover of Let It Be suggests, The Replacements were four ordinary-looking dudes—dudes that looked as though they naturally hung out on the roof of a house with their somewhat disheveled hair. But we all know that their ordinary facade hid something more complex, like with lyrics such as:
“Everything you dream of is right in front of you
And everything is a lie”
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[1] There didn’t seem to be a problem tightening things up on the album’s opener “I Will Dare.”
