THE REPLACEMENTS: This is the disc that should have come out in ’97. |
The Replacements have always been blessed with impeccably bad timing. Here’s a band with a frontman who captured the dispirited sense of alienation that characterized an emerging generation who’d be saddled with a big, fat “X” a few years down the line. Meanwhile, with bassist Tommy Stinson at his side, Westerberg created the blueprint for grunge — with frayed flannel Marshall stacks and torn-jean hooks — before going on to redefine Americana for what would become the alt-country crowd. But when payday came, the Replacements were MIA. So now we have a perfectly titled greatest-hits disc, Don’t You Know Who I Think I Was, the first to include material both from the Replacements years at Sire and, unlike 1997’s two-disc All for Nothing/Nothing for All, their formative beginnings with Twin/Tone. This is the disc that should have come out in ’97, when the evolution from the slam-bamcore of “Takin’ a Ride” to the disaffected anti-anthem “Color Me Impressed” to the disaffected heartbreak of “Unsatisfied” and “Answering Machine” to the rootsy pop of “Kiss Me on the Bus” and “Achin’ To Be” might have had a chance for a second life. Not to mention “Left of the Dial,” an ode to indie rock a good decade before the term came into popular usage. But by that point Westerberg was too busy rewriting Seger tunes to realize that the moment for the drunk and disorderly broken poet prankster had perhaps arrived. Listening to the naked soul searching of “Unsatisfied” or the guarded romanticism of “I Will Dare” today, you could even trace what’s now called emo back to the Replacements. But only if you were so inclined. There are two new tunes on Don’t You Know, both recorded with original bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer Josh Freese (A Perfect Circle/Guns N’ Roses/etc.), both perfectly acceptable and ultimately irrelevant to the career of a band who achieved so much and so little all at once.
