As a person who was listening to both TMBG and the Replacements at the same time as soon as they mentioned Tommy I made the connection. Very different bands and I love them both. I'd suggest Skyway as a sweet little demented love song, I used to sing it to my kids.
Paul Westerburg had some decent solo success too, he could write a catchy ditty.
Oh wow, I didn’t even catch that Tommy was a connection to the band. That’s how little I’ve been aware of The Replacements. I’ll check out Skyway - thanks Geoff!
I spent the 80s reading about but never quite checking out The Replacements but I always thought of this song as being, in part at least, about them, especially the part about Tommy. I think they were post-punk punk. From what I recall, Tommy Stinson was the unpredictable chaos agent of the group, like Sid Vicious or Shane MacGowan (and was, I think, eventually kicked out and Replaced). I do know that "Can't Hardly Wait" is not representative of their classic sound but I love the song, with mixed feelings about the horns forced onto the single mix against the band's will--which happened a lot in the 80s! But the Johns' tribute to the band (which predates CHW), other than the vocal energy, probably doesn't sound like the band at all. The 'Mats didn't use farfisa organ, I'm pretty sure.
I never thought about the song as expressing the idea of a band being replacements for other bands but yeah, now that you write about that, I suppose small band club gigs probably feel a lot like that, replacing the band that was there the night before for the club's crowd of frequent attenders, or the probably common experience of young local performers like TMBG being called in to replace another opener on the bill on any given night. I just read about in 1970 Springsteen & his band replacing Boz Scaggs as headliner one night at the last moment and wowing the crowd in SFO once, and a while back I discovered regretfully that my personal musical GOAT Prince, very early in his pro career, was called from LA on the day of to open for Kool & The Gang at a medium-sized Bay Area theater close enough to where I lived that I could have biked there, except that I was 10 then, had never yet heard of Prince, and his set in those days was totally inappropriate for my tender ears & innocent eyes.
As a person who was listening to both TMBG and the Replacements at the same time as soon as they mentioned Tommy I made the connection. Very different bands and I love them both. I'd suggest Skyway as a sweet little demented love song, I used to sing it to my kids.
Paul Westerburg had some decent solo success too, he could write a catchy ditty.
Oh wow, I didn’t even catch that Tommy was a connection to the band. That’s how little I’ve been aware of The Replacements. I’ll check out Skyway - thanks Geoff!
"Skyway" is a lovely song.
The Replacements may not be for, and don't sound much like TMBG, but before you give up on them, this is definitely a song worth checking out: https://www.songsthatsavedyou.com/p/androgynous-the-replacements
Ok, this is pretty excellent. Thank you!
I spent the 80s reading about but never quite checking out The Replacements but I always thought of this song as being, in part at least, about them, especially the part about Tommy. I think they were post-punk punk. From what I recall, Tommy Stinson was the unpredictable chaos agent of the group, like Sid Vicious or Shane MacGowan (and was, I think, eventually kicked out and Replaced). I do know that "Can't Hardly Wait" is not representative of their classic sound but I love the song, with mixed feelings about the horns forced onto the single mix against the band's will--which happened a lot in the 80s! But the Johns' tribute to the band (which predates CHW), other than the vocal energy, probably doesn't sound like the band at all. The 'Mats didn't use farfisa organ, I'm pretty sure.
I never thought about the song as expressing the idea of a band being replacements for other bands but yeah, now that you write about that, I suppose small band club gigs probably feel a lot like that, replacing the band that was there the night before for the club's crowd of frequent attenders, or the probably common experience of young local performers like TMBG being called in to replace another opener on the bill on any given night. I just read about in 1970 Springsteen & his band replacing Boz Scaggs as headliner one night at the last moment and wowing the crowd in SFO once, and a while back I discovered regretfully that my personal musical GOAT Prince, very early in his pro career, was called from LA on the day of to open for Kool & The Gang at a medium-sized Bay Area theater close enough to where I lived that I could have biked there, except that I was 10 then, had never yet heard of Prince, and his set in those days was totally inappropriate for my tender ears & innocent eyes.
Thanks for sharing all of this. I really can’t believe I managed to sleep on The Replacements for this long.
I grew up listening to my mom listen to the purple rain record. I think Prince might be in my metaphorical blood.