Ashtray Floors, Dirty Clothes, and Filthy Jokes
Memories of The Replacements' 2013 Reunion, and their 1991 "final" show
Riot Fest returned to Chicago last weekend, with enough punk band reunions to make my middle-aged heart soar. NOFX, Circle Jerks, Descendents, Buzzcocks, the Dead Milkmen, Verboten, Pavement, the list goes on. The lineup was spectacular as always, but in what’s become a tradition for me at Riot Fest, every old fart I ran into between sets invariably asked the same question:
“Were you here when the Replacements played?”
I was. Eleven years ago, which already seems like an eternity. The Replacements’ 2013 reunion at Riot Fest was their first time playing together in 22 years. So maybe in another 11 years, they’ll come back and do it all over again. An old fart can dream.
I was also at their first “last” concert, the one they did in 1991 at Chicago’s Grant Park, right before they took a two-decade break. They were a very different band back then, and I was a very different person.
I’ve been to better concerts over the years, I suppose. I’ve certainly been to shows where the performers were less inebriated and seemed to care more about hitting all the right notes. But there’s something about these two shows in particular that feel like timestamps.
If my son ever asked me what it feels like to grow older — he'd never ask that, because it's a stupid question, but IF HE DID — I'd tell him the tale of these two shows, bookends not just between two iconic performances, but between my carefree, drug-fueled 20s and my "I just need a nap, goddammit" mid-40s.
Here’s how it went down:
July 4th, 1991
It’s a rainy day in Chicago, and I’m going to see the fucking Replacements. I’m 22 years old, just out of college, and this is the most anticipated musical experience of my life. I’m living with three guys in a studio apartment in Evanston, because that’s all we can afford.
I’ve never seen the Mats in concert before, but I own all their music, including a cassette bootleg of The Shit Hits the Fans, which I bought at the Record Swap for 99 cents and listen to incessantly.
Everything about it sounds frightening and dangerous, the antitheses of my suburban upbringing. It makes me want to break shit. I don’t know it at the time, but I am a cliché of teenage angst.
I got my Mats tickets from a friend of a friend, who got them from a drug dealer. We’re all going to the show together, including the drug dealer, who is providing the drugs and the transportation. The drug dealer is dressed like he works at a renaissance faire, and tells me repeatedly that his belt is made from real rattlesnake.
We go to his basement apartment and stay longer than we want, and then cram five bodies into his 1976 Chevy Chevette, which is kind of a hilarious car for a drug dealer to own. We underestimat the traffic and end up sitting on Lake Shore Drive for what feels like an hour, but because we’re already profoundly stoned, might’ve just been a few minutes.
I finally get fed up and throw my body weight onto the passenger side door, crashing it open and tumbling out onto the lakeside gridlock. I run like a dog that's escaped from his back yard, heading towards what I hope is the general direction of the park. A few of the other guys follow, while the creepy drug dealer punches his car horn in protest and roars threats at us in what sounds like Klingon.
September 15, 2013
It’s a rainy day in Chicago, and I’m going to see the fucking Replacements. I’m 44 years old, and this is the most anticipated musical experience of my life. I live in a three-bedroom apartment on the north side of Chicago with my wife and two year-old son, because that’s the best I can afford. I’m not going to see the Mats with my son, because he’s two years-old and his favorite band is the Bubble Guppies.
The entire day should be one big holiday for me, but for most of the morning I've been an emotional wreck. I can’t decide on the best way to get to Humboldt Park. I could take public transportation, but the idea of waiting for a bus at midnight in a sketchy neighborhood makes me nervous. I could drive, but the parking situation in Humboldt is desperate at best, hopeless at worst. There are no garages or lots within ten miles of Riot Fest, and most of the street parking is zoned for locals.
I decide to drive, because not caring about whether there’s parking is totally punk rock.
On the drive down, I listen to The Shit Hits the Fans, which plays on my iPod through the speakers of my Honda CRV. I haven't listened to the bootleg in at least a decade, and the novelty of four guys playing covers because they're too drunk to remember their own songs doesn't seem quite as brilliantly subversive as it once did.
I find a space about a mile south from Humboldt Park, in between two abandoned factories. I step out into a river of crushed beer cans and surgical gloves. (I count at least six floating along the curb.) I lock my car, and then lock it again, just to be sure. I walk two blocks towards the park, and then backtrack to lock my car one more time. I’m pissed at myself for leaving the stroller and the portable DVD player in the trunk. Now when the car gets stolen, which I’m convinced it will, it’s just going to be one more thing I have to argue with the insurance company about.
1991
We make it the Petrillo Music Shell around noon. The rain comes in spurts, and there’s even lightning at times. We sit through the opening acts—NRBQ, and Material Issue, who I only know because their single “Diane” is being overplayed on the radio that summer—but we're barely paying attention to any of it. We’re mostly focused on drinking, and when the drug dealer with the rattlesnake belt finally shows up, taking turns going outside to smoke his weed.
Around 3-ish, a guy wanders onstage to introduce the Mats. “Some people say they’re an institution,” he says. “Others say they should be in an institution!”
The Mats launch into “I Will Dare,” my favorite song of the moment, but I barely hear any of it because I’m too busy arguing with one of my friends, who insists the guy who introduced the band was Johnny Marr. I don't believe for a second that the former Smiths guitarist is now doing MC duties for Chicago beer festivals, and we get into a heated argument. By the time I realize he meant Johnny Mars, a disc jockey at a local radio station, the song is over.
2013
Because of my parking paranoia, I'm there by 2pm. The Mats don’t come on until 9. Which is good, because I also get to see Bob Mould and Rocket From the Crypt and the Pixies. But it’s also bad, because it means seven hours of standing on my feet, breathing second-hand smoke and eating carnival food.
The last 30 minutes leading up to Mats, as I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other old fat dudes like myself—bobbing and teetering like inflatable air dancers—I feel like I’m going to die. Literally die.
But then the lights go out and the Replacements come out. The actual fucking Replacements! I have goosebumps big as pennies. My heartbeat is beating ridiculously fast, but perfectly in time with “Takin a Ride,” the first song of their set (as well as their discography), so it all works out.
I’m way more emotional than I’d anticipated. I’d joked with friends for months that when I finally saw the Replacements play live again, I’d weep like a baby. Turns out, it wasn’t hyperbole. I cried and I cried hard. Which is a strange thing to do when you’re listening to a punk song from the ‘80s about driving too fast.
“I don’t even know what fucking record this is,” Paul mutters in between songs. “The key of Lee Majors, let’s go!”
I get it together by the third song, “Favorite Things.” But then I lose it again when Paul sings “Yeah, dad, you're rocking real bad.” Because why? I have no fucking clue. Because I am a dad and I am rocking real bad, and Paul knows it? No, that’s stupid. Paul wrote the song in a drunken haze, and he rhymed “dad” and “bad” because it was easy, not as an Easter egg for his someday aging fans drunk on too many $7 beers.
Still, it feels personal. He’s 54, I’m 44. We have an emotional and intellectual connection with this music that all these young fuckers can never begin to.... Oh, oh, oh, they're playing “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out!” I got a blowjob to this song in college! Aw man, good times. Good memories. Who's with me?
1991
Somebody in our group mentions the absence of Fred. “Wasn’t Fred supposed to be here?”
Fred is our resident ‘Mats expert, the one who turned us all onto the band. According to legend, he’s seen them no less than two dozen times in concert, most recently as the opener for Tom Petty in Des Moines in ‘89, and his accounts of the show have gotten increasingly weird with each telling. (“They did the entire first act of Annie,” he's insisted. “And then Bob pissed into the audience when the crowd started booing!”)
It’s odd, bordering on distressing, that Fred isn’t here. But then somebody remembers that he decided to stay home and tape the show. It’s being broadcast live on WXRT, and Fred intends to get it all on tape. His disgust with the shoddy recording quality of most live Mat bootlegs is a subject we’ve heard him rant about all too often, so we’re glad he's finally getting his white whale.
The Mats are playing “When It Began,” which I guess is off the new album. The lack of “Unsatisfied” on the set list is really starting to chap my ass. Seems as good a time as any to go to the bathroom and drop acid.
2013
Somewhere towards the end of “Androgynous,” I regret coming to this show alone. Paul starts singing “Hey Good Lookin,” and I nearly gasp with music nerd joy. It’s a seemingly off-the-cuff cover, except it just so happens to be included in the set list of their so-called “final” Grant Park performance 20-some years ago!
Obviously this is a nod to those of us in the audience old enough to remember, an inside joke for grizzled fans with too many unlistened bootlegs clogging their iPods. I want to turn to the guy next to me and share this useless minutiae with him. But the guy next to me has a mohawk and a sleeveless jean jacket with “Clit 45” stitched on the back. I don't think he'd understand.
I pull out my phone and hold it over my head in the “I’m gonna update my Facebook status” salute. I pound the buttons on the side with my thumb, but I can’t make the camera feature come up. Something isn't working. But I keep trying, and for a full minute, during an amazing performance of “I Will Dare,” I’m essentially aiming my cellphone screen towards hundreds of Mat fans behind me, and inviting them to look at the wallpaper photo of my two year-old son jamming on his guitar.
1991
“Oh holy hell,” I mutter, my voice trembling. “Please tell me you see that too.”
“See what?” Carol giggles, inching closer as if we’re sharing a conspiratorial secret.
My eyes are wide and bloodshot, like dinner plates decorated with crayons by autistic children. “That little green alien dude with the huge head and the antennas,” I tell her, pointing at nothing. “He’s floating right there in front of us!”
Carol looks at the empty air and tries to paint a mental picture. “It sounds the Great Gazoo,” she says. “Are you hallucinating the Great Gazoo?”
“I don't know what it is, but it's freaking my shit out,” I say, burrowing my face into my knees. “He keeps calling me dum-dum.”
Carol burst into crunchy laughter. “Oh man, you are tripping balls,” she cackles.
I'm hardly a drug novice, but today has been a bad idea all around. I’d already smoked enough recreational pot to ensure several public executions in Singapore. The acid was just adding insult to injury. It didn’t help that a girl named Carol has joined our group, and I’ve been trying to be charming and flirtatious to her, which is almost impossible when you've spent the better part of the day ingesting booze, weed, and acid.
At some point, I think I heard “Waitress In the Sky.” Or maybe I hallucinated it. Don’t go by me.
2013
The Mats are playing "Left of the Dial,” and I'm overcome with a wave of nostalgia and bliss like I haven't felt since my early 20s. Also, I really, really have to pee. Why the fuck did I have so much Dos Equis Amber? Dumb, dumb, dumb.
I wish I would’ve gotten stoned for this show instead. Drinking is never a good idea when you don't have a bathroom within easy stumbling distance. Also, if the people surrounding me are any indication, there’ve been some staggering developments in one-hitters over the last few years. I remember when the biggest technological advance in dope-smoking was the “it kinda looks like a cigarette” pipe, which fooled nobody but at least gave us the peace of mind that we weren’t being too obvious. But the one-hitters these days, they look like something out of Ender's Game.
1991
We’re growing restless. There have been far too many songs from the new albums, and not nearly enough of the old punk barn-burners. There’s been no “I Hate Music,” no “Raised in the City,” no “Take Me Down to the Hospital,” not even “Unsatisfied.” This is bullshit, man.
We leave somewhere around “Within Your Reach.” On the ride home, we listen to the rest of the concert on the Chevette’s radio. We won’t know until later that the ‘Mats gave their instruments to the roadies and made them finish the rest of “Hootenanny.” But we did enjoy this final exchange between the two XRT hosts.
DJ1: I think that’s it. They’re so unpredictable, though. Are they gonna come back?
DJ2: Or they’re gonna break up? Maybe they’ll break up and then they’ll get back together and then they’ll come back.
DJ1: I believe they’re not going to be back.
We laugh and laugh as we inch northward on Lake Short Drive. Those corporate fuckers just don’t get it. The ‘Mats are yanking their chains. Break up? The Replacements can’t fucking break up. They’ll break up just as surely as one of them will die young because their liver explodes, or have a stroke like my grandfather did in his fucking late ‘80s. Can you imagine? Oh god, these old men and their conspiracy theories. They just don’t get us!
Do we have any weed left?
2013
My old man bones are rattling. My socks are so wet, they feel like they're filled with mayonnaise. I am simultaneously too hot and too cold. I am, by my very nature, prone to feeling uncomfortable at the slightest change of temperature, so this is a special slice of hell. But I don’t care. I feel like what marathon runners are supposed to feel after they push past their upper threshold of pain. I am high on endorphins and indie rock muscle memory.
Somebody behind me screams, “I can’t believe this is fucking happening!” A few people in the crowd laugh, but I want to hug the guy who said it. I can’t fucking believe it either, brother!
The Mats play mostly everything I want them to play. They do “Left of the Dial,” “Alex Chilton,” and “Bastards of Young.” They skip a few things. I wish they played more obscurities. I wish they'd done Let It Be in its entirety. I wish for so much. But that's like being the child of divorced parents and the parents get back together and your first thought is “I wish they were rich now, too.” Don't be greedy, fuckhead! You dreamt about seeing the ‘Mats sing “Bastards of Young” live, right in front of you, and you got that.
After the show, I walk back to my car, which is remarkably unstolen, and drive it to my three-bedroom apartment on the near-north side. My wife and kid are asleep, so I pour myself a deep glass of whiskey and sit alone in my office and listen to old ‘Mat bootlegs in the dark. They sound so much sweeter than they have in ages.
Came here having just finished your very fine book. I think I saw it mentioned recently in Record Collector magazine so went out and bought it. Not knowing it significantly revolved around the Replacements. Which, had I known, I’d have been buying it when originally published.
So, first of all, I live in the UK.
Saw the Mats one time in their (not quite original lineup - Slim on guitar) prime in London, and then one of their two London reunion shows in 2015. But I got all their albums back in the day. First, Let It Be (which I bought in its UK iteration) then, using my fanzine editor cred (Lori liked the magazine and the album that came with one of its issues) I established a link with TwinTone, who kindly sent all the way across the Atlantic the earlier releases - including THAT Fans cassette - for free.
(Have since spent a fortune on every reissued box set going so the band ended up being kind of rewarded for TwinTone’s original generosity to an early 20’s wannabe music journalist who never sold more than 1500 copies of anything he ever “wrote”.)
Even spoke on the phone to Paul W one time.
Before I come back to your book, though I’ll reference it here, I noted you referring to the Boink! Release as a bootleg. Given I’m at least partially responsible for the mini LP’s release on my friend Dave Barker’s Glass Records back in 1986 - I’ll spare you the whole story for now - I shout, to no one in particular, “That was no bootleg!”.
THEN, one Google later, I discover there’s a 72 minute bootleg called Boink!
Which I now must find!
Anyway, great piece here on your two times seeing the Mats. I don’t quite have the accompanying tales to tell that you do, but I shall never forget that night, 9 years ago when, as a 55 year old, I found myself at the Roundhouse shouting, at the top of my voice - some might say “joining in” - Bastards Of Young! Hadn't felt so alive in years. And I teared up when they played “Can’t Hardly Wait”. As I still do whenever I hear it.
The concept of your book, well, the unlikeliness of the mission being anything like successful, was insane, of course. That you achieved as much as you did was pretty astonishing, and the journey along the way made for an evocative and sometimes emotional reading experience for a middle England retiree such as I. Spotify was my friend as I read along checking out the songs that cropped up along the way. I even checked out The Boswell Sisters - and felt better for doing so. I’d have put all this in an email to you had I your address rather than publicly share, but I don’t feel I’ve said here anything anyone else shouldn’t hear.
So good work all round Eric and thanks for adding to my collection of great books on loving music.
Chris Coleman
(fka Chris Seventeen)