Synopses & Reviews
In the first book to take on the maelstrom of fact and fiction that was the Replacements, veteran Minneapolis music journalist Jim Walsh distills archival interviews with bandmembers and hundreds of hours of new interviews with their friends, families, fellow musicians, fans, and co-conspirators into an absorbing oral history worthy of the scruffy quartet that many have branded the most influential rock ’n’ roll band to emerge from the ’80s.
“The Replacements weren’t a punk band but they made a great punk show of always biting the hand that fed them. Jim Walsh’s fantastic oral history . . . makes that perverse quality intimately clear.”
—Dan Wilson, singer, songwriter, and Grammy Award™ winner
“Immeasurably more transporting than an ordinary memoir, here is a poetic toast to a band so effusively careless that everyone who saw them instantly cared. At turns wounded and joyful, the communion of voices brought together here chimes like a Strat and builds like a heartbeat.”
—Diablo Cody, author and Juno screenwriter
“. . . a lovable and absorbing work, a swan song for an irrepressible, irreplaceable era in American popular music.”
—Elizabeth Hand, The Village Voice
“. . . it’s hard to imagine anyone approaching this unholy mess of a subject and doing a better job.”
—Patrick Beach, Austin American-Statesman
“. . . Walsh expertly navigates the divide between the truth and otherwise. It’s a compulsively readable, passionately compiled oral history of the infamous Minneapolis foursome who spent the ’80s writing a new rock ’n’ roll fairy tale while simultaneously ripping out its pages.”
—Ross Raihala, St. Paul Pioneer Press
“. . . uniquely, proudly the story of the Minneapolis band from the vantage point of the Minneapolis scene. . . . Funny, intense, sad and joyful.”
—Chris Riemenschneider, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
Publishers Weekly, Oct. 15, 2007
“In this loving, appropriately ramshackle tribute to one of the most beloved rock-and-roll bands of the 1980s, Walsh gives his subjects the oral history treatment, assembling a wide range of associates, friends and famous fans to put their memories on the record. The band’s story is an archetype of the joys and pitfalls of underground success – a rabid and loyal local following leads to a major label contract that, with its attendant pressures and misunderstandings, brings about the band’s slow dissolution and demise. The great moments in their history are all recounted here in warm detail: lead singer Paul Westerberg breaking copies of his new record Hootenanny in the local record store; the drunk Oklahoma City show attended by 30 people that still led to a live album; the triumphant disaster of their first and only appearance on SNL. The self-destruction of Bob Stinson, the band’s hilarious but alcoholic guitarist who died in 1995, is a fascinating and harrowing counterpoint throughout to the band’s adventures. Walsh himself proves to be among the band’s most eloquent and thorough defenders and explainers in his introductory essay and various excerpts from articles that appear throughout this consistently engaging and poignant work.”
Booklist
“The Replacements were a careening indie rock band of the 1980s that garnered more reputation than commercial success (of which they received hardly any). Somehow the scruffy Minneapolis foursome managed to last 12 riotous years. During that time, they staged some legendary “you had to be there” shows and were worshipped by fans with the fervor of the recently converted. What was it about these guys? Was it the goofy-looking guy in a dress, who played scorching lead guitar? Or the sensitive lead singer-songwriter, who shredded his vocal cords on cuts like “I Hate Music”? Walsh, pop-music columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, doesn’t try to answer such questions as much as capture the time and place of the happening that was the Replacements. His oral history recounts the differing reactions of musical contemporaries such as Bob Mould of Husker Du, rock critics such as Steve Albini, and members of the Replacements themselves. But the best remembrances come from ordinary fans, who saw in these awkward adolescents kicking at the status quo something that made them say, “Hey, that’s us.” Recommended, maybe must reading for fans of the Replacements and indie rock in general. Album art, candid photos, and early handbill posters complement the text.”
Review
ALARM Magazine “Having literally grown up with The ‘Mats, as their fans affectionately refer to them, and remaining a friend and fan to this day, veteran journalist Jim Walsh, author of
The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History, is perhaps the perfect person to tell their tale…Walsh presents the ‘Mats in a multidimensional light, illustrating their talents and charisma, while also depicting a band that struggled with many challenges that early success can bring, and showing how easy it can be to fall into a cycle of self-destruction. But rather than turning it into a tabloid, the impression he leaves is sensitive and human. “Compiled from hours of personal interviews and research extracted from countless articles and reviews from years past,
The Replacements is clearly a labor of love. The memories from those who were there are convincing enough that even if the reader had never heard of The Replacements, it is clear how they could become heroes to their fans. In cities across America, the names and places may have changed, but the story remains the same.”
St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Jim Walsh expertly navigates the divide between the truth and otherwise in his new book, The Replacements: All Over but the Shouting. It's a compulsively readable, passionately compiled oral history of the infamous Minneapolis foursome who spent the '80s writing a new rock 'n' roll fairy tale while simultaneously ripping out its pages.”
Review
Publishers Weekly, Oct. 15, 2007
“In this loving, appropriately ramshackle tribute to one of the most beloved rock-and-roll bands of the 1980s, Walsh gives his subjects the oral history treatment, assembling a wide range of associates, friends and famous fans to put their memories on the record. The band’s story is an archetype of the joys and pitfalls of underground success – a rabid and loyal local following leads to a major label contract that, with its attendant pressures and misunderstandings, brings about the band’s slow dissolution and demise. The great moments in their history are all recounted here in warm detail: lead singer Paul Westerberg breaking copies of his new record Hootenanny in the local record store; the drunk Oklahoma City show attended by 30 people that still led to a live album; the triumphant disaster of their first and only appearance on SNL. The self-destruction of Bob Stinson, the band’s hilarious but alcoholic guitarist who died in 1995, is a fascinating and harrowing counterpoint throughout to the band’s adventures. Walsh himself proves to be among the band’s most eloquent and thorough defenders and explainers in his introductory essay and various excerpts from articles that appear throughout this consistently engaging and poignant work.”
Booklist
“The Replacements were a careening indie rock band of the 1980s that garnered more reputation than commercial success (of which they received hardly any). Somehow the scruffy Minneapolis foursome managed to last 12 riotous years. During that time, they staged some legendary “you had to be there” shows and were worshipped by fans with the fervor of the recently converted. What was it about these guys? Was it the goofy-looking guy in a dress, who played scorching lead guitar? Or the sensitive lead singer-songwriter, who shredded his vocal cords on cuts like “I Hate Music”? Walsh, pop-music columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, doesn’t try to answer such questions as much as capture the time and place of the happening that was the Replacements. His oral history recounts the differing reactions of musical contemporaries such as Bob Mould of Husker Du, rock critics such as Steve Albini, and members of the Replacements themselves. But the best remembrances come from ordinary fans, who saw in these awkward adolescents kicking at the status quo something that made them say, “Hey, that’s us.” Recommended, maybe must reading for fans of the Replacements and indie rock in general. Album art, candid photos, and early handbill posters complement the text.” ALARM Magazine “Having literally grown up with The ‘Mats, as their fans affectionately refer to them, and remaining a friend and fan to this day, veteran journalist Jim Walsh, author of The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History, is perhaps the perfect person to tell their tale…Walsh presents the ‘Mats in a multidimensional light, illustrating their talents and charisma, while also depicting a band that struggled with many challenges that early success can bring, and showing how easy it can be to fall into a cycle of self-destruction. But rather than turning it into a tabloid, the impression he leaves is sensitive and human. “Compiled from hours of personal interviews and research extracted from countless articles and reviews from years past, The Replacements is clearly a labor of love. The memories from those who were there are convincing enough that even if the reader had never heard of The Replacements, it is clear how they could become heroes to their fans. In cities across America, the names and places may have changed, but the story remains the same.”
St. Paul Pioneer Press
“Jim Walsh expertly navigates the divide between the truth and otherwise in his new book, The Replacements: All Over but the Shouting. It's a compulsively readable, passionately compiled oral history of the infamous Minneapolis foursome who spent the '80s writing a new rock 'n' roll fairy tale while simultaneously ripping out its pages.” CMJ New Music Monthly
“For those who saw the Replacements in their prime, it’s odd to notice that their lasting influence seems to be congealed into the sappy sides of middling emo bands who really like Don’t Tell a Soul. But don’t blame the Minneapolis slop-rock gods for that foible. Get a feel of their real ragged soul from this bio, cobbled together by a guy who was in a Minneapolis band form back in the drunken daze and saw the Replacements at their very first bar show and a million times after that as a pal and sometime roadie....since we’ve rarely been privy to those fellas’ thoughts, or the cool old pics throughout, this tome is invaluable. Plus, it also helps cement the truly lasting and fruitful fact that the Replacements, and the everyman Minneapolis scene, saved punk from ‘80s bald-headed hardcore dogmatics.”
Minneapolis Star Tribune “The Replacements is uniquely, proudly the story of the Minneapolis band from the vantage point of the Minneapolis scene…Funny, intense, sad and joyful.”
Here, finally, is the rollicking story of the notorious and celebrated band, as told by veteran music journalist Jim Walsh, an eyewitness who was always at the periphery of the storm, and often at its eye.
“The Replacements were superheroes: They rescued a whole planet from ’80s music. Jim Walsh’s loving, engrossing oral history is the book they deserve.”
—Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity, About a Boy, Fever Pitch, and Songbook
“The Replacements were all at once 100-percent right and totally and completely wrong; absolutely inspiring and thoroughly infuriating; gloriously brilliant and utterly stoopid. Any writer who would dare tell their story would have to match those attributes and contradictions, but there was only one up for the task, and Jim Walsh has done a tremendous job of it.”
—Jim DeRogatis, pop-music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, co-host of Public Radio’s Sound Opinions, and author of Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic
“The rest of us have only seen the Replacements through ‘a crack in the drapes.’ Jim Walsh actually took the wheel from time to time and managed to get closer to the band than I ever thought possible. He makes me lonesome for the ’80s.”
—Joe Soucheray, St. Paul Pioneer Press columnist and host of KSTP-AM’s Garage Logic
“The Replacements made a mark on Minneapolis ‘serrated and deep, like a battle scar,’ as one person remembers in this book. Can the life of a band be captured in mere words? Jim Walsh uses oral history as the way to know if any of it mattered, or if it even happened.”
—Diane Middlebrook, author of Suits Me, the biography of the cross-dressing jazz musician Billy Tipton and Her Husband, about the marriage of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath
“(Seeing the Replacements) changed my whole life. If it wasn’t for that, I might’ve spent my time playing in bad speed-metal bands.”
—Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day
“Reading Jim Walsh makes me think things that are kinda corny and totally powerful and true: that rock and roll can save your life; that even scruffy punks can form real family bonds; that you may only be young once, but if your spirit's right you can kick ass forever. Listening to the Replacements makes me feel the same things, and in that I'm like a lot of folks in my generation. Walsh was a participant observer in the counterculture that birthed this great band, and this insider account is as honest and insightful as oral history gets. You can really smell the beer.”
—Ann Powers, pop-music critic at the Los Angeles Times and author of Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America and Tori Amos: Piece by Piece
“Whether you were there when it all went down or just wish you'd been, this account of the ’Mats' enduring chokehold on music history is as ragged as a punk's pedicure, as bittersweet as an illicit pot brownie, and so pure it floats to the top of the rock-lit heap. Immeasurably more transporting than an ordinary memoir, Walsh's book is a poetic toast to a band so effusively careless that everyone who saw them instantly cared. If you've ever fallen in love with ‘that song,’ followed your favorite band from the VFW hall to the arena tour, or felt a Frankenstein-like primal spark at the sound of an opening riff, you'll get it. At turns wounded and joyful, the communion of voices brought together in All Over But the Shouting chimes like a Strat and builds like a heartbeat.”
—Diablo Cody, author of Candy Girl: A Year In The Life of an Unlikely Stripper; the film Juno, and the blog Pussy Ranch
Synopsis
At the dawn of "Morning in America"--a period that would nurse the rise of suit-and-tie culture--there emerged a national network of anti-corporate record shops, college radio stations, fanzines, nightclubs, and entrepreneurial record labels.
In the watershed year 1981, this "indie" scene fostered several seminal releases. Among recordings by bands such as Sonic Youth, Black Flag, Husker Du, The Minutemen, and R.E.M. was an album called "Sorry Ma . . . Forgot to Take Out the Trash", recorded by a scruffy, flannel-clad quartet from Minneapolis called The Replacements. Now, for the first time, all of the hearsay, half-truths, legends, and allegations associated with this maelstrom of a rock & roll band are unraveled in this oral history by longtime Twin Cities music journalist Jim Walsh.
Through interviews with family, friends, and fans; former manager Peter Jesperson; Twin/Tone record label cofounder Paul Stark; and musicians around the nation influenced by the band, Walsh lays bare with painful clarity a tale that unfolds like a tragic comedy in three perfect acts. Celebrated by national publications, "the Mats" often seemed more hell-bent on sabotaging their status as critical darlings than parlaying it. With their markedly apolitical stance amid their decidedly political peers, their uncool embrace of "classic rock" influences like KISS and The Faces, and their Dionysian appetites (and the resulting tendency to literally fall on their own faces), The Replacements lasted 12 years despite themselves.
From the bands founding to their rise through the local and national club circuits, their major label deal in 1985, and the slow and painful implosion that followed, The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting lays down the gripping oral history behind the little band that could--but didn't.
Synopsis
Formed in a Minneapolis basement in 1979, the Replacements were a notorious rock 'n' roll circus, renowned for self-sabotage, cartoon shtick, stubborn contrarianism, stage-fright, Dionysian benders, heart-on-sleeve songwriting, and--ultimately--critical and popular acclaim. While rock then and now is lousy with superficial stars and glossy entertainment, the Replacements were as warts-and-all "real" as it got.
In the first book to take on the jumble of facts, fictions, and contradictions behind the Replacements, veteran Minneapolis music journalist Jim Walsh distills hundreds of hours of interviews with band members, their friends, families, fellow musicians, and fans into an absorbing oral history worthy of the scruffy quartet that many have branded the most influential band to emerge from the '80s. Former manager Peter Jesperson, Paul Stark and Dave Ayers of Twin/Tone Records, Bob Mould and Grant Hart of rivals Husker Du, the legendary Curtiss A, Soul Asylum's Dan Murphy, Lori Barbero of Babes in Toyland, R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, power-pop hero Alex Chilton, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, and replacement Replacements Slim Dunlap and Steve Foley: all have something to say about the scene that spawned the band. These and dozens of others offer insights into the Replacement's workings--and the band's continuing influence more than fifteen years after their breakup. Illustrated with both rarely seen and classic photos, this, finally, is the rollicking story behind the turbulent and celebrated band that came on fast and furious and finally flamed out, chronicled by one eyewitness who was always at the periphery of the storm, and often at its eye.
" T]his consistently engaging and poignant work . . . . is a] loving, appropriately ramshackle tribute to one of the most beloved rock-and-roll bands of the 1980s. . . . The band's story is an archetype of the joys and pitfalls of underground success."--Publishers Weekly
"The Replacements were superheroes: They rescued a whole planet from '80s music. Jim Walsh's loving, engrossing oral history is the book they deserve."--Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity
Synopsis
The first-ever book about the Minneapolis basement band who changed the music scene (and as Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity, remarks, “rescued a whole planet from ’80s music”), this oral history chronicles the Replacements’ mercurial career--the self-sabotage, stubborn contrarianism, stage-fright, Dionysian benders, heart-on-sleeve songwriting, and—ultimately—critical and popular acclaim. Distilling hundreds of hours of interviews with band members, their friends, families, fellow musicians, and fans, Minneapolis rock insider Jim Walsh creates a richly textured, multi-faceted worthy of the scruffy quartet that many have branded the most influential band to emerge from the ’80s.
Synopsis
Formed in a Minneapolis basement in 1979, the Replacements were a notorious rock ’n’ roll circus, renowned for self-sabotage, cartoon shtick, stubborn contrarianism, stage-fright, Dionysian benders, heart-on-sleeve songwriting, and—ultimately—critical and popular acclaim. While rock then and now is lousy with superficial stars and glossy entertainment, the Replacements were as warts-and-all “real” as it got.
In the first book to take on the jumble of facts, fictions, and contradictions behind the Replacements, veteran Minneapolis music journalist Jim Walsh distills hundreds of hours of interviews with band members, their friends, families, fellow musicians, and fans into an absorbing oral history worthy of the scruffy quartet that many have branded the most influential band to emerge from the ’80s. Former manager Peter Jesperson, Paul Stark and Dave Ayers of Twin/Tone Records, Bob Mould and Grant Hart of rivals Hüsker Dü, the legendary Curtiss A, Soul Asylum’s Dan Murphy, Lori Barbero of Babes in Toyland, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, power-pop hero Alex Chilton, Craig Finn of The Hold Steady, and replacement Replacements Slim Dunlap and Steve Foley: all have something to say about the scene that spawned the band. These and dozens of others offer insights into the Replacement’s workings--and the band’s continuing influence more than fifteen years after their breakup. Illustrated with both rarely seen and classic photos, this, finally, is the rollicking story behind the turbulent and celebrated band that came on fast and furious and finally flamed out, chronicled by one eyewitness who was always at the periphery of the storm, and often at its eye.
“[T]his consistently engaging and poignant work . . . . [is a] loving, appropriately ramshackle tribute to one of the most beloved rock-and-roll bands of the 1980s. . . . The band's story is an archetype of the joys and pitfalls of underground success.”--Publishers Weekly
“The Replacements were superheroes: They rescued a whole planet from ’80s music. Jim Walsh’s loving, engrossing oral history is the book they deserve.”—Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity
Synopsis
The illustrated inside story and oral history of the Minneapolis basement band who "rescued a whole planet from '80s music" (Nick Hornby, author of High Fidelity).
About the Author
Jim Walsh spent several years singing in Twin Cities bands before turning to rock journalism. In 1990 he became the music editor at City Pages, an alternative weekly in Minneapolis. Three years later, he joined the St. Paul Pioneer Press as the pop music columnist and as a feature writer, and in 2002 he left Minnesota to study at Stanford University on a John S. Knight Fellowship. Walsh returned to Minneapolis in 2003, where he lives with his wife and two children, and performs and records as his musical alter ego, The Mad Ripple (www.myspace.com/themadripple and www.myspace.com/madripplemusic).
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One Raised in the City
Chapter Two When It Began
Chapter Three What’s That Song?
Chapter Four Someone Take the Wheel
Epilogue Waiting to Be Forgotten
The Players
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
Song and Album Index
General Index