Trouble Boys

I am just about finished with Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements, Bob Mehr's exhaustively comprehensive account of the seminal Minneapolis band that some of us think, despite total lack of commercial success during their lifespan from 1981-91, may have been the greatest American band ever to live. Scott and I have written fairly extensively about our love for the Replacements, and in fact it was Scott who first introduced me to the band. The bastard.

For someone like me whose love of the band cannot truly be expressed in words, I honestly never want the bio to end. Because I know we'll likely never see something this expansive written about the Replacements ever again, and because once I'm done, it will be one more reminder that the band is done as well. And will have lived and died (and briefly reunited recently before going away again) without ever achieving the commercial success they so clearly deserved. Even though it was that very success that terrified them to the point of hitting the self-destruct button on their careers so often they practically wrote the instruction manual on how to do it.

The book is an exhilarating ride all the way through, at times hilarious, awe-inspiring, infuriating, mortifying and horrifically decadent. And sometimes all at once. Mehr's research and ability to actually get inside the troubled heads of Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars and the tragic Bob Stinson may be the most impressive thing about what he's done.

As I've been reading Trouble Boys it once more dawned on me why the Mats meant to so much to me and continue to be so embedded in my DNA, and why it's different than, say, listening to other favorites like Bruce Springsteen or R.E.M.

We listen to devotedly Bruce Springsteen to be inspired and moved, to believe in the glory of rock-n-roll as a force, though good times and bad, that keeps us moving towards something bigger.

We listen to R.E.M. because it makes us part of something, a club for people who are in on this amazing secret and even though we were never ever the cool ones, the fact that we are part of this club is the coolest thing of all.

But we listen to the Replacements not for coolness or glory, but because when we do, we finally get this sense that someone, somewhere out there—even though they have no damn idea who the hell we are—gets us.

Thanks for that, boys. You can color me impressed.