Longtime music journo Mehr’s masterful, comprehensive and engrossing bio chronicles scores of these bizarre lowlights, but also the creation of a catalogue of music whose reputation and influence have only increased in time. Marine Hymn.Īll of this while living every single day in rivers of booze, pyramids of cocaine and mountains of pills. They refused to release videos at a time when videos were everything, then filmed one that consisted entirely of a stereo blaring their song “Bastards of Young.” And while many bands would want to ingratiate themselves with overseas audiences, the ’Mats (as they were called for short) would open with the U.S. The band got banned from Saturday Night Live after uttering the word “fuck” during their performance, and lost most of their proceeds from a 1985 tour replacing a rented RV they destroyed. Even paying audiences would sometimes be punished with bizarre sets of slow-tempoed country covers or sloppy-drunk sets. Through the ’80s, there seemed to be hardly a reporter or radio DJ they didn’t blow off or insult, a booker or promoter they didn’t piss off for lackluster shows or trashing hotel and hospitality rooms, or a record-company exec they didn’t get on the bad side of with their boorish, angry or obnoxious behavior, including onstage brawls and incitement to riot. Their third show, a showcase for record label reps, was also botched on purpose with extreme indifference by the band.
Their second gig was similarly unfinished after such a negative and threatening audience reaction. They were kicked out of their very first gig at a sober house for teens (under original name “The Impediments”) for drinking in the parking lot between sets. Perhaps no band bio has been so aptly named – even though the title actually comes from a Dave Edmunds and Rockpile song that the Replacements admired.ĭespite an impressive body of work that has made rock critics, college-radio programmers and indie music lovers swoon and praise them to high heaven as alt-rock/post-punk messiahs, the Replacements were usually their own worst enemies, gleefully sabotaging their own career.Ĭonsider this. Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements
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