Replacements Revisited

Hello friends, and welcome to another edition of Concords: Behind The Music. This week's subject is the Replacements, one of the most influential rock groups of the 80's. Four of their albums are being reissued this week, so it's a good opportunity for me to pay tribute to these guys. No other band at the time was better at combining the raw energy of punk with first-rate songwriting. If you aren't already familiar with their music, now's the time to take a closer look.

The Replacements had a huge impact on me as a teenager. They were the first alternative band I became obsessed with, and they shaped my musical tastes more than anyone else that I can think of. I still consider their album Tim to be one of the great rock-n-roll records of all-time; it's a perfect balance between the noisy thrash of their earlier records and the more mainstream pop that they made later on. The albums being reissued this week are from the pre-Tim era, which means that the songs might sound a bit rough to the uninitiated, but there are plenty of inspired moments nonetheless.

Here are a couple of tracks from those early records. The first song is one of my favorites from their album Hootenanny. It's a good example of the kind of loud, tuneful rock that they were known for. The second is an older song that finds them in mock country mode, which is unusual given that they were primarily a hardcore band back then.