My favorite music writer talks about two of my favorite bands.

Eric Koslofsky does an amazing music podcast called the Old Time Modern Mixtape Hour, where he plays new favorites and old ones, and chats in between tracks. We asked him to write about several bands. Today he expounds about the Replacements and the Ramones.

The Ramones

The first I ever heard of the Ramones, it was my pops, who said “NOISE”.  And not in a good way. For full context, he also said Billy Joel was “NOISE” and that Billy Joel was “hard rock”. In hindsight, I realized he had only heard of the Ramones, not actually heard them (witness when I played “Needles and Pins” and he loved it as much as I did).

But that was enough for me to avoid them in my youth. And ignore punk in general. Noise. Meanness. Disrespect towards nice people. Spitting. But as I wound my teenage way backwards from the latest Phil Collins and Elton John to Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix, I leap-frogged over punk because of fear that it was just too noisy and scary. But having gone back to the base, I was actually prepping my brain to finally take punk and the Ramones in.

It happened in college. There I was, a cry baby pity party of one, angry at presumably some social slight by a female or a friend or someone and I finally listened to Ramones Mania, having been given tastes of it by a friend of mine (possibly the very one I felt slighted by for all of five minutes). It clicked. And how! This wasn’t some alienating monster. Their songs might be about feeling like an alienated monster but the music itself was an embrace. They were singing about the same kind of boredom and simplistic feelings of youth that I had (and all the other clichés you don’t need me to tell you about). And the blasts of lightning fast rock n roll switching off with 60’s girl group pop sweetness were such a one-two thump to the brain. Hell, even their song about being slipped a mickey (“Somebody Put Something In My Drink”) had me going – and I had never even been slipped a mickey (yet).

There were serious consequences to this realization that the Ramones were good: Suddenly that wretched Never Mind the Bollocks didn’t sound so bad. The Clash turned out to be more than “Rock the Casbah”. All subsequent sounds I got into had to be looked through the prism of the Ramones. Garage bands? Sign me up. Suburban brat rock? Take a hike, even with your “hey! Ho!”’s. Hardcore? Alright, you’re not so bad after all. Gimmicky phony posturing shtick? What kind of gimmicky phony posturing shtick? Ramones-level or Kiss-level? Ramones-level? Alright you’re OK.

In the years since I gave the Ramones a chance, I’ve had crazes over bands, genres and scenes, contemporary and in the past, but I always come back to the Ramones. I have gone back to the Ramones well more than any other. When I’m happy, angry or sad.  Whatever the situation, it usually results in the Ramones being played. I watched Rock n Roll High School on the morning of my wedding day both to celebrate and to stop me from throwing up.  I just realized that I don’t have a picture of my wife on my work desk, but I do have a picture of the Ramones on my office wall. Not sure what to make of that.

The Replacements

The Replacements-way to look at this piece about them is to tell this piece and this whole site in general to take a long walk off a short pier. What kind of nonsense is this? What are we, 16? We’re hanging out at the Internet version of a townie record store and having a High Fidelity moment with our college rock scene ‘zines? Do the Replacements really strike you as a band that you need to judge in the context of other bands? Battle of the Bands, dude. In sports style. On a blog. High five.

But also in keeping with the Replacements-way of looking at a piece about them on a site like this, as the Replacements would be perfectly glad to play along for a few minutes if only to demonstrate why they got this whole thing down and you don’t, this writer will also play the part. No sabotage, just coffee talk.

The Replacements stink. That was always the working theory. The band subscribed to it, the people who saw them subscribed to it. It was almost a registered trademark. When they got good, and started writing songs that appealed to other parts of the brain that wasn’t the “smash everything” dingle bit in the lobe or cortex or whatnot, they had to make sure to go back to stinking just to remember who they were. Except when they went back to stinking they were now accidentally still good. Which they then put to use. Which was then shunned by the corporate record industry (witness the transformations of songs like “Kiss Me on the Bus”, “Little Mascara”, “Can’t Hardly Wait”, or “Talent Show” from their ripping demos to the tamed down finished product). And then they finally had to take a two decade hiatus.

But the hiatus is over. As in Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson have reunited. Good enough for most people of the few people who know and care, save for a couple of anonymous Internet commenters who were born in the 90’s but say they stopped going to ‘Mats shows after Bob Stinson got kicked out of the band. So we have a new chapter by which to take in the story of the Replacements. The good angle of the chapter is that a generation of people who never got to see them the first time around will get to see them now, including getting to see the potential for bad shows and sabotage and all those other old ‘Mats hallmarks that they are probably too old to care about doing now (unless you count Billie Joe Armstrong as a part-time Replacement a sabotage, because that’s been happening). The bad angle is that they are no longer preserved in rock n roll amber. Now they’re the Pixies.  But that’s OK. If you’ve ever heard the 15 seconds of the demo cover of ”Monkey Gone to Heaven” (tacked on to the demo cover of “Gudbuy T’ Jane” which can be found on the expanded edition of Don’t Tell a Soul), then you know that if the Devil is 6, then the Pixies are 7, but the ‘Mats are 8. So it’s no insult. Everyone gets a harder-than-it-had-to-be pat on the back from Westerberg. Including one for himself. Some of that Minnesota Nice mixed in with punk insolence.  The Replacements in their priniciple.