Photo credit: Alexander Stafford
The Replacements, as the legend goes, should have been huge. They certainly had the songs: tuneful rockers that could’ve made them Bon Jovi-levels of famous if they’d played them with a little less punk and a little more sheen. But The Replacements always had a spectacular knack for shooting down the many opportunities that presented themselves. They released indifferent music videos for tracks that could’ve been hits. On big tours, they’d deliberately alienate crowds. Sometimes they’d barely play any of their own songs at concerts, dedicating entire shows to drunken, tossed-off covers. They stumbled and slurred their way through a “Saturday Night Live” performance so disastrous that they were banned from the show for life.
Those incidents are the foundation of the band’s legacy, and a huge part of why the band is so fondly remembered today, but they’re also why a Replacements reunion is seemingly such a lose-lose proposition. With the band now well into middle age, they could never hope to recapture the shambolic, shitfaced spectacle of their early shows, and frankly it’d be sad if they did. Nobody wants to see a buttoned-up Replacements show, but nobody wants to see grown men make fools of themselves, either.
It’s a minor miracle, then, that since singer Paul Westerberg and bassist Tommy Stinson reunited the band in 2012 with new guitarist Dave Minehan and professional fill-in Josh Freese on drums, the group has managed to win over crowds while keeping their dignity intact. Unlike The Replacements of 30 years ago, there’s no doubt this band is going to show up and competently play the songs audiences expect to hear, but unlike so many affirmation-starved reunion acts, they aren’t going to bend over backward to win over crowds, either. Their recklessness has been appropriately toned down, but their punk indifference remains.
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Though their show Saturday night at the Rave’s Eagles Ballroom came halfway through a tour (the band’s first in nearly a quarter century), they carried themselves as if they’d hardly rehearsed. Westerberg, in particular, made sure the show remained on its toes. Between fan favorites that kept the sold-out crowd howling along, he continually rejiggered the setlist, calling out changes to the band, and peppered the set with covers of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” along with wry snippets of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.” He sang “Androgynous” as if amusing himself, and generally treated the whole show like an inside joke, smirking at nothing in particular as he puffed on cigarettes between songs.
Was his peevish demeanor an act? A couple of times late in the show Westerberg paused to admire the crowd and the atmosphere, and he seemed genuine. But whether the band was truly enjoying themselves, pretending to enjoy themselves or pretending not to enjoy themselves was beside the point—whatever the case, they delivered everything fans could have hoped for from a Replacements reunion show. For their second and final encore, they closed with the Pleased To Meet Me ripper “I.O.U.,” which seemed a fitting sign-off for a concert where the band met all their obligations, if not a sly commentary on the reunion itself. “I want it in writing,” Westerberg wailed, “I owe you nothing.”
