The Replacements
A Minneapolis punk quartet that formed in 1979, the Replacements gained quick notoriety for their inebriated, freewheeling live performances. Verging upon success in the mid-1980s, the group mocked rock's conventional marketing tools. Their video for "Bastards of Young," from Tim (1985), was a three-minute close-up of a stereo speaker that was not MTV (Music Television)-friendly. Beginning with "Hootenanny" (1983), however, singer Paul Westerberg's songwriting demonstrated a newfound maturity by including styles that veered from punk into country, folk, and jazz. The Replacements pushed aside the purists, who regarded punk as a self-contained musical form closed to any outside influences. Neither musically mainstream nor punk, Westerberg sang in 1987 that the band had "One foot in the door / The other one in the gutter." The group that could not find their niche disbanded in 1991, but became a model for the guitar-pop bands that proliferated in the mid-1990s, when the alternative became the mainstream.
Further Reading:
Mundy, Chris. "Achin' to Be Understood." Rolling Stone. June 24, 1993, 51-55.
Ressmer, Jeffrey. "Replacements: A Band on the Verge." Rolling Stone. October 18, 1990, 32-33.
Wild, David. "Paul Westerberg." Rolling Stone. November 17, 1994, 106-107.
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