(For the back story: Twenty-Five Albums For Twenty-Five Years #25-23, #22, #21, #20)
19. Don’t Tell A Soul – The Replacements
As Mark Richardson mentions in his recent Pitchfork review, “For many, Don't Tell a Soul, with its slick production-- saxophones and violins were one thing, but synths?-- and generally muted tone spelled the end of the Replacements as we knew them.” This was not the case for me. Don’t Tell a Soul was my introduction to the Replacements.
Talent Show
It goes something like this. My brother played guitar. When he was in high school, he had band—he had the ripped up, bleached out jeans and Jon Bon Jovi perm. He had a purple guitar and a big ass guitar rig. His band, our last name, played a mixture of Rush-like prog and Ozzy-like metal. And for one shiny-but-embarrassing moment (for all of us), I was the lead singer. Somewhere at my mother’s house is a rapidly deteriorating VHS tape of our performance at the city fair’s Battle of the Bands. On this tape, you can hear a pre-pubescent me wailing away Ozzy (hitting the high notes but off-tempo), and slaughtering the lyrics to “Sweet Home Alabama.”
It’s safe to say we didn’t win.
Anyway, my brother graduated and went to college. He cut his hair and pretty much stopped playing.
Recognizing that my balls dropping and my inability to keep time would be the end of my singing career, I slid over to bass guitar and got a band of my own.
We had a complicated mythology which involved in-fighting and a change in line up. I was friends with (this is code for “in the Boy Scouts with”) our original drummer, and he was casual friends with two guys who played guitar (Brian and Michael). Somehow or other, we all wound up in my garage. From this meeting of minds, Fifth Wheel was born.
We had no clear vision and, aside from our lead guitarist (Michael), no real talent. Our furtive attempts to coalesce into some identifiable, cohesive sound were the epitome of lame. Basically, our practice sessions amounted to loud, cacophonous farting around. Attempts to cover hits of the day were met with little success.
Despite our lack of talent, our furtive attempts landed us in a similar situation to my earlier Battle of the Bands fiasco: We tried out for—and made it into—our high school’s talent show.
Our pièce de résistance? Guns ‘n Roses “Rocket Queen.” Instrumental, of course.
Shortly after we tried out and got on the slate, our drummer informed us that he would be out of town for the event. Faced with no drummer, we pulled in our friend Jeff (who is now a Naval flight officer) to cover on skins.
There’s video tape of our talent show performance, too—though I don’t know where it is.
It wasn’t long after that performance that we lost our first drummer to a difference of opinion. He thought he was awesome. We disagreed. He later went on to found a rival band (which we mocked incessantly), and Jeff came on as our official drummer. Surprisingly enough, with Jeff on the throne, we managed to find some direction, and our practice sessions netted some actual results, actual gigs. Those gigs reflected the general spotty-ness of our career—from our one real gig at a local music club, to an afternoon show at a day care (there’s video tape of this one, too).
We had an occasional singer who was older, cooler, and in college. Ron was not really invested in us. He had his own aspirations—and those included playing guitar. Our rhythm guitarist, Brian, later followed Ron out to Western, picked up bass and helped found the Western Carolina trio Minus Us.
All in all, Fifth Wheel was a grand experiment in teen angst. I’m proud (if also slightly embarrassed) of that band—and I’m also eternally thankful that we “came of age” musically at the same time that Nirvana and Pearl Jam were redefining music. There’s something poetic about a bunch of teenagers who couldn’t get laid banging out “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a garage.
I also find it deeply fascinating that Paul Westerberg managed to write some of the most authentic (at least in my experience) lines in rock music (from Don’t Tell A Soul’s “Talent Show”): "It's the biggest thing in my life, I guess/ Look at us, we're nervous wrecks/ Hey, we go on next."
I did that.
Drivn’ n’ Cryin’
This little story of a bad high school rock band does more than illustrate a high point from Don’t Tell A Soul. See, Fifth Wheel’s music may not have been all that great, but the band was the center of my social world for those two or three years before I went off to college. Up until that point, I’d been a competitive swimmer and a Boy Scout. Both of those things fell into the background when I started playing bass. They were replaced with some of the strongest friendships I’ve ever had. I would even go so far as to suggest that my ability to maintain strong friendships now is a direct result of the bonding that happened in my garage.
Not only do I still keep in touch with my former band mates, but my wife and I flew to Finland this summer to take part in our lead guitarist’s wedding.
Anyway, my junior year in high school was marked both by being in a band and taking a television production class at the Weaver Center in Greensboro. Somehow, my friend Brian caught wind of the television production class and we managed to get enrolled in it. The result was that we carpooled out to Weaver at the end of each school day. Driving back and forth to Weaver with Brian, we talked mostly about girls, but we also listened to a lot of music. Since Brian was a year older than me, he fancied himself the worldlier in regards to music.
I should probably interject: I was fattened on Rush, Ozzy, and Styx. I had inherited my musical tastes from my parents and my older brother. This was all counter to the tastes of Michael and Brian, who were big fans of The Monkees and The Beatles, and only later branched out into harder stuff. We were all enamored with Guns ‘n Roses, of course, but there was always a sense that my tastes were bad because I’d taken part in the big hair metal extravagancies of the late eighties—a travesty along the lines of being a Reagan Republican in a Clinton jazz band.
I credit Brian for introducing me to Drivn’ n’ Cryin’ and The Replacements.
This is where Don’t Tell A Soul comes in. I don’t remember where he got it—though I suspect he heard “I’ll Be You” on WUAG, UNC-G’s radio station. All I remember is that he had a tape copy of the album and he played it for me on the way to Weaver one afternoon. I didn’t like it immediately, but I was forced to borrow the tape.
I mentioned that I was a swimmer. I was no Michael Phelps (clearly), but I was still practicing regularly. And when I got my license (and my brother’s car, since he was away at college), I started driving myself the half hour to and from practice. I did a lot of driving and a lot of (cryin’) listening.
Driving back and forth from Weaver, and from swim practice, I fell in love with Don’t Tell A Soul. Later, I discovered the whole Replacements back catalog (and even found that Please To Meet Me is my favorite Replacements album), but Don’t Tell A Soul stands at the front of my list of albums where my musical tastes began to change.
ROCK 'N' ROLL GHOST
Later, much later, Michael of Fifth Wheel and Finland fame sent me a copy of Nina Persson's A Camp. It's a great little album that's never been released (I think) in the states. Anyway, near the end of the collection is a cover of "Rock 'n' Roll Ghost." It's a slow, sultry version of the already slow, melancholic track from Don't Tell A Soul. I've always been wary of covers (as much as I love Luna, I'm not a big fan of their lackadaisical version of "Sweet Child O Mine"), but this one's spot on. And it reminded me of the highlights—of what I love most about Don't Tell A Soul.
As you can probably gather from what I've already written, I was a reforming head banger who's only "slow music" likes were power ballads a la "Mama, I’m Comin' Home." Don't Tell A Soul was like nothing I'd ever really liked before. That "generally muted tone" that Mark Richardson mentions in his review was new to me. And the more I listened, the more I liked it. I would argue that Don't Tell A Soul opened me up to later enjoy Luna and The Sundays. It also allowed me to look back on the eighties and admit that I actually liked (sonically speaking) the other side of the musical spectrum—the side that my staunch head-banger youth railed vehemently against. I could allow myself to enjoy "Safety Dance" and "Come On Eileen."
But it's more than that, I guess. Otherwise, I wouldn't have found myself so enthralled with the rest of the Replacements catalog. And I guess this is what really bears mentioning: Yes, Don't Tell A Soul was a departure (from my own tastes as much as the band's storied past), but it was steeped in what made the Replacements great even from day one: great songwriting.
Richardson notes this—that "the hearts of good songs" are "beating beneath the plastic exterior" of their production. And, despite the change in line up, the heart of the Replacements is still their—because Westerberg is still there.
Now, one need only look at Paul's solo career to see that the Replacements were certainly more than him—but his greatest gift is, and always was, a knack for great songwriting—both riff-writing and lyric writing. And despite the typically professed failings of Don't Tell A Soul, the songs are damn good. I'll admit that I, too, have real problems with "I Won't" and "Anywhere's Better Than Here," but all in all the good outweighs the bad.
I used to say that three people most influenced my sense of (and love for) language: George Carlin, Tom Waits, and Paul Westerberg. That list has grown since, but those three still stand there at the front. First came Carlin (for more about Carlin: The King Is Dead) and later came Waits. But in the middle, in those teen angst years when I was fumbling toward some sense of self as a social being and as a writer, I learned from Westerberg the art of humility in humor and pain, the art of dismantling a phrase not as Carlin had for laughs but for a deeper truth, the truth that caused cliché in the first place. Where Waits painted another picture—other warped and weary worlds built of hobos and cigarette smoke—Westerberg painted an existence that was very much like my own (except for the boozing and Midwest cold, of course).
PLEASE TO MEET ME
I'll add this last bit because I'm probably not going to have room for more than one Replacements album in my twenty-five. In the end, Don't Tell A Soul means more to my musical history than Please To Meet Me does—even if it isn't the better album.
And I guess I should explain that. Looking back at my other choices so far, there is a sense of sonic resonance, of completeness and cohesiveness. On a good album, a band's or artist's expression is summed up within the confines of the chosen songs, which collectively represent a theme, an idea or ideas closely matched. While Please To Meet Me is a solid album with few missteps, it doesn't gel like Don't Tell A Soul does. Hands down, "Can't Hardly Wait" and "Alex Chilton" are my favorite Replacements songs, but the landscape that starts with "Talent Show" and ends with "Darling One" is one more completely realized. Whether by intention or accident, Don't Tell A Soul represents a specific moment in musical time—both for me and for the music world—and as such, means more to me.
One last thing (a sad note): I bought my CD copy of Please To Meet Me used at B.B.'s Compact Discs in Greensboro. B.B.'s was a classic haunt of my high school years. Kids without much to do and little money, we would drive out to B.B.'s and listen to music. The great thing about B.B.'s was that you could listen to any CD in the store. All you had to do was wait for an open player.
I discovered a lot of new sounds in that store—though, sadly, I never really bought much there. (I do have a couple of Tom Waits Bootlegs that I got there—back when you could still get those kinds of things at certain record stores…)
Earlier this year, B.B.'s closed its doors. There's a possibility that it may open again (somewhere else in town and likely at a reduced size), but having seen all my favorite music stores drop like flies in the last decade, I'm not all that hopeful.
But back in 1993, I lucked upon a used copy of Please To Meet Me (I'd already worn my copy of a copy out at that point).
I still have the receipt for it.
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