davemerrill

Live Replacements covers today at Mister Kitty's Found Sound as we send you more music from world of illegal recording! Yes, put somebody in the audience with a microphone and you'll get a bootleg. And that's a good thing because without these underlegalized entrepreneurs we wouldn't have The 'Mats doing "Can't Get Enough Of Your Love" and "Radio Free Europe". Yeah, I know that this immediately pegs us as middle-aged losers who can't stop talking about all the awesome bands they saw in their youth - as if it's 1990 and we couldn't stop talking about Woodstock. The difference is that the distance between 1970 and 1990 is about a million zillion years, while what's the difference between 1990 and now? We have smaller and faster computers and fewer mullets. Cars get slightly better gas mileage. Everything else is more or less the same; no frightening social upheavals, no scary youth culture (the 20something hipster ideal these days is to dress and act like a 40 year old), no Bonus Armies marching on Washington. Hells Angels no longer provide security at Rolling Stones concerts. Yes, the Rolling Stones are still touring. The Who is still touring. Madonna is still touring. If Michael Jackson wasn't dead HE'D be touring. U2 is still touring. We're stuck in a cultural dead end. And why? Because in 1990 we were given The Replacements, and instead we chose Milli Vannili and Vanilla Ice. We were given Negativland and we chose Island Records. We were given Eightball and Hey Mister and we chose Spawn. We're still paying the price for mediocrity.

Of course much of the blame must fall on The 'Mats themselves, as they found themselves unready and unwilling to accept the mantle of cultural standard-bearer. But isn't part of their appeal the knowledge that failure was always an option, and may have even been inevitable? I'd drink too, if I had to wake up to that every day. I don't know if I'd wear dresses on stage, but I'd definitely drink.