The Replacements – All Over But the Shouting (review)

As a major fan of The Replacements in my life, I was very excited late in the summer when I first learned of longtime Minneapolis rock writer and musician Jim Walsh's upcoming book on the Mats. Well, I got a preview copy last week and once CMJ ended, spent the weekend with it.



It must've been a gargantuan task by Walsh to try to unearth the 'oral history' of the band and its place in rock and roll. After all, so much of The Replacements story is buried in mythmaking (the best in rock and roll?) and mystery. What was that old R.E.M. line? ‘Three chords and a cloud of dust’? That could equally apply here.

The facts? Three scruffy Minneapolis kids banging away at loud 70s rock covers in a basement, and a kid who's been hanging outside their house listening (Paul Westerberg) eventually gets invited to play with them. They start to play clubs, get noticed in their hometown and put out a record pretty quickly, and it starts to grow.

Walsh brings us these early days well - after all, 'these are the days' of Walsh’s life – he was in a band or two at the same time that played with the early Mats, he hung out at the same clubs, parties and rock gigs. He knows this terrain very well. And updated interviews with scenesters at that time, as well as TwinTone mavericks Peter Jesperson and Paul Stark, lend great authenticity to the tale.



The era from 1980-1985 is a joy to read. Lots of fun stories from early tours (like the Oklahoma The Shit Hits the Fans saga), the competition with the Huskers, the insights and local flavor within early Westerberg songs, the battles among band members – it’s all here. Coupled with previously unseen (by me) pix and the first half of the book fires on all cylinders.

It’s the latter half of the book that misfires, with seemingly huge chunks of time missing. Of course, the Replacements were by then traveling and touring on a major label, the gang had grown up, and Bob Stinson had been kicked out of the band. The Sire exec involved in those days gets some oral time, but that's about it. In fact, the period between the 1989 Tom Petty tour to the July 4th,1991 last show in Grant Park, Chicago goes by in what seems like a few pages.

I think the big disappointment for me is the exclusion of any current interviews from Mats gangsters Westerberg, Tommy Stinson or Chris Mars. All the material from the band themselves is from past interviews, dating way back to the 1980s and early 1990s, and many of which I’ve read before and have in my rock clippings at home (Matter magazine, anyone?).

I am not faulting Walsh – no matter how hard he tried, he probably couldn't get the Mats guys to contribute - and right upfront in the press notes it reads..."music journalist Jim Walsh distills archival interviews with band members and hundreds of hours of new interviews with their friends, families, fellow musicians, fans, and co-conspirators..." but IMHO, the book is considerably weakened without the band members’ current perspective.

Any Replacements fan worth his gold will remember the early 90s as a time for major recrimination among the band members. I'm sure with some distance and time, the joyous memories of what they were and how they did it would be wonderful to read (even through Westerberg's persistent sarcastic being).

Overall, though, for fans old and new, 'The Replacements - All Over But the Shouting' sweetly brings the Mats story to life, with all the hits, misses, booze and snorts that was part of their deal. Kudos to Walsh for what was surely a momentous workload over the last year or so to get this sucker done. The book’s official release date is November 15th, but I’m sure you can get it now through the Amazon link.

Here's HARP Magazine's take on the book. Jim Walsh will take his book tour to NYC in December.