Words Are Enough: Paul Westerberg

Few great bands, if any, have demonstrated the kind of ritualized disinterest in their own material that typified the Replacements in the mid-1980s. They played shitfaced, mumbled sets full of inept covers and improvised lyrics. They'd play 60 seconds of "Substitute," 30 seconds of "If I Only Had a Brain," 10 seconds of "Misty Mountain Hop," then giggle, drink, play most of a Robyn Hitchcock song, then "Fuck School," then drink again.

And they were adored. They were the least self-important band in America. Paul Westerberg wrote lyrics that effaced himself, others, rock music in general and the Replacements' music specifically.

I hate music/ Sometimes I don't/ I hate music/ It's got too many notes

Those lines, from the Mats' first release, 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, lay it out bare. It's an aggressive, conflicted declaration — anti-music and anti-themselves — that describes the band's next 10 years with strange prescience. The Replacements were fantastic, except when they weren't. They hated music, except when they didn't.

Ain't lost yet so I gotta be a winner/ Fingernails and cigarettes, a lousy dinner

It's become a canonical fact of rock history that Let It Be, released in 1984, is the band's essential record. Maybe this is true. It's definitely the record that got the Replacements noticed by a wider cast of listeners, and led Sire/Reprise to sign the band. Like 1983's Hootenanny, Let It Be combined clever, anxious, sometimes elegiac songs with full-throttle moronic tilts. "Unsatisfied" and "Sixteen Blue," two pitch-perfect expressions of Midwestern alt alienation, are separated by "Gary's Got a Boner." They're preceded by a messy cover of KISS' "Black Diamond."

Passing through and it's late, the station started to fade / Picked another one up in the very next state

Westerberg described all the really good things — relevance, attractiveness, drunkenness — as not just disposable, but fundamentally self-disposing. So fuck it. Stuff fades, new stuff arrives, then that stuff fades. Drink up, buddy. It was an oddly comforting world-view.

Jesus rides beside me, / He never buys any smokes / Hurry up, hurry up / I've got enough of this stuff / Ashtray floor, dirty clothes and filthy jokes / Lights flash in the evening / I guess we'll follow them there

I'll be sad in heaven / If I don't find a hole in the gate / Climb to the top of this crummy water tower screamin'/ I can't hardly wait / I can't wait / I can't wait / I can't wait / 'Til it's over

There was never much confidence expressed in a Mats song. Idiocy? Yeah. Cynicism? Undoubtedly. Sentimentality? Sure, sometimes. But no obvious confidence. Their music was the sound of chronic underachievement. Westerberg's lyrics were often perfectly indecipherable. At their best, though, they made you smirk, glad to be inside the joke.

Feeling like a hundred bucks, exchanging good lucks face to face / Checkin' his stash by the trash at St. Mark's Place / Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round / They sing, "I'm in love. What's that song?" / "I'm in love with that song"

Once, in 1991, I watched Westerberg buy every Gordon Lightfoot cassette in an Iowa City record shop. It remains one of the most self-destructive things I've ever seen anyone do. A few weeks later, after a delightfully bad Fourth of July show at the Taste of Chicago, the Replacements called it quits. But Westerberg didn't fade. He can still deliver a raucous gem, as he did with 2003's "MPLS," a bluesy nod to his hometown.

On the Mississippi River, I was born in '59 / Mississippi River, born in '59 / Down in Dinkytown old Bob Dylan freeze his behind

Go down to the shore, drink us some wine / Well, we tumble down to the shore, drinkin' some wine / I only did it one time

Took a whole lot of girls, then went down to the shore / Took a whole lot of girls, went down to the shore/ Took a boy down once to play the blues and he ain't here no more

— Andy Behrens (abehrens53@hotmail.com)