Although I had already reserved a ticket for the Replacement show, I still called the venue on the day of the concert just to make sure they were really going to show up. The concert was going to be at some wholly disreputable, fly-by-night punk joint in Indy, next to the Vogue, a shady place that I think doubled as a Mexican restaurant during the day. When I called early that afternoon, some big-sounding, cheery bartender-type told me that the concert was indeed a go, and that the Repellents would be taking the stage shortly after 10pm. Pause. The Repellents?, I said, uncertainly. Do you mean the Replacements? There was a long pause. I heard the guy cup his hand over the receiver and call out to some co-worker: “Hey, what’s the name of that band. . . ?” Some garbled voices, then back to me: “Yeah, that’s it, the Replacements. Not the Repellents, The Replacements. Sorry about that.”
Jesus Christ, I thought, clued-in, hip Indy at its finest: “The Repellents.” My favorite band, the indie-alternative favorite, the critics’ choice, “The Repellents.” Though, as my mortification started to recede, I had to admit that the name kind of fit: the way the Replacements consciously avoided success, the way they went out of their way to repel people, especially industry types. If I ever got a chance to talk to them, I thought, a little moonily, I’d mention it to them; they’d probably give a grim, rueful little smile and say, That figures, the Repellents. Well, Paul would, anyway. Bob Stinson would just throw a bottle of whiskey at my head.
I gave the guy my name again, just to be sure they had a ticket reserved for me--back then, in 1986, credit cards weren’t mandatory for everything, you could just call a place and they’d manually pull a ticket for you. I know I was being a little obsessive about getting the damned ticket, annoying the frat boy by making him spell my name out and all, but I didn’t care: the Replacements were the band I liked so much that I didn’t even mention it to other people, because I knew if I did they would just think that I was unbalanced and fanatical and ridiculous about them. And they’d be right. I still couldn’t quite believe that they were only going to be just two hours away from me.
To be honest, I wasn’t really sure why the band hit me so hard. I had read some writers who talked about the klutz genius, the anomie, the galvanic, Johnny Thunders-like guitar work, etc, but none of that resonated with me. And while I appreciated the sophomoric humor and the sloppiness and how loud and smart-alecky they were, well, that wasn’t it, either. What I couldn’t get over was how melancholy they always sounded, even in the head-bangers; I couldn’t figure out how “Androgynous” sounded less like a gender anthem and more like some sad outtake from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” They were, without question, the oldest bunch of young guys I had ever heard; “How young are you, how old am I/Let’s count the rings around my eyes” sang Paul, from the ancient perch of 24. 24! In “Swingin Party” and “Here Comes a Regular” he sounded more like a miserable, middle-aged drunk than a guy in his 20s with (seemingly) his whole life in front of him. He sounded old, not resigned, really, but not “wise” old, or “old soul” old either. Just old. And that was beguiling to me.
So intent was I on not missing the show that I left Fort Wayne about 3pm, determined to get to the venue and just plunk myself down in the bar for four hours before the band hit the stage. I figured I’d have a late lunch, slam a few drinks, smoke a few cigarettes, get ready for the show. What I didn’t count on was that when I finally got there, the Replacements were already in house, hanging around the waitresses, getting as tuned up as I imagined I was going to get.
In hindsight, I should have figured out that they’d be there: The Replacements were an infamously hard-drinking band, and really, what else is there to do in Indianapolis on a Friday afternoon? Go to the Governor’s Mansion? The Zoo? I’m sure they rolled into town a few hours earlier in a van they probably slept in, coming from a show in Chicago or Detroit, no hotels for these guys, obviously, and later, after sleeping it off in the van post show, they’d aim the vehicle toward Louisville or Cincinnati with the least incapacitated band member behind the wheel.
After I paid for my ticket and slid into a booth I looked up and, son of a bitch, there they were. I knew the band’s faces from the “Let it Be” album cover and a Village Voice article I had read, and there were the Stinson brothers, Bob and Tommy, standing in the aisle, a few feet away from me, drinking beers. I tried hard not to crane my head and gawk at them, not wanting to be too obviously a smitten fan boy, but after three beers in half an hour I decided what the hell, and got up to speak to them.
I’ve never been too gaga over seeing celebrities in public (and indeed, how derisive and mocking they would be, if they heard themselves referred to as “celebrities”) but, well, they were the Replacements, my band, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little bit curious about what made them tick. I had heard stories about the band’s notorious drinking and self-destruction tendencies--especially Bob, the doomed Bob, Bob Stinson, dead by ‘95--I had heard about the way they boozed through shows and fucked with various promoters, agents, record execs, etc, so there was a tiny bit of trepidation on my part about approaching them. But they looked so casual and unassuming there, and so damned Midwestern, more like the fans who started to trickle in than any big deal rock and roll stars.
In my bluff, formal way I went right up to them and told them I loved their music and I was a big fan and I was glad they were there, and what do you know, they were polite and gracious, formal as I was, thanking me for my kind words. There was an awkward silence and then Bob said I should talk to Paul, he was upstairs in the band room, and though Bob was being very nice I could tell he was a little anxious to pawn me off on Paul. He probably figured Paul was the guy I wanted to talk to, anyway, Paul, the writer, and of course he was right. I’m sure at every concert he kept running into guys like me, intense loners who identified fiercely with the guy who wrote “Answering Machine” and “Little Mascara.”
Not trying to be too obvious I said goodbye and took the stairs to see Paul, but when I got outside the band room I hesitated. What, just walk in? It seemed too invasive, too, I don’t know, rude, and so I skipped by the band room and went into the upstairs Men’s Room instead.
There were two urinals in the bathroom and when I sidled up to one of them I noticed, of course, that there was Paul, next to me, finishing up nature’s business and giving me a nod. Standing there, pissing, I told him in a rush that their music was just about the most important thing in the world to me, that his songs hit home with me like nothing else, that I related wholly even to the ones I didn’t quite understand. Instead of being embarrassed by this effusive praise he just nodded his head, thanking me quietly. We talked a bit then, as we both zipped up, about Michael Jackson and Minneapolis, I told them I had visited the Twin Cities a few months before and hung out at a place called Oliver’s.
“You went to Ollie’s?” he said. “What did you have?”
“Burger and fries. Beer.”
I told him that I had written him a fan letter the previous year and that he had responded with a very funny letter in reply. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“Leo, Indiana.”
“I remember,” he said, surprising me. “You included a poem.”
I laughed. “I did. You told me that I was a better poet than a tree.”
This is the poem I had sent:
She heads for the door,
My Valentine’s day red, red-Valentine heart
Leaps from my chest and bounds down the hall after her.
She reaches the door,
Turns to look at some shell on the floor,
And tells me I need therapy damned fast.*
(*Preceding poem was rejected by seven literary journals, including the IU undergrad magazine, “Transitions.”)
I was feeling a little embarrassed about keeping him there, trapped in the bathroom, with my earnest fan talk, so I pulled in and told him it was nice to meet him and I got out of there.
The rest of the night was a blur. I got back to my booth and continued drinking. The place started to fill up and more and more fans starting to approach the Replacements like I had, talking to them as they hung out at the bar. (Later I read that the “Tim” tour was a pretty rough go, as the tensions between Bob and Paul kept boiling over. All throughout the pre-show hours I noticed that they didn’t talk to each other at all, they kept their distance.)
Eventually the Replacements left the bar area and went to the band room for some last-minute, pre-show excesses (I’m guessing.) The local punk openers started playing, and as they went through their set the room really started to fill up. Mostly kids, I saw, high school kids, who apparently didn’t seem to know or care who the name band was that was playing that night, it was just the place to go on a Friday night. It could have been the Repellents playing, after all.
I got drunk, drunk as hell. I only remember snapshots of the rest of the night. I talked to Paul again at some point, but I don’t remember what I said, though I do remember him laughing at one of my jokes. I felt happy that he had come over to where I was sitting--an ally, he must have thought, from our previous encounter, I’ll talk to him. Made me realize that he was probably nervous, too, in that packed room, with all those strangers.
Other snapshots:
--I saw a girl from Fort Wayne that I knew, a friend of my sister’s, a very striking punkette wearing camouflage gear and black lipstick. We talked while the opening band played and later, I saw her again: upstairs, me in the rest room again, I stumbled out and saw her slamming the door to the band’s room. She was shaking. She looked at me and said, angrily: “Those guys are insane!” There was a pause that I didn’t fill up: I had nothing to say. Then she turned on a black heel and walked away.
--In front of the stage the kids formed the inevitable mosh pit, and because I like to mix it up and I was drunk, I got down there, too, though I was older than everybody by a good eight, nine years, and though I’m a pretty big guy I was still whipsawed back and forth by the relentless slam dancing, crashing into people and getting tossed about like a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. At one point the crowd’s force pinned me face-to-face with a girl I knew form a creative writing course at IU, and in that split second we both regarded each other: “Hi,” I said, “Hi,” she said, recognizing me, and then Wham!, I was pulled away from her by the crowd and into another wave of punks and drunks. I didn’t see her the rest of the night, I haven’t seen her since.
--The only song I remember from the concert was the opener, “Bastards of Young,” and the only reason I remember it was because it was the loudest goddamned thing I had ever heard in my life. I’ve been to loud concerts before, dozens of them, and even the opening act was playing at an excruciatingly blaring level, but “Bastards of Young” was ten, twenty, a hundred times louder than any of them: BA DUM BAD DUM BA DUM DUM “AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! GOD WHAT A MESS ON THE LADDER OF SUCCESS. . . “ I’ve suffered some pretty significant losses of hearing over the years, what with Walkmans and concerts and car stereos and iPods, but I’m convinced I lost a huge percentage of it right then, that night, in the first ten seconds of the Replacements’ set.
--At that moment, in the mosh pit, the night turned on a pivot towards the surreal. The loud music, the incredible amount of alcohol I had ingested, the heat from the bodies around me, the pushing and shoving, seeing my heroes--all of it came together at once and I was, well, not transported, but definitely altered, not entirely pleasantly, I should say, but I gave into it nonetheless, like an ecstasy-head at a rave concert. I tried to concentrate on the band, with my failing consciousness, I wanted to at least have some sort of personal record of the concert that I was so looking forward to, but I was fading quickly. The last image I remember was of Paul, looking out at the crowd after the first song--he seemed reserved, quiet even, in direct contrast to the sounds the band had just unleashed. It struck me as noble, compassionate even--I imagined that he saw all those kids who didn’t give a damn about his music and weren’t even paying attention to it, yet he was going to give them a show anyway. A professional musician, after all. Another dichotomy from the band notorious for not giving a shit when it played.
I left the concert early; I had to. I’m a sputtering, clumsy drunk and there was a 100% chance I’d knock somebody over, somebody bigger than me, and so I straggled to my car, locked the doors, passed out. Unbelievably, the night didn’t end for me there. I woke up around 2 am and then decided, in my state of infinite rationality, to drive to Bloomington and knock on the door of a grad student I had dated the previous year, thinking she’d be delighted to see me at 3 in the morning and would be willing to pick up where we had left off. Miraculously I made it to her dorm, and of course she wasn’t there. I left a whimsical message on her dry-eraser board and when I turned to leave, there she was, walking down the hall toward me, as drunk as I was, but laughing.
When she took my hand and led me into her room I marveled at my good fortune, fortune that no true Replacements fan should ever expect to have.
Back to (260): Unsatisfied.