Read About Your Band

the first time i heard the replacements was track one on a mix from dan that i had requested in what i called a "music slump" during the winter of junior year of high school. the song was swingin' party and for some reason it was exactly what i needed to hear. it didn't sound like anything i had ever heard, but at the same time it was so average, and so beautiful and honest. maybe six months later i bought Tim because i loved swingin' party. i liked the album but i didn't love it, and there was something about their sound and subject matter that i couldn't quite digest. too raw and regular, and not in a way i was used to. looking back on it, it might have been more relevant than i would have liked. to me it sounded like trudging through the cold on the sidewalks of... i don't know, where are they from? minneapolis? again, not in a way i liked. maybe the timing was wrong for me. i put the album aside after trying a lot of times to love it, thinking it'd be more fair to everyone if i shelved it.

i bought Let It Be just recently and i basically felt the same way, but after listening to that a few times i decided to return to Tim because it had been a while. i put it on the car the other day when i was already so happy and having the best day and the weather was the most beautiful fall weather of all time and suddenly it just clicked. i felt content, but the music made me hungry. and this music i used to feel disconnected from, and almost unsettled by, suddenly felt like the most familiar thing i knew. like an essential part of me, like without it i'd have an imbalanced pH or something like that. i kind of wondered what was filling the replacements hole when i hadn't been listening to the replacements.

i think the best way to pinpoint the way it feels to me is this: there are things that are so real they chill you to the bone. you can take these things two different ways though, because somehow those same things can be comforting. to me there's already something so nostalgic about the replacements, even though they really haven't been a part of my life thus far. right now though, they feel like years past- like cold uncertain teenage years which were balanced by the comfort and certainty of the things you had, like a home a family and nothing that was actually worth worrying about. that didn't matter though, because you always wanted more. that's what those years were for. and now you look back and wish life were so simple. those are the good old days and this is youth, and the most sincere music i know. i think they're in my blood. i actually think they're in everyone's blood. if they're not it's a pH imbalance.

with all that said, this is pretty straightforward rock 'n' roll so ignore this. also i've been singing left of the dial in my head this whole time, it is a true beauty.