The Replacements: Pleased to Meet Me

"Well you wish upon a star, that turns into a plane..."

My cat Pecan is curled up in the only spot of sunshine passing through our bedroom curtains this morning. Her purring rumbles over the stereo. I’m listening to The Replacements and just watching my roly-poly little hoagie flex and tuck in a motion matching her purr-cadence, I am struck with how much I love this cat. From the moment she followed me around a Louisville cat cafe, to her falling asleep in my office as I write and work, I cannot imagine my life without her. 

Which is why it’s so hard to write about. 

I was so afraid to write about music for a long time because I love it so much. I see it as being wholly responsible for so much of who I am and how I see the world (and how I create), that the debt to my favorite artists is insurmountable. Lionized, canonized, and on a pedestal, I would be happy to bend an ear all day at a record store, cafe, or grocery store, telling you about The Replacements, but when allowed to write about them… a different story. 

I used to joke with my writer friends that maybe if I’d idolized more popular artists I would be more successful as a poet/writer/artist/raconteur, but I found myself locked into the gaze and gravity of Replacements albums and Paul Westerberg’s zag to the world’s zig. It was more of a punchline than truth until it started feeling that way.

There comes a point where you start aligning yourself with the slacker/beautiful loser aesthetic because it feels insulating. When “born to lose” as a pose stops softening blows to the ego and starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, you eventually begin to risk less and less until you are simultaneously eggshell vulnerable and gradually accepting regret over change--which is antithetical to those you idolize in the first place. Much like any hero worship, the deeper the identification, the further away you get from having to figure your own shit out. That also includes understanding the nature of your love for what you love.

I remember going to Wall to Wall Sound & Video at the Susquehanna Mall with my high school girlfriend. It wasn’t that long after discovering my love of the Replacements and realizing that I was late to the party, that the band had broken up a few years ago. It was the Sunday after Paul Westerberg made his return from SNL exile, to play a song off 14 Songs and the Replacement’s’ classic “Can’t Hardly Wait.” I persuaded my girlfriend to buy Pleased to Meet Me while I bought Alice in Chains Jar of Flies. I think she had her heart set on the Into the Woods soundtrack (because she was in the high school play) but I was pretty “charming” (more likely annoying). As soon as she cracked the cellophane and popped the CD into the car player, I knew I had made a mistake… I NEEDED that album and set on convincing her how much more amazing Jar of Flies was and that I would be happy trading down for this lowly unknown band that I had mistakenly convinced her she should buy. 

It’s some A-level assholery, but I was a kid and a burgeoning music junkie. Honestly, I don’t think she cared about either CD. 

Until recently, I had forgotten the reason it spoke to me. The Replacements and music of their ilk (Big Star, Teenage Fanclub, Husker Du, Nick Drake, Love, Dexys, New York Dolls, Rites of Spring) were all drawing lines in the sand, but not in the divisive us vs. them way. They were making clear the boundaries and barriers of city limits…and, more importantly, crossing these lay lines was possible. 

The borders were only as real as we allowed them to be, and somewhere in the coded politics of the heart, these albums spoke to modes and methods for escape. To reach that terminal velocity meant having heart and faith in who you were and the potential set to blossom within. No one else gets to see those moments, hell, most are too busy with the world they’re spinning in to stop long enough to water and tend these self-stirred flowers. It’s not just imagination, it’s not just dreaming, it’s more tangible than just those aspirations. 

So often the act of doing takes precedence over reflection. You continue to do and create and go until all of the booster rockets have been drained and dropped off, unbeknownst to you. Then, you’re dead-deep into a trajectory without a destination. The going had got you there, “Alex Chilton,” “Valentine,” “Can’t Hardly Wait” pounding louder and louder until you realize you’ve just been propelled into adulthood, homeownership, and being a caring spouse and now cat daddy. 

Not bad things, mind you, and more importantly came the reality that love for a band or art needed to manifest into much more real love, like the love for self, family, and well, cats.

The Replacements inspired escape at first, but the real lesson in this love has become one of resilience. 

For me, “Can’t Hardly Wait” feels like the validation of perseverance… It’s the victory lap, the pause to reflect on winning a battle but knowing that life’s campaign rages on. 

I didn’t think about it much until I was thinking about all my favorite record stores. With a handful of exceptions, many of my favorite stores have made a life for their owners and staff out of weathering storm after storm. When the idea of opening a store revolving around a perceived dead medium (“Music’s free now right?”), these stores dug in, determined to stay afloat with only their convictions and commitment to vinyl, tapes, and CDs and a faith that there were those equally in love with music — that customer and shop were not star-crossed connections but part of a thriving, passionate, community and ecosystem. 

All that love cannot be contained, and at its most indescribable, it finds us wandering the racks of our favorite record store. 

When the impossible happened in 2014 and I saw The Replacements headline RiotFest, it would have been easy to see it as something less than sincere. The cashing in on nostalgia that one can argue a record store deals in, but it’s more than that--it has to be--and even if I knew the motives behind Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg reuniting (without Chris Mars and the late Bob Stinson or Slim Dunlap for that matter), it doesn’t matter. The intentionality of an artist ends where the audience begins. It’s why someone can see the optimism in a song like “The Ledge” (which is supposedly about suicide) or Pitchfork can spend 1500 words deconstructing Please to Meet Me’s take of “Can’t Hardly Wait” as being lesser compared to the Tim outtake of the same said track featuring Bob Stinson’s fills and guitar solos. 

For me, “Can’t Hardly Wait” feels like the validation of perseverance. Hearing it now, as the last song of Please to Meet Me, the song has moved past the anticipatory excitement of potential (as it struck teenage me driving home from the mall) into the realm of hard-won, world-weary resilience. It’s the victory lap, the pause to reflect on winning a battle but knowing that life’s campaign rages on. 

Last week I was talking with Blair and Heidi from Siren Records. Heidi was trying to pin down a starting point for the record store. Somewhere in the conversation, 1986 came up as a zero point for the store. It was a year before Pleased to Meet Me was recorded in Memphis. We are two years away from Siren turning 40. It has already survived and pressed on over five different decades and just experienced its best and busiest Record Store Day ever (the annual event started in 2007). There was a lull in the conversation and the three of us took in that thought. It made me think of hearing Paul Westerberg play on SNL all those years ago, and at the crescendo of “Can’t Hardly Wait” the horns swell with the din of drums and guitars, then at its peak, silence. In that break and breath, Paul chuckles with a mix of victory and bemusement at it all. Forget the beautiful loser tag, that string is cut in that suspended silence, replaced with the validation of persistence and faith. 

“You’re obviously invited to the big party in ’26,” Heidi says. Of course, all I could do was laugh and say…well you already know what I said next.