The Replacements: Favorite Thing
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In '84, I had just finished the eigth grade and was looking forward to high school... As with every summer between 1982 and 1988, I spent a week in Minneapolis, staying with my brother. I'd get to see what living in a cool place was like (as opposed to the hick-ville town I was growing up in.) Each summer he'd choose a week for me to visit when there was a good concert to go see. The summer of 1984 was a two-fer, seeing Rush on the Grace Under Pressure tour and the opening show of the Born In The USA tour by The Boss.
Actually, I'd seen Bruce Springsteen one other time before the opening date... the day before! The close-ups for the "Dancing In The Dark" video (featuring Courtney Cox; directed by Brian DiPalma) were filmed at the St. Paul Civic Center that day. Seventeen takes. The next night, during the show, they filmed it an additional two times. And if you know when to look, and don't blink, you can see me all blurry for about 1/2 a second a couple of times. Whoo!
After the filming was done, Bruce and the band played a mini-set for about an hour. There were only about 150 of us extras there, and it was (do I even need to say it?) amazing!
So why am I not featuring a track from Born In The USA? Well, I only have a cassette copy (an autographed cassette copy, mind you), with no easy way to get it to my hard drive right now. So I'm going with a tune from another great album from that year. Let It Be may not have sold a bazillion copies, and launched The Replacements into the Stratosphere, but dammit! it should have.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
1984: Favorite Thing
Posted by Anonymous at 1:30 PM
Labels: 1984, The Replacements
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3 comments:
Matt,
From where I sit, I think you picked the right album. I loved both records at the time, but The Replacements album stuck with me a lot longer. It's a timeless classic (just my opinion).
They've been getting a fair amount of publicity lately with the reissue of their albums, but more love for the 'Mats is always a good thing.
Paul
P.S. I was going to post a song from this album myself, but now you've saved me the trouble! :) (I've got a bit of blogger burnout going on right now).
As I've mentioned earlier, I was but 11 in the year in question -- as such, my tastes ran more towards rockwell than the stuff I would later discover had been lurking under the MTV powerpop all along.
But since I had already covered a song from Born in the USA for our 2:42 theme, I was GOING to post either something from the Smiths, or something from the Replacements next...
Glad to have my instincts reinforced: this WAS the good stuff. Lucky there's plenty more happening in other genre forms during the year-in-question.
One of the greatest songs on one of the greatest albums by one of the greatest bands ever. Grand Champeen does an awesome cover of this which I'll post sometime in the future ... when I'm not too fat and lazy to find it.
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