No Replacement for Paul Westerberg

The library branch I frequented as a young kid in Minneapolis shared a corner with the epicenter of a booming popular culture. I tried to imitate the kids on the corner with purple hair dye and ragged clothes, but I was born too late to truly be one of them. I listened to Tiffany. I was too late for their look, and I was too late for their music. In the 1980s Minneapolis thrived on alternative, do-it-yourself bands, but by the time I came of age, these bands had broken up, the members had sobered up, and the corner had cleaned up. In other words, growing up in Minneapolis, I was in the right place at the wrong time. What the kids on the corner knew then, I would not know for another ten years--how to get drunk and listen to the Replacements.

Paul Westerberg, the Replacements' ringleader, played at the Warsaw in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, last Monday night, the first of three engagements in New York. It's appropriate that he played Brooklyn's Polish district before he played Manhattan because its location, hovering just on the edge of hugeness, symbolizes Westerberg's place in musical history. Though at the fore of the emerging alternative scene two decades ago, the Replacements never quite achieved the popular recognition they deserved. After a long absence from the stage, Paul Westerberg is returning to the spotlight (to stage, some say, an Alex Chilton-like comeback) with his Come Feel Me Tremble tour.

This show was supposed to promote Westerberg's new record, Stereo, released by Vagrant Records in April. Instead, it turned into a poignant retrospective on twenty years of songwriting. Westerberg played a set that flowed so beautifully between songs old and new that it might be called a song cycle for the way the songs were bound together by poetic and musical themes--a Romantic-era technique Westerberg seems to have mastered. That's not to say that his songwriting hasn't developed over the years. But a core element of epiphany, rising out of deep-seated sadness, characterizes all his music. He also uses puns from his old lyrics as the themes for his new ones, a true lesson in self-deprecation. Just compare "Happytown" from 1990's All Shook Down, in which "the plan was to set the world on its ear," with the track off Stereo in which "we may well be the ones / To set this world on its ear / We may well be the ones / Why the hell else are we here?" This time around, the words are used toward much more brooding and defeated ends.

A great song can be broken down to just a man and his guitar and still retain its essence. Sometimes this simplification is even an improvement. Backed by living-room decor instead of a band, Westerberg proved last week that his songs have not only withstood the test of time but in some cases have a never-before-heard depth. To hear a lone man sing "Unsatisfied" evokes more desperation and hopelessness and frustration than does the Replacements' version, which despite the lyrics is rather empowering. On the other hand, "Can't Hardly Wait" was mesmerizing for the fullness of sound that this one-man band produced and the energy that both he and the audience exuded. Every song, including one well-chosen John Prine cover, not only withstood the simplicity of the solo setup but thrived on it.

The most striking of the new songs was "Let the Bad Times Roll," which plays a characteristic pun on The Cars' hit. As Westerberg sang, the stage lights dimmed to a hazy blue. At that point the lyrics, the legacy of the man who was singing them, the swaying crowd, and the serenely lit space convened and pulled a curtain on the past. The song bids farewell to the ë80s, when the good times were indeed rolling, and when rock 'n' roll, the American dream, and the good life were still worth buying into. Westerberg was leading a movement in American music, and everyone else was going along with him. This song's cynicism is therefore very personal, but it is all the more potent for its cultural and political implications in today's mismanaged and war-prone America.

I will never really get what happened in Minneapolis music while I was growing up there. Although at some point I fancied myself some kind of punk, my timing was all wrong. I do, however, understand my hometown hero emerging from his basement recording studio, taking the stage in Brooklyn, and blowing my mind. In other words: right place, right time.