Great Songs from My Favorite Year in Music: 1985, Part 26

The Replacements - "Bastards of Young" & "Here Comes a Regular"





(Album Release: October 1985)
Man, am I glad I'm a 'Mats fan. While I was in the midst of a British immersion, enjoying the likes of DM, the Cure, Smiths, Echo, and New Order, the Replacements released an album that would prove to me that America still had a stake in the game. Tim was the band's major label debut and one could argue that the songs on the record were more accessible, but the 'Mats (as their fans call them) seemed to rebel against their success at every turn. They were rock and roll bad boys, getting drunk, cursing on television, and making videos like the one for "Bastards" above, in which there is one static shot of a stereo speaker, a phonograph, and a milk crate. A figure picks up the sleeve for the album in the blink of an eye, wiping off the cigarette butts, as if to spit in the face of product placement and marketing. "Bastards of Young" is an anthem for not just my generation, but for every new younger generation that follows. Just as the youth in the song belong to no one, the song is equally sans ownership. It belongs to whomever might embrace the ideas behind it. "Here Comes a Regular" showed Paul Westerberg's range, as he emulated his idol, Big Star's Alex Chilton, in showing that he could write acoustic ballads just as well as anthemic rebellious rock tracks. That both of these are on the same album, bookends of the second side of the record, is remarkable. "Here Comes a Regular" is the yang to "Bastard's" yin. While "Bastards of Young" is a call to arms, "Here Comes a Regular" is a surrender. Instead of the young man who leaves home for new adventures, it provides the perspective of the young man who just can't leave his hometown, still working the same dead-end blue collar job, and still drinking at the same bar with all of his school buddies. Westerberg captures an atmosphere in this song-story that is as reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen as the music is reminiscent of Bob Dylan. Yeah, it's that good. There are very few bands that could pull off this kind of depth, but Paul Westerberg is no ordinary songwriter.

p.s. The "Bastards of Young" video directs viewers to YouTube because they don't allow embedding on this one, but watch out, there's an ad for an ultra-right wing, Tea Party-like group that is so antithetical to the Replacements, that this type of ad-matching should be a crime.