Trouble Boys

 Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements by Bob Mehr is an exhaustive, and exhausting, account of a hard-living eighties band. I am just now getting into the Replacements, and reading this provided more than enough context for their music. Mehr is a clear and competent writer, and the book was long but went quickly: I read it in class alongside my freshmen. The Replacements almost made it big, and that brush with fame, thwarted by their drunken self-sabotage, provided enough tension to maintain reading momentum. The band members spent the entire 1980's inebriated. They never graduated high school, never got driver's licenses, never had a radio hit. What they did was rock. They flared up and burned out like a Neil Young cliché. I have become a big fan of their music, driven in part by a new reissue of Tim and Trouble Boys. While musically they have some limitations--it's not hard to see why mainstream radio didn't acquiesce to their humor and primitivity--they are very good on their own terms. By my reckoning, the Replacements are the best bar band of all time.