Replacements' Let It Be by Meloy Colin

Author:Meloy, Colin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Continuum International Publishing
Published: 2009-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

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On my insistence, my mother caved in and bought a TV with cable. Our days of borrowing the neighbor’s black and white television to catch such major network events as V and Shogun were at an end. Most importantly, we now had MTV. I braved the nattering of my mother to stay up well past my bedtime to watch 120 Minutes at 11:00 on Sunday nights. For two hours, the programmers at MTV played videos exclusively by the bands that were dominating the college rock charts: the Cure, Depeche Mode, the Smiths and XTC. During the week, I would try to catch Post Modern MTV, the younger sibling of 120 Minutes at its thirty minute length, but would often miss it because of its brevity. It wasn’t long before it disappeared from the programming schedule, leaving the behemoth 120 Minutes as the only remaining bastion of College Rock on MTV. I watched the show intently, hoping that each video would be from one of my new favorite bands. I found that even among this, the mainstream representation of the fringe, the Replacements were still on the margin. After seeing the video for “The Ledge,” the lead single off of Pleased to Meet Me, I understood why: shot in stark, uncompromising black and white, the video was comprised of one shot: the various shoed feet of each of the Replacements, while the band members to whom they belonged sat on a couch. For a song that was obviously about teenage suicide, it was a pretty bizarre approach to video-making. In relation to everything else on MTV, it was a complete outcast. By 1988, video budgets were expanding exponentially, and even the more obscure acts, those who peddled their videographies to 120 Minutes, shot big and pushed for flashy production in their videos. “Even though we’ve signed to a major label,” the Replacements’ video said, “we still don’t give a shit.”

On Let It Be, the song “Seen Yer Video” lays out the Replacements’ approach to mainstream promotion in its one lyric: “Seen yer video / That phony rock and roll / We don’t wanna know.” I understood then: to make any other sort of video would be nothing short of hypocrisy.

Little did I know, it would be only a year before the Replacements would abandon much of their anti-authoritarianism in favor of a slicker, more industry-friendly image. Pleased to Meet Me, itself edging closer to the mainstream accessibility they had eschewed on earlier records, would be followed by the great act-cleaner-upper, Don’t Tell a Soul. No sooner had this record hit the Sam Goodys of America than Paul Westerberg was being interviewed in Spin, talking about how they’d given up drinking, that they wanted to be a decent band, dammit. Whereas the intention was right—a thousand concert promoters across greater North America must have sighed in relief—the essence of the band seemed to dissolve with this concession. I had a poster on my wall—a color print-out my uncle had sent me—with a picture of a heavy-lidded Paul Westerberg, staring into the camera.

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