Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Replacements: Footnotes

I'm often fascinated by uber-footnotes in history; either in pictures (eg. who's the woman in the picture they always show kneeling over the body at Kent State?) or otherwise (eg Raymond Jones - to quote Wikipedia: The Beatles had recorded the 'My Bonnie' single with Tony Sheridan in Germany...Epstein's version of the story was that a customer—Raymond Jones—walked into the NEMS shop and asked Epstein for the "My Bonnie" single, which made Epstein curious about the group.") Who are these people? Has anyone ever interviewed them? That should be a whole book, interviews with these footnote people. There's millions of 'em. - SEE XMASTIME FOOTNOTES HERE.
Part of The Replacements lore is how Paul Westerberg became the singer, as it's been told 1000000 times:
“One day a friend asked me if I wanted to go hear a band play,” he says. “We pull up, and it’s that house on 36th and Grand. I walked in very casual and didn’t tell them that I had been listening to them. I was immediately struck by Tommy. His amp was bigger than him.”

The band was calling itself Dogbreath and featured 12-year-old Tommy Stinson on bass, his 19-year-old half-brother Bob on guitar and 18-year-old Chris Mars on drums. By the time Westerberg left the Stinson house, he was officially a member of Dogbreath.


The guys in Dogbreath asked Westerberg if he knew any singers, so for the next rehearsal he brought along Oat’s vocalist. Dogbreath liked him fine, but Westerberg had other ideas.

“I pulled him aside afterwards and told him that I liked his singing, but the other guys weren’t into it,” says Westerberg. “I told them he wasn’t into it and I would sing until we found somebody else.”
Who the hell was that guy?

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