Esquire's Dave Holmes reports that Vice Presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine is a fan of the Replacements' 1984 masterpiece Let It Be. I have often felt that the Senator takes the safe, central, crowd pleasing option, but we're in tight agreement here.
And I'm right on board with Holmes' assessment of the album as well. I'll expand on his point that a Replacements fan not only "understands the concerns of the American middle class", but those below as well. I grew up middle class in a largely working class town (though my dad was a working class kid made good), and everything here is familiar. This was a city where that had a record store which would close for two days whenever the Replacements played in Boston or Albany.
Often bluntly categorized as "punk", the music covers a wide swath of post-1970 rock stylings (there's even a Kiss cover fergawdsakes). Sixteen Blue is a beautiful song about male adolescent awkwardness that has a sensitivity and anguished roar that conveys the roaring anguish the character feels about his sensitivities. The next song is Gary's Got A Boner, which covers the exact same subject matter with the same level of subtlety and sensitivity, musically and lyrically, that the title suggests.
No comments:
Post a Comment