"For a time, the world's best rock 'n' roll band"?

Author and music critic Jim Walsh has just published The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting, based on his intimate knowledge of the legendary south Minneapolis band and the thriving Minneapolis music scene of the 1980s. Walsh has already been praised by Publishers Weekly for writing a “loving, appropriately ramshackle tribute” to the Mats, detailing such infamous episodes as Paul Westerberg smashing copies of Hootenanny in local record store and the band’s “triumphant disaster” on Saturday Night Live. Trouser Press called the Replacements “for a time, the world’s best rock ‘n’ roll band.”

As a former disc jockey for a college radio station who played the Replacements many times over the years, I look forward to Walsh’s book. It should be a fascinating read. After all, what do fans ask the most of R.E.M.’s Peter Buck? “You played on [Replacements] 'I will Dare.' What was that like?” “More people bring that up to me than anything else,” he said.

Speaking of Peter Buck, Cable & Tweed have posted an old photo of him back in his days as a clerk at Wuxtry Records. Note the comics Conan the Barbarian and the first issue of Howard the Duck in the background.