TRICKED OUT GARAGE ROCK?:

There must have been dozens upon dozens of Minneapolis punk bands in the late '70s and early '80s cutting scrappy demos in their basements. What was it about the Replacements that set them apart? Can one hear the deciding factors in Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash that turned these guys into the college radio/underground heroes they would eventually become? One obvious factor that fans will gladly bend your ear over is Paul Westerberg's songwriting ability. Anyone who has had their personal antennae tuned into "alternative" rock since the beginning of the '80s can tell you that his approach was unique, mining hooks meant for loftier musical ends that instead wound up getting fed through the punk filter. His lyrics could be both clever and juvenile at the same time, his voice snotty one moment and road-weary the next. As of 1981, Westerberg hadn't really found his songwriting voice yet but a handful of Sorry Ma's 18 tracks proved that he was already well on his way there. Throw in Bob Stinson's lead guitar, influenced by punk and progressive rock in near-equal measure, add the rhythm section of Bob's kid brother Tommy on bass and the multi-talented Chris Mars on drums and you have the Replacements, a band that canceled out its own talent with an unfortunate knack for self-sabotage.

But before diving into the album, we have to acknowledge "punk" as the lazy label that it is. This isn't to say that a band like the Replacements weren't totally befitting of the adjective, because there were times when they very much were. It's that the punk label obfuscated everything else at work here, even during Sorry Ma's fastest and loudest moments. It's true that Westerberg spends a lot of time shouting his vocals on this album, but his melodies and phrasing thereof hinted that his influences probably cast a wider net to include blues and rockabilly. By exploring this box set, you'll find that "Johnny's Gonna Die," the band's ode to Johnny Thunder's drug problems, began life as a hard-driving punk thrasher before calming down into the mellow piece it eventually became. So while songs like "Careless" and "Customer" pretty much fit everyone's definition of punk ― fast, loud, very few chords, lots of shouting, lasts no longer than 90 seconds ― calling Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash a punk record doesn't feel completely appropriate considering that it also features "Shiftless When Idle" and "Raised in the City."

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