For the Record Top 10: #5 (halfway there, folks!)

The Replacements Boink!! EP (1986)

Just as kids can’t believe their parents may once have been cool teenagers, I can barely fathom a time when I did not know and love The Replacements; however, before pulling this obscure cassette from the stacks at Tu Trax record shop, the fabled quartet was wholly unknown to me. Pre-Internet there were a precious few ways for smalltown-me to discover new bands: 1) friend recommendations and 2) cover art. Boink!! was a gamble. The band name had potential--who but a truly clever punk band would name themselves after something that substitutes for something else? The cover seemed promising--a sepia image of scrappy-looking nobodys loitering in a dank alley. Then there was the record label: Glass, Linburn House, London. That’s right, I thought The Replacements were a British band.  Popping the cassette into the deck of my car, I was hooked immediately. This band was exactly what I had hoped for: raw, melodic, restless, dirty. The bullhorn intro to “Kids Don’t Follow” made me love them even more: “Helloooo, this is the Minneapolis police, the party is over!” These guys weren’t Brits, they were Midwestern cousins from the Twin Cities.