Jim Walsh (1)

All Over But the Shouting is a collection of old and new interviews, fan reminiscences, and magazine and newspaper articles that, woven together by journalist Jim Walsh, tell the story of the Replacements, the legendary Minneapolis quartet that was a cornerstone for grunge, low-fi, and alt-country and whose influence can still be heard in today's rock music. The book's structure, however, is its very weakness, as Walsh doesn't really add any new information about the band and long-time followers will experience a bit of deja vu as they read interviews culled from old sources. Furthermore, singer/songwriter/guitarist Paul Westerberg refused to be interviewed for the project, as did bassist Tommy Stinson. As a result, fans of the band, who are the book's primary audience, won't be satisfied.

Still, a book about the Replacements that fails to live up to expectations seems somehow appropriate for a band that in many ways was about failure and dissatisfaction. Walsh's preface to the book is one of the better attempts at explaining the paradoxical appeal of the band, which, as others have pointed out, could be the greatest rock and roll band in the world one night and the worst on the next. Some nights they could go to either extreme within the the same set or even song. They were that good...or is it that they were that bad?

While I'm delighted that someone has finally assembled a book about the Replacements, the definitive story has yet to be told. I would have liked more commentary on the songs and on the band's legacy--not just the legacy as described by fans, but by musicians who were influenced by the Replacements. More stories about the group's notorious hi-jinks would have provided for comic relief, too. Let's remember that one of the most appealing things about the band is that they were, to paraphrase Robert Christgau, both fun and funny. Some of the new interviews are insightful and interesting, but alas, there is too much re-tread of old material. The passages on the dissolution and death of Bob Stinson, though, including Walsh's own eulogy delivered at the funeral, are particularly heartbreaking. His firing cast a long shadow over the band, and the book makes it clear that nothing was ever quite the same after his exit. Slim Dunlap, too, does give a few fresh and sometimes unflattering insights into the latter days of the band. A word of advice to the journeyman musician: never join your daughter's favorite band.… (altro)