'Mats book is worth shouting about

Jim Walsh's oral history is uniquely, proudly localized.

By Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune

Last update: November 9, 2007 - 4:23 PM

As appropriate as the surviving Replacements' continued refusal to reunite on stage, St. Paul-based Voyageur Press deserved to publish the first-of-its-kind tome on the world's most inappropriate rock legends instead of some big New York publishing company. Not that the 'Mats ever sold enough to have the big New York publishers frothing at the mouth.

"All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History" is uniquely, proudly the story of the Minneapolis band from the vantage point of the Minneapolis scene, and not much else. It lacks many of the sordid road stories and troubled music-biz tales dutifully recounted in Michael Azerrad's great '80s indie-rock collage "Our Band Could Be Your Life." But that almost seems the point.

Most of the people quoted in this 267-page book weren't hanging around backstage when the Mats stumbled onto "Saturday Night Live" or signed with Warner Bros. They were hanging around the block long before all that. These are 7th Street Entry stories, not Fifth Avenue. Like the one about guitarist Bob Stinson climbing into a garbage can at the Entry and stumbling out of it in his birthday suit.

Walsh, the former Pioneer Press and City Pages writer who's now an online columnist and singer/songwriter, remains one of the best-liked figures in the Twin Cities music scene. (Full disclosure: I consider him a friend, too.)

Being popular can be antithetical to being a critic, and it causes some problems here. Walsh spends too much of the book quoting his friends and family members. (One begins, "I never met Paul Westerberg, but. ... ")

Walsh's likability got him in with the Mats in the first place, though -- an invaluable asset for writing about a band that oozed mistrust. Aside from a bit contributed by drummer Chris Mars, the band members did not participate in this book. Neither did two other eye-of-the-storm sources, road-crew guys Bill Sullivan and Bill Carton. Too bad, but oh, well.

In their place, Walsh includes a stockpile of good quotes from past interviews with the band. Their datedness might even be an asset -- less cynical and maybe more accurate. He also had his own gold mine of memories, including a firsthand account of their first gig.

The best parts, though, are assorted new insights from other principal players including Peter Jesperson, the band's original manager, and Slim Dunlap, Stinson's replacement, whose levelheadedness made him an unlikely Replacement but is a winning trait here. With their help, the book turned out just as Walsh described Stinson in his eulogy of the guitarist: Funny, intense, sad and joyful.

Chris Riemenschneider • 612-673-4658

Chris Riemenschneider • chrisr@startribune.com