The Uptown Bar really seemed to hit its stride in that mid late to late 90’s, for a good deal of that time there were really only two “credible” bars to do alternative shows, there and the 7^th Street Entry. No offense to the Fine Line but they were still having their supper club period and it wasn’t a great fit for a band like Dumpster Juice, The 400 hadn’t had their revival yet, and Goofy’s and the Longhorn were long since gone.

I think it’s important to keep in perspective the whole idea of  “alternative” at the time it was big culture wise, but not like it is now; a time before your mom listened to NIN. Then it still had some cachet of being underground, you still had to work a little to find ironic t-shirts or the first Yo La Tengo record.  Unlike today where every mall has a Hot Topic –the Emo Superstore, and everything is accessible all the time, then scarcity was still a commodity. That era helped to make the Uptown an important clubhouse in the fraternal order of hipsterdom.

During that time I was the Director of A&P for the Twin/Tone Record Group, I liken it working for Sun or Chess records- but in the 60’s: still cool but past the era of earth shattering. We did make some phenomenal records, they where just lost in a sea of  other records. When the Replacements came out there were maybe2-3000 records released a year in the US, by the mid 90’s that number was more like a 100,000, Now with internet and digital releases that number is really incalculable.

We booked a lot of shows at both venues, but probably a bit fewer at the Uptown for one reason: Maggie the booker scarred the hell out of me.

Bar bookers tend to be a legendary breed, they always at the center of tales told by musicians and management in the wee hours: their kindness, their curmudgeony, and their pure unadulterated craziness.  It was a business run by characters and Maggie was most certainly a character. She wasn’t inhospitable or mean, rather imposing, I never had a call with her that I didn’t feel like I was wasting her time, even when we did shows that sold out the room. As intimidating as that was it’s also what made that room great. You could have Oasis there one night and Vinnie and the Stardüsters the next, and it didn’t seem incongruous- it just seemed like the Uptown.

My favorite stories of that place though are much less specific, just great slivers of memory: The plethora of Funseekers shows, almost all of which where Keith Patterson one of the greatest front men the Twin Towns have ever produced would at some point drop his pants- and it sort of made sense; granted the same action now would probably find him sued. The freighting and mildly dangerous backstage area. The ripped booths and cantankerous bartenders and sound system that was always les then ideal- it was if all the negatives added to a plus- a Minneapolis CBGB’s but cleaner and with French fries.

Some of my most important memories of the uptown don’t involve bands at all; rather breakfast there the day after. More meetings and planning were held there then I care to recall. It was Zine head quarters for both And She Said, and the Wrap Up. Mostly because of it’s proximity to Kinko’s (well that and the Bloody Mary’s) where we would sneak time on the computers and be made fun of by Peter Davis while he worked on the far bigger Your Flesh.

I negotiated more then one contract at those booths, and laid the ground for countless others, met girls, dated girls and broke up with girls all to a stompin’ 4/4 backbeat and the largest food ever envisioned by man and the most disgusting bathrooms short of a bus station in southern Alabama. In short it was a bar like any other bar, and unlike any other bar.

Once Maggie was gone, it just wasn’t the same. Not for me at least. It’s liked the spirit left the building and I found myself spending less and less time there. When I did go it was for reason of sentimentality, but what they say is true you can’t go home again. At least that home was more of a sense of time than a sense of place.

There is a new book out called “The Replacements: All Over But the Shouting: An Oral History” by Minneapolis super writer Jim Walsh, Its been making a lot of head lines here in my hometown, well because it’s the Replacements and it’s their hometown too. Here they are the stuff of legend, but I guess like all legends they didn’t start out that way.

What makes the Replacements difficult for me is that in the 90’s I worked for the label that launched them Twin/Tone or as it was know the TRG (Twin/Tone Records Group), during the Non-famous years post Suburbs, post Soul Asylum, post Babes in Toyland, and of course post Replacements. We did however have Lifter Puller, Brother Sun Sister Moon, Savage Aural Hotbed and some other bands that 90’s survivors might remember fondly I was the Director of Artist and Product so my task was to discover and develop bands. The Replacements were like this big drunken God that all of our bands would get measured against, and they would all suffer in the comparison.

Imagine Guns and Roses, biggest band in the world, Slash at the time worlds most famous guitar player quits and starts his own band “Slash’s Snake Pit” and you’re the Bass player. That is to some extent the definition of career suckatuide. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re a great bass player it will never be Guns and Roses. Now you don’t know this right away so you try, and then you try harder and you may get to be really good but it all gets lost not because of what you are, but because of what you are not.

The Replacements became sort of the gold standard that Mpls Indie Rock was Judged by well them and Hüsker Dü, and Soul Asylum and the Jayhawks …Ok there are a lot of bands that fall into that category but the Mats stand out a bit more today if for no other reason there are a number of books about them currently in the market.

I first heard about the Replacements from my friend Greg Holmka, he was the cool punk rock guy in Coon Rapids complete with fin Mohawk and Agnostic Front shirt, while I was token wanabe punk guy in carefully distressed clothes from Fridley. He started dating a girl I went to school with at Totino-Grace; she was very preppie and dated him mostly to annoy her parents. Greg had seen the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag (before Rollins ruined it.) and turned me on to the wonders and joys that were the Circle Jerks (ok that sounds really wrong), even the guy at Sun’s head shop knew him by name.

Greg became my Guru, I thought he could help leave my little private school life and discover the true punk rock me; he was the guy who showed me how to draw the perfect anarchy symbol on the left leg of my self ripped jeans, he showed me where to buy the DK button that would go on the right sight of my sharpie laden jean jacket, he showed me how to be a non conformist. Which in 1984 meant looking like every other angry at their parents fourteen year old. If only teenagers in youth movements could understand Irony, but then I suppose we never would have gotten EMO.

The entirety of my “Hardcore phase” was six months, it was a short tenure mostly because I got bored with a three chord vocabulary, and looking like part of a ragamuffin army, soon enough I was to leap on the much more embarrassing train of Goth, but for now I was still searching and destroying.<

One day while watching Repo Man for the sixtietrillionth time, Greg put on a cassette of a local punk band that he thought I would like and stop playing REM incessantly (which apparently could mess with my punk credibility), the tape was Let it Be, and the band the Replacements.

On first impression, I hated them. Not just dislike mind you, but truly hated them. The record seemed sloppy, and downright silly (Gary’s got a Boner?!). Perhaps had been recorded while being drunk- It was just so amateurish. The big question is were they Punk? This is the sort of things we debated for hours, like some sort of hipster student council, at the Zantigo’s downtown. I was confused, everyone called them Punk; they weren’t hardcore, these were songs and they weren’t political, Regan wasn’t mentioned once. They weren’t new wave; there was none of that polish and sheen. And they sounded nothing like the Clash, Siousxe or the Damned. That first listening experience left me with the very solid impression that they were the crappiest band in the world, and would never have the importance of a Jody Foster’s Army. I pushed the stop button on the tape, and put on a Die Kreuzen record.

Greg forgot the Replacements tape at my house; it sat in the stereo cabinet of our suburban Fridley home for about two months. By this point I had discovered the Velvet Underground, and would literally listen to nothing else. It was during this period of time that I had a very bad reaction to far too many caffeine pills, which in turn convinced me that I had been dosed with speed. Which lead to me doing many stupid things, not the least of which was running around the block in my boxer shorts singing “Run Run Run Jig a Jag a Jew-Scared to death of you, Say what you do”. My friend John who had convinced me to do this in the first place coaxed me inside thinking the best way to get me to stop running and jumping about was to put on some music –that wasn’t the Velvets. Of course he put in the Replacements cassette, this time however, I didn’t hear it as the mess it originally seemed to be. This time “I Will Dare” made sense. This time I too would dare. It was a golden moment, where the album was perfection. It was an epiffany that lasted until the pizza came, and was quietly forgotten in a post speed haze.

Greg took the tape back later that week, but wanting to try and recapture that moment I went to the Wax Museum at the Northtown Mall and bought the new Replacements record “Hootenanny”. I hated it. I didn’t play it again till 1989.

Eventually I did come to understand their genius; it took a long road trip to Chicago during which the driver played the entire catalog. It was the right context and I was now in possession of a much wider musical vocabulary; I was walking in the Skyway, after being colored impressed. Hell I even liked Gary’s got a Boner.

Sometimes my favorite music takes the longest to like. Maybe because it’s not about when it comes out rather when we are ready to hear it. In 1984 I just wasn’t ready, in 1994, well that was a different story.

During the interviews for the job at Twin/Tone the owner asked me what my favorite Twin/Tone golden age release had been, I responded with the Wallets. I never brought up the Replacements once during any of our conversations, when he asked me what I thought of them; I said they were my least favorite band, possibly of all time. Surprisingly they hired me.

Sacrificing bands to the shadow of long gone gods: pretty much how I spent the 90’s.
Not that we knew it at the time, we were just making records and playing shows and hoping to get some fans and make some scratch. It’s only after the game that we know why the play didn’t work, at the time you are far busy to see the game for what it is.

I am not suggesting that this is a conscious effort on the groups part, rather it’s an influence woven into the subconscious culture of the city. The bands today and even those of recent yesterdays don’t necessarily consider those bands of yore; but the press does. As does the rest of the machinery that makes up a scene: the stores, the clerks, the clubs, the bookers, the elder statesmen scenesters (read those who are over 30 and still go out); this is how the new talent gets measured and judged – will they add up? Sadly, the answer is almost always no. No band starts out ass a legend, but that is how they will always be compared. We will never have another Beatles, another Rolling Stones, a Hüsker, or Replacements, for the same reason we will never get another Einstein or Edison.

They got to the field first, and have the benefit of history washing away their sins, and reinforcing there deeds true or not.