Welcome Back, 'Mats: The Replacements at Festival Pier

Before the energized, bang-up, tighter-than-they've-ever-been show they put on at Festival Pier at Penn's Landing on Saturday night, I had seen the Replacements six times (that I can recall) before.

There was a show at the Ripley on South Street on the Let It Be  tour in 1984 that was cut short halfway through, after which I ran into singer Paul Westerberg in the men's room, where he defended himself from charges of self sabotage and blamed neighborhood noise complaints.

In 1986, the Minneapolis quartet - whose original bassist Tommy Stinson, is on the the band's current Back By Unpopular Demand tour with Westerberg plus new members Dave Minehan (guitar) and Josh Freese (drums) - played Houston Hall on the Penn Campus. That same year, I caught the band in a disco in Manchester, England in a show (naturally) undermined by bizarre sound problems. (Top that, hard core Replacements geeks!) And I later saw them back home at the Chestnut Cabaret, opening for Tom Petty at the Mann and headlining at the Tower Theater.

The question is: Were any of those shows by this legendary band who were the never-commercially-successful lost soul leaders of the '80s rock and roll underground as good as the one they put on at Penn's Landing?

Probably not, though my memory might well be as hazy as that of the band, who were infamous for taking the stage in an inebriated state that is romanticized in retrospect but could be excruciating in reality. What's certain is that the 'Mats - short for 'Placemats, a nickname indicative of their endearing tendency towards self-deprecation, if not self abnegation - never sounded nearly as tight and forceful and together as they did during Saturday's  highly efficient 25 song set.

Which is not to say that it was an overly-polished, too-slick or the slightest-bit-boring affair. It's just that because they're older, wiser and no longer drunk, the band now has the capacity to screw around, without having the entire enterprise collapse. The freewheeling set pulled mostly from the remarkable run starting with the insolent 1980 debut Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash to 1986's Pleased To Meet Me and included covers of Sham 69's "Borstal Breakout" and Barbie Gaye's "My Boy Lollipop." The band also took requests from the audience, consistently mostly of middle aged men sharing an emotional moment. (Though it was my considerably younger friend Molly who best captured the mood of the crowd upon seeing a band that last played Philadelphia in 1991, when she texted: "I can't even believe I'm here and this is happening!"

The Replacements at Festival Pier (Christopher Hoffman)

The band's capacity to create chaos and then reel it back in was best exemplified when Westerberg, who had earlier name checked the '80s Philadelphia after hours club the Black Banana,  honor requests for both "Seen Your Video" and "Androgynous" by having two members play each song simultaneously. It sounded horrible. But whereas the old 'Mats would have left it at that, the new followed with "Seen" in it entirety, its raspy voiced expression of refusal of mainstream banality as applicable in 2015 as in 1984: "Seen you video / Your phony rock and roll / We don't want to know!"

Just as the Replacements were falling apart in the early '90s, another band that explored themes of frightening self-doubt called Nirvana were exploding with a ferocity that would tragically destroy them. In comparison, the Replacements were torch carriers who didn't even go down in flames but simply faded away.

But all those songs that were never added to alt-rock radio playlists - like the superbly sketched domestic drama "Little Mascara" ("All you ever wanted, was someone to take care of ya / All you're ever losing is a little mascara") sounded remarkably fresh under the stars at Penn's Landing. Raucous rock and roll about yearning for authentic human experience never goes out of style, and it helps enormously when an expert band is finally taking its music as seriously as it deserves to be. Welcome back, 'Mats. Long may you rock.

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