Review: Replacements - back, and couldn't be better

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

There was a show at the Ripley on South Street on the 1984 Let It Be tour 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 noise complaints.

In 1986, the Minneapolis quartet - whose original bassist, Tommy Stinson, is on the 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 them in a disco in Manchester, England, in a show (naturally) undermined by bizarre sound problems. (Top that, hard-core Replacements geeks!) I later saw them 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 as good as the one at Penn's Landing?

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

Which is not to say it was overly polished or the slightest bit boring. It's just that because they're older, wiser, and no longer drunk, they now can screw around without the entire enterprise collapsing. The freewheeling set pulled mostly from the remarkable run starting with the insolent 1981 Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash to 1987's Pleased to Meet Me and included Sham 69's "Borstal Breakout" and Barbie Gaye's "My Boy Lollipop." The band also took audience requests, mostly from middle-aged men sharing an emotional moment.

The band's capacity to create chaos and reel it back in was best exemplified when Westerberg honored requests for "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 its entirety, its raspy-voiced refusal of mainstream banality as applicable in 2015 as in 1984: "Seen your video/Your phony rock 'n' roll/We don't want to know!"

Just as the band was falling apart in the early '90s, another one exploring themes of frightening self-doubt, Nirvana, was exploding with a ferocity that would self-destruct. In comparison, the Replacements were torch carriers who didn't even go down in flames.

But all those songs that were never added to alt-rock radio sounded remarkably fresh. Raucous rock and roll about yearning for authentic experience never goes out of style, and it helps when an expert band finally takes its music as seriously as it deserves. Welcome back, 'Mats. Long may you rock.