RUINS OF CHILDHOOD is an excavation and recontextualisation of Tim’s time spent in the 20th Century.

Originally published March 22nd, 2019.

Prior to college, “DON’T TELL A SOUL” was my favorite Replacements album. From it came the song I thought most defined me in that mid-teens moment: “I’ll Be You” (which is odd , given its a song about swapping personas). And, while their career had spanned the near entirety of the ‘1980s, it was also the only Replacements album I knew.

I had obtained it in the most affordable fashion an 11th grader could, via a single penny combined with the return postage on each unwanted copy of The Escape Club’s “DOLLARS AND SEX. “DON’T TELL A SOUL’s” track listing included “I’ll Be You,” a single that sang to me with its lyrical broadcast of “If it's a temporary lull, why am I bored right outta my skull?” That aimlessness struck me as its intended target and this already single Stinsoned band became my new found fave, edging out the stiff competition of the California Raisins.

But once i knew this album, where was I to go? Nothing was streaming yet because no one had the internet (well … Andrew McCarthy managed to email that headshot in Pretty In Pink but that seemed like a sort of industrial light and magic). All i had was a band name, which I could take two towns over to the (less so) local Strawberries to search a sea of long-boxes, starting with RATT and ending just after REO Speedwagon. There wasn’t even a plastic placard to designate where their discography once lay. The East Brook Mall had eroded my hope of finding more music by The Replacements.

So I applied to Emerson College figuring they must have used record stores in Boston. And so, as I arrived at college, I made it my goal, to scour the streets of Kenmore, Harvard, Coolidge and Allston in hopes of unearthing ... whatever this band had done before doing everything i knew them for.

But, in 1993, this was not a fruitful quest. There wasn’t any of the Replacements to really be found. The corporate chains of Newbury comics and Tower Records were to busy making shelf space for Toad The Wet Sprocket. And any true fan of the Mats (which I’ve never called them) would want to hold onto their favorite albums., so why would they ever sell then into the servitude of a Second hand CD shop. My quest for a second album hit a slump so I spent the Fall of my Freshhman year pretending to be a Sex Pistols fan.

Until that final week of finals.

I should have been strapped to my desk reviewing whatever a creative writing major was supposed to be studying. Instead, I was taking my work study allotment out to the dirtiest steps of Kenmore Square and into the compact confines of PLANET RECORDS, a store big enough for three thousand used discs and two music fans to peruse them. I ran my finger though their card-marked alphabet, the same way I often did, anticipating a yawning chasm within the “R”s.”

But on this particular day of not studying … I found a disc wedged in there. One whose album art I did not recognize. That I did not know. That I had never seen before. And that’s with flipping though this particular part of this particular bin on a weekly basis, like Sisophys bullding his perfect mix tape. A batered, blueish album pricked my fingers with a 12 dollar price stamp. The case was cracked. The insert was bent. But the title still resonated.

It was a copy of SORRY MA, FORGOT TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH … apparently the very first release by The Replacements. That wasn’t a fact I knew then, but who effin’ cared? I had unearthed an unearthly listing of 16 never before heard (by me) tracks. This was an album by my favorite band. And, if it survied my gingerly-handed process of passing off the cash ... it would double the discography in my dorm room.

This is what I had been hunting for. This was my snape, my grail, my Moby Dick analogy that nobody cared about. This was the buliding of a collection and the introduction to an oeuvre that, as if a curtain had pulled asidse, I was soon able to amass.

Coming in hot to that summer, I was inpsired by the fact that a high school friend now worked at Strawberries. She stocked the shelves, selected what to listen to and related the fact that, if it wasn’t in their bins, they could order it for you. And not like some BMG catalog too lousy with Extreme and Wilson Phillips. No, they could do a War Games-esque search of band titles and pull up what albums they had released. And, with the third level mage gesture from their bag of holding, they would call to the coroporate shipping gods of Twin Tone and have delivered, to their very mall back entrance, a pristine and in no way moldy copy of their complete works

By the fall of ‘94 I was sure that The Replacements were the greatest band i could have ever heard. They got me, sang to me, sang about me. They were relatable in every turn of their often indecipherable phrases. Still, it would be two more semesters before I managed the one/two punch of hearing “Left Of The Dial” and “Answering Machine” of their respective albums. So, in a way, it was the summer of 1995 that transmogrified me and my hairstyle into a wannabe avatar of Paul Westerberg. Still, when I think of my fandom for The Replacements, I think back to that inital walk back from purchasing a used copy of SORRY MA FORGET TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH in hand. It was surprisingly humid and I was overdressed in my favorite attire of a overcoat.

Returning to the dorm with that disc in hand, I edged my way into a friend’s room just so I could have someone validate its existence. I slid the disc into Joe Francazio’s CD player and, as I intruded on his end-of-the-year study space, heard the sloppier, snottier mindset of what I had previously known as a more polished act. And I embraced its it, with sweaty arms and total disregard for the intention of collegiate pursuits.

I had found the perfect soundtrack for my next 30 years of passionate disenchantment.

-sigh-

Tim