Trouble Boys

I'm a huge fan of The Replacements, so I was predisposed to like Bob Mehr's Trouble Boys (2016), and it was entertaining and informative. I started getting into The Replacements in 86, I believe. I can remember when Pleased To Meet Me came out and was in constant rotation among my friends. I remember reading about the legendary 86 shows with The Young Fresh Fellows opening, but I wouldn't see them live until their final tour for All Shook Down in 1991. The set list for the paramount show is available online. I also remember going to see Paul Westerberg solo at RCKANDY in Seattle a few years alter. I remember listening to the Chris Mars solo album and liking it-I also liked Tommy Stinson's band Bash and Pop and saw them live as well. It's funny that The Replacements were so well known for their unpredictable sets live, by the time I saw them they were pretty rigid in their sets when I saw them. bash in Pop, in particular played the songs in order from the album from start to finish without any banter, covers or anything. Like many of the rock and roll greats (Big Star, The Velvet Underground, Iggy Pop, The New York Dolls, etc), they were too ahead of their time and missed their opportunity to be huge and it seem as if they  everything possible to keep themselves from attaining success. It's difficult to read about how they bit the hand that fed them-insulting people who could help them, burning their daily per diem, sabotaging big shows, getting blind drunk and tearing shit apart, etc. The stories Mehr tells are down right insufferable-if I had met them in those days would I be still such a fan? It's hard to say. Biographies kind of suck in that all the dirty linen gets aired. But as the record bin I saw in Tower Records in the early 90s in the Tower Records in the U-District proclaimed: "The Replacements make life worth living."