THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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Gen X in the suburbs wasn't an economic casualty. If anything, they had it slightly better than kids today in some aspects because inequality wasn't pinching the middle class so hard. There's 3 main reasons why that generation was "lost":

1. Absentee parents. Disengaged, emotionally distant authority figures who offered no encouragement.
2. Lack of youth activities. When the kids came home from school to an empty house, there was no supervised constructive activities for them to do. And no transportation outside of where they could ride a bike to get to do stuff with their friends.
3. Inormation isolation. Pre- cable TV, obviously pre- Internet. Also before mail-order was much of a thing. So outside the cities the kids were culturally shut out of all access to stimulating media: good record stores, range of any radio stations that played good music (unless you were lucky enough to live near a college campus), video games and 8-bit home computers, cool clothing, access to alternative magazines, and often even music stores that catered to anything beyond supplying the high school band with flutes and tubas. And the places that did exist required Mom to drive you there, meaning you were on-the-clock to get in and out. Couple that with the physical isolation from other kids, and the sensory deficit became stark.


With all 3 building off each other to build really resentful, emotionally-stunted teens who filled the vacuum with self-medication, law-breaking, and aversion to achievement because "slacker" was a protest against parents who cared more about their work than their really lonely kids who just wanted SOMEBODY to talk to. It's much the same alienation as the big city kids faced, with slightly different way of getting there. The city punks had less money, came from possibly more broken homes...but also had more cultural mobility in terms of places they could get on foot/city bus to see their friends, hear new music and read some zines (even if that just means loitering in the record store), get to a club to see their peers play, and so on. The same vices came into play, but the type of hopelessness was different. In the suburbs, marked more by loneliness and isolation...in the cities, marked more by chafing against the claustrophobia.


Neither is "better" than the other. But the latchkey kids were much, much more underreported a class of Gen X casualties because they were in flyover country and simply not seen out-and-about (not even by their own parents). You can start to quantify the effect today by seeing how worse off the Midwest is vs. the coasts...that whole middle generation just doesn't exist in large numbers as participating members of society between the cranky old Boomers and clueless Millennials. It's just gone, or gone into hiding because they never reached functional adulthood. It explains a lot of the brain drain showing itself in America today.



And yes, they really did call them "latchkey" kids. My elementary school had an official "latchkey" program, where all the kids who didn't have any unlocked doors to go home to because their parents were still at work got hoarded onto a bus and dumped off at the Boys' Club downtown to basically stand there in a dilapidated gym for 2-1/2 hours. I used to watch them board like they were off to Dachau every day when I was in line for the "normals" school bus. Some surly old (drunk) WWII vets would sternly watch and periodically yell at them, set a couple basketballs on the court and pens/pencils on desks, and expect the masses to fend for themselves. Usually that entailed the jocks prying off into one "serious" basketball game closed to outside auditions, bullies taking another few basketballs and playing "involuntary dodgeball" with the heads and/or crotches of the nerds and awkward kids, and carving ones intitials into the table with the writing implements. It was adult-sanctioned Lord of the Flies 5 afternoons a week. Not coincidentally, after a few years of this practice the lead floated to the bottom and the kids in the latchkey program almost universally became the troublemakers, outcasts, and academic failures regardless of whether they were bright and well-adjusted when they started.

And this practice was still going on in my podunk 'burb-with-a-gang-problem by 1986. More than a decade after the accrued damage to that generation was plain as day. It wasn't until like '88 or '89 when I was in 5th/6th grade that the school system reformed this barbaric practice and replaced the bus to Dachau with more structured, less prison-like after-school activities and stopped treating kids who had working parents like they were defective by default.

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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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Apropos to the above discussion. . .

[v][/v]

"Psychopharmacology", from Coachella Weekend 1.

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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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My point is it makes no difference if you are rich or poor. Great rock n' roll comes from the soul. You can come from a very wealthy background and still make rock n' roll singing from the gutter. Rich kids are just as likely and probably more likely to have uncaring parents. It comes down to the individual and a desire. London and New York oh sure they were privileged with a rock n' roll heritage but no Ramones attitude no Replacements. A lot of rock n' roll bands have come and gone by '79 the Matts invented nothing but played with a passion, joy and abandon that will forever keep them a place in my heart.

It's never about where you're from but where you're at that counts.

The latchkey kids a term coined by that famous NBC Documentary in 1944 yeah well that was just a name that fitted with the life of the lonely child. I spent lots of my childhood alone I had a key hanging around my neck. Mum out at work all day and stepfather a long distance lorry driver not home for days on end. Was I poor no was I disadvantaged no was I lonely no I was a kid and I could always find mischief to keep me company.

Were The Replacements any worse of as kids than the Sex Pistols? Fuck knows and I don't really wish to analyse too much. Did Paul Westerberg come home and find his mum smacked out her head on heroin like Sid did his? Her not being there at all or her being there but not really there because she was on drugs, what's worse I don't know it wasn't me in that situation. Were the Pistols lucky to be in London at the right time probably but John and Sid lived in squats John had been kicked out of his home and Sid didn't care for his. Everybody has a story I guess.
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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Marky Dread wrote:My point is it makes no difference if you are rich or poor. Great rock n' roll comes from the soul. You can come from a very wealthy background and still make rock n' roll singing from the gutter. Rich kids are just as likely and probably more likely to have uncaring parents. It comes down to the individual and a desire. London and New York oh sure they were privileged with a rock n' roll heritage but no Ramones attitude no Replacements. A lot of rock n' roll bands have come and gone by '79 the Matts invented nothing but played with a passion, joy and abandon that will forever keep them a place in my heart.

It's never about where you're from but where you're at that counts.

The latchkey kids a term coined by that famous NBC Documentary in 1944 yeah well that was just a name that fitted with the life of the lonely child. I spent lots of my childhood alone I had a key hanging around my neck. Mum out at work all day and stepfather a long distance lorry driver not home for days on end. Was I poor no was I disadvantaged no was I lonely no I was a kid and I could always find mischief to keep me company.

Were The Replacements any worse of as kids than the Sex Pistols? Fuck knows and I don't really wish to analyse too much. Did Paul Westerberg come home and find his mum smacked out her head on heroin like Sid did his? Her not being there at all or her being there but not really there because she was on drugs, what's worse I don't know it wasn't me in that situation. Were the Pistols lucky to be in London at the right time probably but John and Sid lived in squats John had been kicked out of his home and Sid didn't care for his. Everybody has a story I guess.
No, Marky. Did you read my post at all? By the 60's and 70's "latchkey" had evolved from loose generational label to an actual codified school board policy in most suburban communities to control the population of unsupervised kids hanging about town. It persisted in my own hometown (the whole point of that story) till almost the 90's. The parents were encouraged to sign a waiver, and their spawn got piled onto a bus after school and basically kept in a Darwinian internment camp for 3 hours. It was forced isolation from free choice of who to hang with, and put well-behaved kids at the mercy of bullies every day in a room they couldn't escape from. So it became a day-in, day-out trauma for them and an out-of-sight/out-of-mind convenience of their self-centered parents. And after they moved to middle and high school they go no equivalent after-school support to socialize them to unstructured free time (unless they were luckily athletic enough to play after-school sports), and that's when things really went to shit.

This was forced government action systematically destroying the mental health of millions of children. That has nothing to do with individual desire. And it was a different experience from the cities where those enforced controls didn't exist, so these latchkey kids were fucked up in different ways. Not better or worse...but fundamentally different.


I have no fucking idea if Paul/Bob/Tommy/Chris were enrolled in a latchkey program. It didn't matter. They grew up in the thick of 70's suburbia that did that to their children, enforced government isolation from socializing with others with few alternatives for filling that void when they were separated from friends, and were similarly psychologically damaged by the collective cruelty of it all. That's who the "Mats Babies" are...the kids whose childhoods were spent in the part-time equivalent of Japanese interment camps, and their friends on the outside afflicted with guilt and/or anger at the injustice of seeing their friends get put through that. To say nothing of how corroded they were on the inside at the gall of their parents willfully signing that waiver. Say what you will about Millennials, but they are a whole fuckload better socially-adjusted than X because of this barbaric practice being purged.


I probably identify more with X because of early awareness of the senselessness of the daily "latchkey" bus, even though I was not one of them and most of my friends weren't either. I saw a lot of good, promising kids go to total shit unequipped for dealing with life because of the trauma inflicted by that policy.

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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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Rat Patrol wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:My point is it makes no difference if you are rich or poor. Great rock n' roll comes from the soul. You can come from a very wealthy background and still make rock n' roll singing from the gutter. Rich kids are just as likely and probably more likely to have uncaring parents. It comes down to the individual and a desire. London and New York oh sure they were privileged with a rock n' roll heritage but no Ramones attitude no Replacements. A lot of rock n' roll bands have come and gone by '79 the Matts invented nothing but played with a passion, joy and abandon that will forever keep them a place in my heart.

It's never about where you're from but where you're at that counts.

The latchkey kids a term coined by that famous NBC Documentary in 1944 yeah well that was just a name that fitted with the life of the lonely child. I spent lots of my childhood alone I had a key hanging around my neck. Mum out at work all day and stepfather a long distance lorry driver not home for days on end. Was I poor no was I disadvantaged no was I lonely no I was a kid and I could always find mischief to keep me company.

Were The Replacements any worse of as kids than the Sex Pistols? Fuck knows and I don't really wish to analyse too much. Did Paul Westerberg come home and find his mum smacked out her head on heroin like Sid did his? Her not being there at all or her being there but not really there because she was on drugs, what's worse I don't know it wasn't me in that situation. Were the Pistols lucky to be in London at the right time probably but John and Sid lived in squats John had been kicked out of his home and Sid didn't care for his. Everybody has a story I guess.
No, Marky. Did you read my post at all? By the 60's and 70's "latchkey" had evolved from loose generational label to an actual codified school board policy in most suburban communities to control the population of unsupervised kids hanging about town. It persisted in my own hometown (the whole point of that story) till almost the 90's. The parents were encouraged to sign a waiver, and their spawn got piled onto a bus after school and basically kept in a Darwinian internment camp for 3 hours. It was forced isolation from free choice of who to hang with, and put well-behaved kids at the mercy of bullies every day in a room they couldn't escape from. So it became a day-in, day-out trauma for them and an out-of-sight/out-of-mind convenience of their self-centered parents. And after they moved to middle and high school they go no equivalent after-school support to socialize them to unstructured free time (unless they were luckily athletic enough to play after-school sports), and that's when things really went to shit.

This was forced government action systematically destroying the mental health of millions of children. That has nothing to do with individual desire. And it was a different experience from the cities where those enforced controls didn't exist, so these latchkey kids were fucked up in different ways. Not better or worse...but fundamentally different.


I have no fucking idea if Paul/Bob/Tommy/Chris were enrolled in a latchkey program. It didn't matter. They grew up in the thick of 70's suburbia that did that to their children, enforced government isolation from socializing with others with few alternatives for filling that void when they were separated from friends, and were similarly psychologically damaged by the collective cruelty of it all. That's who the "Mats Babies" are...the kids whose childhoods were spent in the part-time equivalent of Japanese interment camps, and their friends on the outside afflicted with guilt and/or anger at the injustice of seeing their friends get put through that. To say nothing of how corroded they were on the inside at the gall of their parents willfully signing that waiver. Say what you will about Millennials, but they are a whole fuckload better socially-adjusted than X because of this barbaric practice being purged.


I probably identify more with X because of early awareness of the senselessness of the daily "latchkey" bus, even though I was not one of them and most of my friends weren't either. I saw a lot of good, promising kids go to total shit unequipped for dealing with life because of the trauma inflicted by that policy.

"part-time equivalent of Japanese interment camps" - sounds a bit strong to me.

I don't know how you can compare New York, London or any other shithole to the fact that these poor fuckers had to go to these government enforced programmes. It's like you're saying they had it tougher than everybody else so they (The Replacements) deserve more credit/glory than the class of '77 because of the shithole they came from. The history books paint that picture of '77 London/New York simply because that's where all the classic bands came from and the writers are lazy and easily just continue parrot fashion the myth.

I do not like the idea of that latchkey bus system but that's not to say other kids in more privileged areas had it any better surely it has to be down to the strength of the individual and how they deal with their own personal dilemmas and situations. Some kids at school could not deal with being away from their parents too long. A friend of mine was sent away to a boarding school and couldn't cope and slashed his wrists and killed himself aged 15. Although he was a very bright gifted kid he wasn't mentally strong let alone physically but his dumb-assed parents couldn't see the flaw. Surely schools are just as crap as that latchkey system for some kids who get bullied don't fit in can't make friends etc. I do get the exclusion to media etc. you mentioned and the distance to the nearest music outlet but it obviously wasn't impossible to get to hear stuff or The Matts wouldn't exist.
Image

Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by Rat Patrol »

Marky Dread wrote:
Rat Patrol wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:My point is it makes no difference if you are rich or poor. Great rock n' roll comes from the soul. You can come from a very wealthy background and still make rock n' roll singing from the gutter. Rich kids are just as likely and probably more likely to have uncaring parents. It comes down to the individual and a desire. London and New York oh sure they were privileged with a rock n' roll heritage but no Ramones attitude no Replacements. A lot of rock n' roll bands have come and gone by '79 the Matts invented nothing but played with a passion, joy and abandon that will forever keep them a place in my heart.

It's never about where you're from but where you're at that counts.

The latchkey kids a term coined by that famous NBC Documentary in 1944 yeah well that was just a name that fitted with the life of the lonely child. I spent lots of my childhood alone I had a key hanging around my neck. Mum out at work all day and stepfather a long distance lorry driver not home for days on end. Was I poor no was I disadvantaged no was I lonely no I was a kid and I could always find mischief to keep me company.

Were The Replacements any worse of as kids than the Sex Pistols? Fuck knows and I don't really wish to analyse too much. Did Paul Westerberg come home and find his mum smacked out her head on heroin like Sid did his? Her not being there at all or her being there but not really there because she was on drugs, what's worse I don't know it wasn't me in that situation. Were the Pistols lucky to be in London at the right time probably but John and Sid lived in squats John had been kicked out of his home and Sid didn't care for his. Everybody has a story I guess.
No, Marky. Did you read my post at all? By the 60's and 70's "latchkey" had evolved from loose generational label to an actual codified school board policy in most suburban communities to control the population of unsupervised kids hanging about town. It persisted in my own hometown (the whole point of that story) till almost the 90's. The parents were encouraged to sign a waiver, and their spawn got piled onto a bus after school and basically kept in a Darwinian internment camp for 3 hours. It was forced isolation from free choice of who to hang with, and put well-behaved kids at the mercy of bullies every day in a room they couldn't escape from. So it became a day-in, day-out trauma for them and an out-of-sight/out-of-mind convenience of their self-centered parents. And after they moved to middle and high school they go no equivalent after-school support to socialize them to unstructured free time (unless they were luckily athletic enough to play after-school sports), and that's when things really went to shit.

This was forced government action systematically destroying the mental health of millions of children. That has nothing to do with individual desire. And it was a different experience from the cities where those enforced controls didn't exist, so these latchkey kids were fucked up in different ways. Not better or worse...but fundamentally different.


I have no fucking idea if Paul/Bob/Tommy/Chris were enrolled in a latchkey program. It didn't matter. They grew up in the thick of 70's suburbia that did that to their children, enforced government isolation from socializing with others with few alternatives for filling that void when they were separated from friends, and were similarly psychologically damaged by the collective cruelty of it all. That's who the "Mats Babies" are...the kids whose childhoods were spent in the part-time equivalent of Japanese interment camps, and their friends on the outside afflicted with guilt and/or anger at the injustice of seeing their friends get put through that. To say nothing of how corroded they were on the inside at the gall of their parents willfully signing that waiver. Say what you will about Millennials, but they are a whole fuckload better socially-adjusted than X because of this barbaric practice being purged.


I probably identify more with X because of early awareness of the senselessness of the daily "latchkey" bus, even though I was not one of them and most of my friends weren't either. I saw a lot of good, promising kids go to total shit unequipped for dealing with life because of the trauma inflicted by that policy.

"part-time equivalent of Japanese interment camps" - sounds a bit strong to me.

I don't know how you can compare New York, London or any other shithole to the fact that these poor fuckers had to go to these government enforced programmes. It's like you're saying they had it tougher than everybody else so they (The Replacements) deserve more credit/glory than the class of '77 because of the shithole they came from. The history books paint that picture of '77 London/New York simply because that's where all the classic bands came from and the writers are lazy and easily just continue parrot fashion the myth.

I do not like the idea of that latchkey bus system but that's not say other kids in more privileged areas had it any better surely it has to be down to the strength of the individual and how they deal with their own personal dilemmas and situations. Some kids at school could not deal with being away from their parents too long. A friend of mine was sent away to a boarding school and couldn't cope and slashed his wrists and killed himself aged 15. Although he was a very bright gifted kid he wasn't mentally strong let alone physically but his dumb-assed parents couldn't see the flaw. Surely schools are just as crap as that latchkey system for some kids who get bullied don't fit in can't make friends etc. I do get the exclusion to media etc. you mentioned and the distance to the nearest music outlet but it obviously wasn't impossible to get to hear stuff or The Matts wouldn't exist.

I don't know how I can put this any clearer:
Not better or worse...but fundamentally different.

You're picking an argument with a point I was never making. It is NOT a dick-measuring contest between which punks are holier than thou. Different scenes had different youth experiences that led them to a similar place we loosely define as "punk". As you yourself claimed, the music the Midwest suburbanites made didn't hop the pond and resonate to nearly the degree the New York punks did. Why? The shared experiences didn't overlap as much. The kids processed their experiences and reacted in the same general direction through expression, but the origin and path were different. You just wrote paragraph after paragraph underscoring that point by comparing/contrasting your own peers' experiences and how they were NOT, in your opinion, qualitatively the same. Well...that's a pretty big tell right there. You're from a different scene. You know instinctively how your scene processed stimuli and where it led them. It's harder to explain how somebody else in a different part of the world (i.e. urban/dense vs. suburban/sprawl, not so much U.S. vs. U.K.) got from Point A to a Point Punk without substituting some undefined placeholder into the equation like "soul" and leaving it at that. So the comparison starts to fray into a direct competition.


That's not it at all. Kids in flyover country collectively got their heads messed with in different ways than kids in the cities. Not better, not worse...DIFFERENT. And this should be the least surprising fact ever, because the whole story of post-WWII America is the shearing off of suburban life from urban life. Each semi-independently evolving their vices and inequalities. So of-fucking-course the kids are going to have their grey matter dinged and scraped different, have different proportions of vices and social retardation in reaction to that, and have different lengths to reach to find a cultural outlet. And not necessarily be kindred spirits beyond a superficial level with the city kids. The very structure of the communities they grew up in was divergently different (at a time in history when 'burbs vs. cities were probably at their most polar opposite and most isolated from each other).

And I'd say the same about L.A. vs. Midwest vs. NYC too. What's urban or suburban in California is pretty alien to what's urban or suburban in flyover country or the (leaps-and-bounds more directly UK-derived) East Coast, since in Cali (especially SoCal) there's almost no such thing as a city limits--or even clearly-defined downtowns. The auto sprawl just continues endlessly in a geometric grid from more density to less to more again. Kids mindfucked by life in sprawl out there make fuckin' good punk music too. But put them together a neutral-sire super concert bill with 1/3 of the audience Cali, 1/3 Midwest, 1/3 Northeast and they're going to dance eyes-forward at the bands with not a whole lot of common ground to talk about amongst themselves. And probably quite a few pissing matches on who had it worse and who was more punk.

"Mats Babies" are the inland suburban grouping of X'ers with punkish inclinations who had their skulls fucked with that way. Not that other way the CBGB's or 100 Club patrons were. Not that other-other way the Gilman Street punks were. That's it. Understand where they went from Point A to Point B as succinctly as you can say that with your scene and it makes sense. But chucking it up to sheer alchemy like "soul" then picking nits with who was better off with what misses the point.




And yes, the latchkey program was cruel and unusual punishment. You go tell the kid who got the everloving shit kicked out of him by bullies every day in a locked gym and grew up with PTSD-like symptoms about how "strength of the individual" triumphs above all and that he's blowing it out of proportion how traumatic the experience was. And please do diminish how much emotional damage has lasted into adulthood from that because "Well, you should feel lucky it wasn't boarding school...because I knew some blokes who got royally fucked by boarding school." Yeah...they've never heard that one before. That's just the ticket to making them not-traumatized by it after 20 years of being traumatized by it.

Barbarism is fucking barbarism. "Different" barbarism is not "my barbarism experience was worse than yours". There are 8 million different ways to destroy a soul to exactly the same rubble pile.

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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by muppet hi fi »

Very interesting commentary from Rattie, Marky and TeddyB.
I'm not going to use the quote function here, as it's getting long, but a couple things I want to make clear.
I'd never heard of any "latchkey" program ever before this thread. Anywhere. I'm fairly certain no such thing existed in any fashion in the Twin Cities in the late '60s to...ever.

The individual Replacements, as I did, all came from inner city locales. I know all the houses they grew up in (except Chris. And Slim came from northern Minnesota originally). There was nothing remotely suburban or sprawl-ish about where they grew up and went to grade school and high school.

I'm not trying to be know-it-all here, and I don't need to get into specific details, although I can and might, but the physical environment Rattie is describing is nothing like the inner city landscape that the band grew up in and were informed by. (and apropos of nothing much, Jim Walsh's book gets quite a few facts wrong i.e. where Paul went to high school). I understand that it was an oral history as told by others, but Jim should have fact checked. Then again, maybe that was part of the book's point. The 'Mat's Myth, if you will).
Carry on, gents. Interesting, if difficult ( for personal reasons) reading.
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by Marky Dread »

Rat Patrol wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:
Rat Patrol wrote:
Marky Dread wrote:My point is it makes no difference if you are rich or poor. Great rock n' roll comes from the soul. You can come from a very wealthy background and still make rock n' roll singing from the gutter. Rich kids are just as likely and probably more likely to have uncaring parents. It comes down to the individual and a desire. London and New York oh sure they were privileged with a rock n' roll heritage but no Ramones attitude no Replacements. A lot of rock n' roll bands have come and gone by '79 the Matts invented nothing but played with a passion, joy and abandon that will forever keep them a place in my heart.

It's never about where you're from but where you're at that counts.

The latchkey kids a term coined by that famous NBC Documentary in 1944 yeah well that was just a name that fitted with the life of the lonely child. I spent lots of my childhood alone I had a key hanging around my neck. Mum out at work all day and stepfather a long distance lorry driver not home for days on end. Was I poor no was I disadvantaged no was I lonely no I was a kid and I could always find mischief to keep me company.

Were The Replacements any worse of as kids than the Sex Pistols? Fuck knows and I don't really wish to analyse too much. Did Paul Westerberg come home and find his mum smacked out her head on heroin like Sid did his? Her not being there at all or her being there but not really there because she was on drugs, what's worse I don't know it wasn't me in that situation. Were the Pistols lucky to be in London at the right time probably but John and Sid lived in squats John had been kicked out of his home and Sid didn't care for his. Everybody has a story I guess.
No, Marky. Did you read my post at all? By the 60's and 70's "latchkey" had evolved from loose generational label to an actual codified school board policy in most suburban communities to control the population of unsupervised kids hanging about town. It persisted in my own hometown (the whole point of that story) till almost the 90's. The parents were encouraged to sign a waiver, and their spawn got piled onto a bus after school and basically kept in a Darwinian internment camp for 3 hours. It was forced isolation from free choice of who to hang with, and put well-behaved kids at the mercy of bullies every day in a room they couldn't escape from. So it became a day-in, day-out trauma for them and an out-of-sight/out-of-mind convenience of their self-centered parents. And after they moved to middle and high school they go no equivalent after-school support to socialize them to unstructured free time (unless they were luckily athletic enough to play after-school sports), and that's when things really went to shit.

This was forced government action systematically destroying the mental health of millions of children. That has nothing to do with individual desire. And it was a different experience from the cities where those enforced controls didn't exist, so these latchkey kids were fucked up in different ways. Not better or worse...but fundamentally different.


I have no fucking idea if Paul/Bob/Tommy/Chris were enrolled in a latchkey program. It didn't matter. They grew up in the thick of 70's suburbia that did that to their children, enforced government isolation from socializing with others with few alternatives for filling that void when they were separated from friends, and were similarly psychologically damaged by the collective cruelty of it all. That's who the "Mats Babies" are...the kids whose childhoods were spent in the part-time equivalent of Japanese interment camps, and their friends on the outside afflicted with guilt and/or anger at the injustice of seeing their friends get put through that. To say nothing of how corroded they were on the inside at the gall of their parents willfully signing that waiver. Say what you will about Millennials, but they are a whole fuckload better socially-adjusted than X because of this barbaric practice being purged.


I probably identify more with X because of early awareness of the senselessness of the daily "latchkey" bus, even though I was not one of them and most of my friends weren't either. I saw a lot of good, promising kids go to total shit unequipped for dealing with life because of the trauma inflicted by that policy.

"part-time equivalent of Japanese interment camps" - sounds a bit strong to me.

I don't know how you can compare New York, London or any other shithole to the fact that these poor fuckers had to go to these government enforced programmes. It's like you're saying they had it tougher than everybody else so they (The Replacements) deserve more credit/glory than the class of '77 because of the shithole they came from. The history books paint that picture of '77 London/New York simply because that's where all the classic bands came from and the writers are lazy and easily just continue parrot fashion the myth.

I do not like the idea of that latchkey bus system but that's not say other kids in more privileged areas had it any better surely it has to be down to the strength of the individual and how they deal with their own personal dilemmas and situations. Some kids at school could not deal with being away from their parents too long. A friend of mine was sent away to a boarding school and couldn't cope and slashed his wrists and killed himself aged 15. Although he was a very bright gifted kid he wasn't mentally strong let alone physically but his dumb-assed parents couldn't see the flaw. Surely schools are just as crap as that latchkey system for some kids who get bullied don't fit in can't make friends etc. I do get the exclusion to media etc. you mentioned and the distance to the nearest music outlet but it obviously wasn't impossible to get to hear stuff or The Matts wouldn't exist.

I don't know how I can put this any clearer:
Not better or worse...but fundamentally different.

You're picking an argument with a point I was never making. It is NOT a dick-measuring contest between which punks are holier than thou. Different scenes had different youth experiences that led them to a similar place we loosely define as "punk". As you yourself claimed, the music the Midwest suburbanites made didn't hop the pond and resonate to nearly the degree the New York punks did. Why? The shared experiences didn't overlap as much. The kids processed their experiences and reacted in the same general direction through expression, but the origin and path were different. You just wrote paragraph after paragraph underscoring that point by comparing/contrasting your own peers' experiences and how they were NOT, in your opinion, qualitatively the same. Well...that's a pretty big tell right there. You're from a different scene. You know instinctively how your scene processed stimuli and where it led them. It's harder to explain how somebody else in a different part of the world (i.e. urban/dense vs. suburban/sprawl, not so much U.S. vs. U.K.) got from Point A to a Point Punk without substituting some undefined placeholder into the equation like "soul" and leaving it at that. So the comparison starts to fray into a direct competition.


That's not it at all. Kids in flyover country collectively got their heads messed with in different ways than kids in the cities. Not better, not worse...DIFFERENT. And this should be the least surprising fact ever, because the whole story of post-WWII America is the shearing off of suburban life from urban life. Each semi-independently evolving their vices and inequalities. So of-fucking-course the kids are going to have their grey matter dinged and scraped different, have different proportions of vices and social retardation in reaction to that, and have different lengths to reach to find a cultural outlet. And not necessarily be kindred spirits beyond a superficial level with the city kids. The very structure of the communities they grew up in was divergently different (at a time in history when 'burbs vs. cities were probably at their most polar opposite and most isolated from each other).

And I'd say the same about L.A. vs. Midwest vs. NYC too. What's urban or suburban in California is pretty alien to what's urban or suburban in flyover country or the (leaps-and-bounds more directly UK-derived) East Coast, since in Cali (especially SoCal) there's almost no such thing as a city limits--or even clearly-defined downtowns. The auto sprawl just continues endlessly in a geometric grid from more density to less to more again. Kids mindfucked by life in sprawl out there make fuckin' good punk music too. But put them together a neutral-sire super concert bill with 1/3 of the audience Cali, 1/3 Midwest, 1/3 Northeast and they're going to dance eyes-forward at the bands with not a whole lot of common ground to talk about amongst themselves. And probably quite a few pissing matches on who had it worse and who was more punk.

"Mats Babies" are the inland suburban grouping of X'ers with punkish inclinations who had their skulls fucked with that way. Not that other way the CBGB's or 100 Club patrons were. Not that other-other way the Gilman Street punks were. That's it. Understand where they went from Point A to Point B as succinctly as you can say that with your scene and it makes sense. But chucking it up to sheer alchemy like "soul" then picking nits with who was better off with what misses the point.




And yes, the latchkey program was cruel and unusual punishment. You go tell the kid who got the everloving shit kicked out of him by bullies every day in a locked gym and grew up with PTSD-like symptoms about how "strength of the individual" triumphs above all and that he's blowing it out of proportion how traumatic the experience was. And please do diminish how much emotional damage has lasted into adulthood from that because "Well, you should feel lucky it wasn't boarding school...because I knew some blokes who got royally fucked by boarding school." Yeah...they've never heard that one before. That's just the ticket to making them not-traumatized by it after 20 years of being traumatized by it.

Barbarism is fucking barbarism. "Different" barbarism is not "my barbarism experience was worse than yours". There are 8 million different ways to destroy a soul to exactly the same rubble pile.
Holy fuck Ratty you twisted the shit out of my so called "strength of the individual" comment. Obviously "the kid who got the everloving shit kicked out of him by bullies every day in a locked gym" doesn't cope and that's the thing here it can happen and does happen to the privileged and underprivileged. I'll be fucked if I said "Well, you should feel lucky it wasn't boarding school...because I knew some blokes who got royally fucked by boarding school" again what I'm saying is boarding school is something for the wealthy and yet you can still get fucked, not that anyone is lucky either way. No it's not a dick-measuring contest between which punks are holier than thou either that is not what I was saying. You made the statement about the historians of punk giving the glory to the London/N.Y. scene over the more deserving mid-west. Or are you just really saying they are being written out of the story and forgotten about when the social struggle deserves more?
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by Marky Dread »

muppet hi fi wrote:Very interesting commentary from Rattie, Marky and TeddyB.
I'm not going to use the quote function here, as it's getting long, but a couple things I want to make clear.
I'd never heard of any "latchkey" program ever before this thread. Anywhere. I'm fairly certain no such thing existed in any fashion in the Twin Cities in the late '60s to...ever.

The individual Replacements, as I did, all came from inner city locales. I know all the houses they grew up in (except Chris. And Slim came from northern Minnesota originally). There was nothing remotely suburban or sprawl-ish about where they grew up and went to grade school and high school.

I'm not trying to be know-it-all here, and I don't need to get into specific details, although I can and might, but the physical environment Rattie is describing is nothing like the inner city landscape that the band grew up in and were informed by. (and apropos of nothing much, Jim Walsh's book gets quite a few facts wrong i.e. where Paul went to high school). I understand that it was an oral history as told by others, but Jim should have fact checked. Then again, maybe that was part of the book's point. The 'Mat's Myth, if you will).
Carry on, gents. Interesting, if difficult ( for personal reasons) reading.
I will immediately apologise to you mate if anything I say in this thread causes you any pain or consternation that is not my intent. But and it's a huge but I don't like it when people analyse others circumstances and pretend to have any idea how the individual feels when they have not lived that life. I'm never suggesting that one area is worse than another only that it can be an equally tough challenge sometimes whether you be rich or poor. I'm not saying anyone I knew had it worse than anyone else I'm am only being honest and genuine about my own experience.
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by muppet hi fi »

Marky Dread wrote:
muppet hi fi wrote:Very interesting commentary from Rattie, Marky and TeddyB.
I'm not going to use the quote function here, as it's getting long, but a couple things I want to make clear.
I'd never heard of any "latchkey" program ever before this thread. Anywhere. I'm fairly certain no such thing existed in any fashion in the Twin Cities in the late '60s to...ever.

The individual Replacements, as I did, all came from inner city locales. I know all the houses they grew up in (except Chris. And Slim came from northern Minnesota originally). There was nothing remotely suburban or sprawl-ish about where they grew up and went to grade school and high school.

I'm not trying to be know-it-all here, and I don't need to get into specific details, although I can and might, but the physical environment Rattie is describing is nothing like the inner city landscape that the band grew up in and were informed by. (and apropos of nothing much, Jim Walsh's book gets quite a few facts wrong i.e. where Paul went to high school). I understand that it was an oral history as told by others, but Jim should have fact checked. Then again, maybe that was part of the book's point. The 'Mat's Myth, if you will).
Carry on, gents. Interesting, if difficult ( for personal reasons) reading.
I will immediately apologise to you mate if anything I say in this thread causes you any pain or consternation that is not my intent. But and it's a huge but I don't like it when people analyse others circumstances and pretend to have any idea how the individual feels when they have not lived that life. I'm never suggesting that one area is worse than another only that it can be an equally tough challenge sometimes whether you be rich or poor. I'm not saying anyone I knew had it worse than anyone else I'm am only being honest and genuine about my own experience.
Jesus Christ, Marky, of course not, my man. I love hearing your views on everything from simple music to any and all aspects of this thing called Life. Any emotional consternation I may feel about getting involved in this discussion is 100% my problem. And anyway, it's very good reading - from you, and Ratty and TeddyB.
And I'm listening to some Westerberg solo stuff at the moment (haven't listened in a while). And having a drink. And enjoying myself. Thanks a lot, bastids :mrgreen:
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by muppet hi fi »

Westerberg and Joan Jett make a Cole Porter song sound like the Ramones.
[youtube][/youtube]
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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muppet hi fi wrote:Westerberg and Joan Jett make a Cole Porter song sound like the Ramones.
[youtube][/youtube]
Very cool. Like the Tank Girl vid too.
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by Silent Majority »

Marky Dread wrote:
muppet hi fi wrote:Westerberg and Joan Jett make a Cole Porter song sound like the Ramones.
[youtube][/youtube]
Very cool. Like the Tank Girl vid too.
That's great.
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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

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Image
Image

Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

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Re: THE REPLACEMENTS Song of the Day

Post by muppet hi fi »

One of Paul's greatest songs. My (pathetic, perhaps) life summed up in a simple song.
[youtube][/youtube]
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