Children by the million, are you ready for assimilation? So speaks
Paul Wester-borg!
I love the ‘Mats, I really do. In the grand word association game of life, “The Replacements” are front and center whenever I come across the term “college radio” …more so than The Smiths, The Cure, R.E.M, or any other representative of the cluster of acts associated with that particular tag.
There’s something about listening to “Left of the Dial” that makes me want to invent a time machine to travel back to 1987 and enroll in UMass-Amherst’s English program. Then I remember how I used to stay up until three in the morning finishing overdue term papers because I pissed away my time hanging out with friends and visiting used record stores, and the nostalgia quickly morphs into a vague feeling of unresolved dread.
College was fun. So fun that I never, ever wish to repeat the experience. As a student, I mean. After graduation, I took a job at my alma mater and have been happily ensconced there for over a decade now. One of the perks of the position is that I can sit on the curbside and observe collegiate life without having to actively participate in it. Every trip to the vending machines or ATM reveals new sociological and popcult insights.
The window dressing changes from year to year, but certain aspects have remained reliably constant since my early 1990’s undergrad salad days. College socialists will always be idealistically clueless, and will recoil at the suggestion that the human experience cannot be explained by a handful of reductive theories. College Republicans will talk a lot a militaristic bullshit, yet have convenient excuses about why they personally aren’t doing the fighting and dying. College Democrats will continue to dress like they work at the Gap (or Blockbuster Video).
…and no matter what fashion for hipster poets, writers, or other artistes is trendy at the moment (currently a Strokes-ian “New York” faux 70’s junkie look ‘round these parts), there will always be a substantial percentage of that population who have adopted a Paul Westerberg-inspired look: blue jeans, workboots or beat up sneakers, a flannel or simple buttoned-down shirt, stubble and a mop of short yet unruly hair. It’s a cleaner cut (but still casually rumpled) precursor to the grunge look, and it’s a comfortable fashion, especially suited to the Northern climes of Minnesota or Boston. (It shares some elements in common with the “Michael Stipe,” although Stipists prefer slacks and boat shoes, tuck in their shirts, and frequently wear workman’s caps and have soul patches.)
While Paul Westerberg might not have invented the style (which seems to be an logical adaptation to certain climates – for example, New England college campuses) I still tend to associate it with the man and his music. Hence this internal monologue the other day, as I waited for a herd of creative writing students to pass by:
“Wow. It’s a tribe of Westerberg clones – no,
Wester-borgs!”
Yes, I stretched a mildly amusing pun into a full-on post. That’s how I roll -- like a shopping cart that has been run over by a snow plow a couple of times.
Paul Westerberg – Dyslexic Heart (from the
Singles OST, 1992) –
Singles is an interesting little timepiece of a movie. Every time I watch it, I find myself wondering what happened to my generation’s spirit. The culture wars over hip-hop and political correctness, the in-your-face activism of ACT UP and PETA, the sense that a newer, better era was dawning after 12 years of Reagan and Reagan-lite… There was something there that evaporated at some point. I’m not misremembering this, am I?
Then I see a conservatively-dressed woman my age get off the subway at State Street station, the scar from an old piercing prominent on the side of her nose, and I know the answer.
William Shatner – It Was a Very Good Year (from
Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, 1998) – One good
Star Trek reference deserves another…and a terrible
Star Trek reference deserves something like this track.
Posts
