The Replacements (band) - Live Performances

Live Performances

The Replacements gained local notoriety following their first live performance because of Tommy Stinson's young age. Early shows were consistently tight and became more aggressive following the release of the Stink EP in 1982. As their stylistic repertoire began to expand with the writing and recording of Hootenanny the following year, the band's increasingly antagonistic stage show left them with a reputation for their rowdy, often drunken live shows. The band would frequently take the stage too intoxicated to play. They were famously banned permanently from Saturday Night Live after performing drunk before a national television audience on January 18, 1986. As one reviewer succinctly observed, the band could quite often be "mouthing profanities into the camera, stumbling into each other, falling down, dropping their instruments, and generally behaving like the apathetic drunks they were". There emerged an element of unpredictability, as The Replacements — when sober — gained critical praise for their live shows. Part of the mystique of The Replacements was the fact that the audience never knew until the start of a concert if the band would be sober enough to play. It was not uncommon for the group to play entire sets of covers, ranging anywhere from Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" to Dusty Springfield's "The Look of Love" to Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog."