The Replacements — Cheapo Records and Minneapolis Haunts

The Replacements formed in Minneapolis in 1979 — Paul Westerberg, brothers Tommy and Bob Stinson, and Chris Mars — and spent the first half of the 1980s as the greatest and most infuriating band in American rock. Their early hardcore on Twin/Tone Records (Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash; Stink) gave way to ragged, emotionally honest rock songs on Hootenanny and Let It Be (both 1983) that influenced every subsequent generation of American indie rock. Westerberg's writing was confessional in a way American rock hadn't been — damaged, funny, drunk, desperately sincere.

The Replacements were legendarily self-destructive: they would play their best songs in disguise, take requests for songs they didn't know, wear each other's clothes onstage, and generally sabotage their own commercial prospects with a dedication that became its own kind of artistic statement. Their major-label years — Tim (1985), Pleased to Meet Me (1987) — brought them critical success but no mainstream breakthrough. They broke up in 1991 with a final show at Grant Park in Chicago, and Westerberg has pursued a largely solo career since.

Minneapolis's music scene in the early 1980s was extraordinary: Prince was also developing his sound in the same city at the same time. The Replacements' haunts — the 7th Street Entry (still operating as a venue attached to First Avenue), record shops in the Uptown neighbourhood — are still findable. First Avenue, where Prince filmed Purple Rain, was also central to the Replacements' story.