The Shit Hits the Fans

Saw Paul Westerberg last night at the Riviera. In a word: terrible. Let me state here that I was a Replacements fan from the beginning, and while I find Westerberg's solo stuff inconsistent at best, I still consider him one of the best songwriters of his generation and certainly one of my all-time favorites. I saw four Mats gigs, all great (none of them were of the legendary, drunken, shambling mess variety), and all of the 6-7 solo shows I've seen have been excellent as well.

All of which made the Riv show so disappointing. His voice sounded awful from the start, and he seemed disinterested most of the show in playing the right notes on the guitar. One of my favorite Mats songs, "Little Mascara," was a disaster. (Predictably, the adoring crowd still ate it up.) As the show progressed, it turned into a middle-aged version of one of those legendary, drunken, shambling mess shows. He brought a backstage TV onstage and smashed it with a guitar. He stomped on a telephone he also brought from backstage. He jumped into the crowd, guitar and all. He swigged from a bottle of whiskey (he was clearly off the wagon, at least for one night.) And he played a bunch of stop-start covers, including "Cat Scratch Fever" and "Substitute." (The latter actually wasn't half-bad.) Granted, there was a certain entertainment value to some of this, but in terms of being a solid-sounding show, it failed miserably.

Equally predictably, deluded acolytes are actually praising this show on his message board, with one person saying, "It's the best I've ever seen him." I feel sorry for that guy. I also feel sorry for my wife, who'd never seen Westerberg and was looking forward to this first time. Needless to say -- but I'll say it anyway -- color her unimpressed.

I'll take this opportunity to tell my one pseudo-amusing Mats concert story. In 1986, I saw them for the very first time at the Newport in Columbus. This was back in the day when bathroom access wasn't all that important and I didn't mind crowds, so my buddy G.W. and I went right up to the front of the stage, directly in line with Tommy Stinson. For about half the show, a girl to my right kept pleading, "Tommy! Tommy!" even after he came over a couple of times to shake her hand. Finally, even he had enough, as mid-song (I forget which one), he comes over, takes the grape bubble gum out of his mouth and hands it to her, with a clear look of "Will you leave me alone now?" on his face. She, of course, is overjoyed, but her hand was shaking a little, and she dropped the gum on the stage.

Now, I consider myself to be a nice guy, but the urge to flick the gum away from her was just too strong. It flew about six feet right into Tommy's left leg. Though I felt kind of bad about it, I was much happier that Tommy found it hysterical and couldn't stop laughing the rest of the song. Ah, youth.

Hell, maybe that's part of the reason I found last night's show so desultory. Maybe I'm too old and needed to be drunk. I'm not sure it would've helped.