The Replacements to reunite for first shows in 22 years

The Replacements will reunite for their first concerts in 22 years. Paul Westerberg, Tommy Stinson, and possibly their original drummer, Chris Mars, will play three gigs headlining festivals in Chicago, Toronto and Denver.

Fans of 80s alt rock are already wildly clicking “buy” for the band’s trio of Riot Fest shows. Because co-founder Bobby Stinson died in 1995, and his Replacements replacement, guitarist Slim Dunlap, is recovering from a stroke, most had given up hope that they would reform. In fact, Dunlap’s stroke seems to have been the catalyst for reconciliation: last year, Westerberg and Tommy Stinson recorded a covers EP to raise medical funds.

“After playing with Tommy … I was thinking, ‘All right, let’s crank it up and knock out a record like this,'” Westerberg said in October. Mars’s involvement is much less of a certainty. Now a painter, he declined to participate in 2012’s covers project, and hasn’t officially commented on the reunion. “That chapter of my life [in the Replacements] was kind of another life,” he told the AV Club in 2006. “I’m not living in that space [any more]. I’m in another place.”

Although the Replacements were certainly never monsters of the charts – their highest album debut was at No 57 – the group were one of the 80s’ most important underground bands, inventing a loose new style of punk rock. “Anybody know how I can get Replacements tix?” actor Bob Odenkirk tweeted yesterday. “God I am so happy to have lived long enough to ask that question.”

Source: The Guardian