Mile End Kicks

My review of Mile End Kicks, the new film about an aspiring 33 1/3 book author, is up at 333Sound. 

The Giraffes

21 years ago this month, on summer break between junior and senior year of college, I drove solo to the Black Cat in Washington DC to see one of my favorite bands since 6th grade, Local H. The openers were a rowdy, sketchy-looking quartet that seemed like they could be fun. Before I knew what was happening, the lead singer's hand was in my hair. They started a beer fight with the crowd, had at least half the band in the audience while the rest was on stage, and got us screaming along with hooks like "You're going home in a fuckin' ambulance" and "Having fun with assholes" seconds after we learned them. I bought their newest CD after the show and was a little surprised by how nice the band members I spoke with were. My ticket was $12 and there wasn't a phone in sight. I had just met the Giraffes.

Luckily, they were from New York, a short Metro-North ride from school, and I tried to see them as much as I could over the next several years. I booked them to play my college (it took a lot of work convincing student senate to sponsor something that wasn't indie rock or folk) and watched them turn our cafeteria space into Mad Max. I wrote about them for whichever publications would let me (thank you Beyond Race and Metal Injection) and interviewed them on my college radio show (thank you WSLC). Their manager Chris gave me a high standard of music business professionalism, and the Giraffes gave me a high standard of everything—performances, albums, and just showing that a bunch of deviant, weirdo artists can still be cool to their fans. The music industry is more overrun with creeps than any of us will ever know, and the older I get the more I realize that (Aaron voice) "you have no ideaaaaa" how rare folks like the Giraffes are.

I often think of Mishka Shubaly in Ted Manitatakos' fabulous Giraffes movie, pulling out Meet Me in the Bathroom and pointing out the glaring omission in the "G" section of the index. The Giraffes have never gotten the bank or the audience they deserve, despite having more crossover appeal than your average punk/metal/surf/garage/indie/I still don't know what to call it trailblazers. They've also never phoned it on, on stage or on record, in any instance I've experienced them. At their possibly final show last Friday before Aaron escapes to Italy, they were still full of surprises. I usually avoid looking at people's phone footage of shows, but this time I keep thinking "Did that really happen?" before going back to check the Giraffes' stories to confirm yes, it did. Yeah, they do it. That's how they do it. And they do it so good.

Thank you Damien, Drew, Aaron, Hannah, Josh, Jens, John, Tim and everybody else who's been a part of this incredible story so far.

Fishbone

My Fishbone profile, including new interviews with Angelo Moore and Christopher Dowd, is up at The Aquarian.

Howie Klein

My Howie Klein remembrance is up at the site he founded, Down With Tyranny.

A Late Encounter With the Bad Guy

I lose friends over politics. These days saying as much often looks like a brag, a woker-than-thou policy that you value urgent world affairs more than your personal relationships. But even in my liberal New York City bubble, I’ve found more ways and time to argue politics than the average citizen.

I can’t attribute this to one thing. It probably didn’t help to grow up with two lawyer parents, one of whom loved to argue at family gatherings (usually taking the conservative side against my mother’s family, and the liberal side against my father’s) and enjoyed making me defend any basic claim I made with enough arguments to sway a jury. I also spent my boyhood in swing state Northern Virginia, bordering America’s political capital Washington, D.C., where federal government discourse was practically second nature to anyone I came into contact with. When I left home for college, I was surprised to learn that not everyone liked to argue, or even cared about, American politics.

Still, I didn’t feel shy about questioning someone’s statement, or fact-checking their belief, or asking them to bolster their opinion with more evidence than they may have wanted to provide. My late grandfather, a former Kennedy administration official who held onto his memories of a time when the most-admired conservative in America was Dwight Eisenhower, had as much political wisdom as anyone I’ve met. Yet I wasn’t above clashing with him when he’d suggest that President Biden could unite the country by appointing Republicans to his cabinet, like a modern-day Team of Rivals.

It feels almost inevitable that I'd love the most combative, politically-confrontational rock band of my lifetime, Body Count. In high school I heard their first album, a revolutionary blend of punk and metal music, with hip-hop and horror movie-inspired lyrics, and thought I’d found the coolest band in the world. Their song “Cop Killer” set off a political maelstrom in 1992, which involved the United States president, congress, the FBI, and others in a campaign that eventually got the first Body Count album banned from stores. I heard. Years later, I’d see Body Count’s influence in the world’s increased conversation around white supremacy, police brutality, and great replacement theory, not to mention dozens of new artists inspired by Body Count’s sound and image. With a few years of journalism under my belt, I wanted to thank Body Count by writing the first-ever book about the band. I submitted a proposal to Bloomsbury Publishing, and set to work researching the book these innovative musical heroes deserved.

 

It wasn’t easy chasing down prominent musicians for interviews, and near-impossible to get any of the band’s vilifiers, which I needed for an even-handed account of the story. I could find plenty of ‘90s press about far-right anti-“Cop Killer” hatred, sometimes spilling over into racism and conspiracy theories. But I didn’t want anyone to think I was distorting conservative claims to make my case. Most of the conservatives I reached out to never got back to me. Dan Quayle’s representative dutifully took down my contact info before never responding to any more of my interview requests. Some of the most active law enforcement officials in the fight to get “Cop Killer” banned never replied to my emails or voicemail messages. But the most important one did.

Ron DeLord is described on his professional website as “Attorney at Law, Labor Consultant, Author.” As the co-founder of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT), he’s spent decades as one of the most powerful police union bosses in America. A 2021 New York Times profile described him thusly:

“Ron DeLord, a fiery former Texas cop turned labor organizer, has long taught union leaders how to gain power and not let go. He has likened a police union going after an elected official to a cheetah devouring a wildebeest, and suggested that taking down just one would make others fall in line.

He helped write the playbook that police unions nationwide — seeking better pay, perks and protections from discipline — have followed for decades. Build a war chest. Support your friends. Smear your enemies. Even scare citizens with the threat of crime. One radio spot in El Paso warned residents to support their local police or face ‘the alternative,’ as the sound of gunshots rang out.

‘We took weak, underpaid organizations and built them into what everyone today says are powerful police unions,’ Mr. DeLord said in a recent interview. ‘You may say we went too far. I say you don’t know how far you’ve gone until you’re at the edge of the envelope.’”

If there is one villain in the Body Count story, it’s Ron DeLord. In 1992, DeLord was the most high-profile “Cop Killer” opponent not surnamed Bush, Quayle, North, Gingrich, or Heston. DeLord was certainly the most involved one, organizing press conferences, appearing on TV panels, mailing hundreds of information pamphlets, and spearheading a nationwide boycott of Time Warner, the media conglomerate whose subsidiaries included Body Count’s record label, Sire. In a black and white photo from a Time Warner shareholders meeting, DeLord holds a sign naming Time Warner magazines, movies, TV networks, and amusement parks to boycott. Body Count frontman Ice-T called DeLord “that particular cop down there in Texas who’s trying to show that he’s supercop” in Rolling Stone. Various Time Warner officials pleaded with DeLord for mercy, begging for their family products to be spared from the boycott. DeLord was implacable.

“We don't care if they sell a million more copies because of our protest,” DeLord told the Los Angeles Times. “You have to speak out against this sometime. If not now, when? How bad will the next album Time Warner produces be? We're not backing down one bit on this boycott. We're going to stay on them until the stench of this will make them decide it isn't worth it."

The movement to ban "Cop Killer'' eventually cost Time Warner an estimated $150 million, resulting in the company pulling the record, and dropping both Body Count and Ice-T from the label. To this day, it’s the most successful police boycott of a major corporation—DeLord points out that more recent US law enforcement furor over Beyoncé’s “Formation” or kneeling Colin Kaepernick did not get the police’s desired results.

I found DeLord’s email address on his website and sent him an interview request. I didn’t plan on confronting him about the issue, like a Michael Moore-style ambush. I’d rather coax enough of his opinions out of him and give him enough rope, as the saying goes, to emphasize DeLord’s place on the wrong side of history next to my interviews with Ice-T. DeLord responded promptly and professionally to my request, and we found a time to talk that week.

It sounded like he might be calling me on speakerphone from his car, perhaps confident he wasn’t going to need all of his attention and intelligence to handle me. I’d read that Ron spent his youth as an inner city cop in Beaumont, Texas, thrown into the job at age 21 with no weapons training or criminal code experience. He did not seem like the kind of guy who’d be concerned about something a New York liberal might say about him in a book.

Ron spoke with the Texas accent I knew from old news clips. He was genial, knowledgeable, funny, and remained steadfast in his belief that he’d been right about “Cop Killer.” He offered behind the scenes insights, articulating why it was important for the police to protest the Time Warner corporation and not Body Count or Ice-T. He revealed that he wanted to continue the boycott after the record had been pulled, and that the president of the Police Benevolent Association had to talk him out of it. (“He said ‘Ron, it’s over. We won, move on.’ And I said, ‘You’re right.’”) Ron remembered names and positions with expertise, and expressed sympathy for Ice-T and nonwhite Americans as subjects of police brutality. He even praised Ice’s acting skills as a Law & Order policeman, a casting choice that has infuriated some conservatives and law enforcement officials. He expressed hope for more progressive police reforms. Ron made some points I disagreed with—it’s hard for me to hear “Cop Killer” as encouraging targeted violence, or equate the song with writing a composition called “Jew Killer” or “Gay Killer.” But I couldn’t argue with Ron when stated that corporations don’t have free speech rights. Ice-T could sing whatever he wanted, Ron asserted, but Time Warner did not have the same protections.

“I wanted the companies to understand, you have the right to do whatever you wish but it does not come without consequences if you're selling something to the public,” said Ron. “They just didn’t put a human face on the police side of this argument. Whether police officers should or shouldn’t have dealt with someone in a certain way is not the issue. There’s 800,000 police officers out there, and we can’t advocate killing them as some solution to social injustice.”

“You can be for social justice, you can be that police have mishandled cases, or you can accuse them of racism, or systemic racism in our own criminal justice system,” he elaborated. “The point was, you can’t be a corporation, particularly in the family entertainment business, who allows someone to target anyone . . . for violence or death.”

It’s almost too easy to say Ron reminded me of a John Wayne movie character, and it did feel at times like I was speaking with a remaining pillar of traditional American masculinity. But Ron was varied enough—he didn’t speak in one-liners, or offer any hints of violence—to make me think that real tough guys are pretty different from the ones in movies. I thanked him for his time and we ended the call. Later that day, Ron sent me a photocopied excerpt about the “Cop Killer” controversy from a book I’d been unable to find. He CC’d a photographer who’d been on the frontlines of the story and asked for photos. “If you need anything else please reach out to me,” Ron concluded.

People ask what it’s like to interview Henry Rollins or Jello Biafra or Chuck D. But the interview I’ve since reflected on the most was probably Ron DeLord’s. I wanted to include more of our interview and write more about him in the book, which I still needed to edit to make the word count. I read that Ron had joined the Texas police force when jails were still racially segregated and Black officers were not allowed to arrest white citizens. In Dan Charnas’ book The Big Payback, I learned that Ron worked with one of the only Black Texas state senators, Royce West, “to fight for legislation mandating statewide technical, cultural, and racial sensitivity training” for nearly sixty thousand Texas officers, laboring for years to get the bill eventually passed over the objections of major lawmakers and most of the state’s police chiefs. Reading up more on Ron, I was saddened to find out that Ron’s father Clyde, a blue collar union bricklayer, died the summer of the “Cop Killer” scandal, ten days before Ice-T’s press conference announcing the record’s removal. There was no mention of this from Ron or in any of the press I read about him. When I see my friends’ “ACAB” or “ABOLISH THE POLICE” social media posts, I sometimes think of Ron. My grandfather died in 2023, and the week of his funeral I had a dream that Ron had died. “You love Ron!” my wife remarked, upon hearing my umpteenth reflection on one of our conversations. 

When my publisher sent me the first copies of my book, Ron was the second person I mailed one to, after Body Count guitarist Ernie C. I was touched to receive a thank you message from him, and shocked to see the photograph Ron posted on his social media accounts, smiling, holding a copy of my book directly in front of the camera. I looked closer at the bookshelf behind him, taking note of his numerous American history books, and was almost unable to fathom that my book might share a space with such prestigious works. “I was interviewed by author Ben Apatoff for his new book Body Count 33-1/3 about Ice-T’s album in 1991. Cleat and I were involved in pushing back against the rap song Cop Killer.” wrote Ron.

Trying to form words to thank him, I looked at the comments from Ron’s friends, some with “likes” by Ron.

It was an unacceptable song that never should have aired.

We should focus on Jason Aldean and Small Town! 😎

I remember him shooting the finger.

ironic that he was allowed to play a cop on Tv.

I thanked Ron privately, and never commented on his social media posts. I reached out to him again when Rolling Stone ran an excerpt from the book, and Ron encouraged me to write another one. (“Do it you obviously have the talent.”) Ron sent me a signed copy of his academic book Police Unions and the Reform Movement: The Battle for the Future of America’s Police. I’m a little afraid to read the whole thing and learn more of Ron’s beliefs. Flipping through the chapters, I can already see a contribution by someone who endorsed a presidential candidate I can’t abide. Maybe one day I’ll feel as tough as Ron DeLord and read the rest.

Ice-T Solo Records Ranked

“In order to get big sponsorships from these companies, you have to buy into the American way,” Ice stated in his 1994 book The Ice Opinion. “It’s not important enough to me that I would change my beliefs.” Looking at Ice-T’s thriving, prolific career today as a national treasure, one sees an America that bought into him, a pioneer rap entrepreneur whose stardom crosses over to music, film, TV, video games, literature, advertising, social media and beyond. But don’t forget—what earned him that status is his music.

Call him a businessman and he’ll agree, once stating, “I think I'm a musician first. More of like a writer, whether I'm writing books or writing rap, or just a lyricist and a writer, first. But bottom line, hustler.” But those business skills include quality control, and to deny his talent and innovations as a rapper would be like pretending Ice’s former LA club scenester pal Madonna is all business and no bangers. In honor of his recently announced upcoming album Criminal Migraine, here’s the good, the bad, and the O.G. of one of hip-hop’s greatest creators.

8. Gangsta Rap (2006)

None of Ice-T's last three studio albums get mentioned in his excellent autobiography Ice: A Memoir of Gangster Life and Redemption, and it’s not hard to hear why. Ice's last rap studio album to date, his first in seven years, sounds like the work of a man who had moved most of his hustle into acting, with cover art that tries too hard and music that doesn't try hard enough. “Walking in the Rain” is an enjoyably romantic spin from the man most of us didn’t know would turn into such a wife guy, but the album’s weighed down by forgettable guests and boasts Ice could have delivered in his sleep.

7. The Seventh Deadly Sin (1999)

In his 2000 episode of VH1's Behind the Music, Ice stated that he was more interested in making money than making music. Previous comments contradict this, so maybe he was joking or being defensive, but on The Seventh Deadly Sin, released one year earlier, he sounds disinterested in music, running through second-rate production and rap themes that he's stated better elsewhere. Released on Ice’s own digital record label Coroner Records (“The old-school major labels are going to die, only the coroner will continue to have a job.”) and less memorable than the home studio video interview the same year, in which he predicts the future of music and movies online: “Anybody who's ever seen it actually work cannot honestly believe CDs got a chance in hell in the next five-10 years….Right now, I can go get Lauryn Hill’s album from the Tower Records, rip it and email it to everybody in the world if that’s why I choose to do. There’s nothing you can do to stop that, right?”

6. Ice-T VI: Return of the Real (1996)

“I didn’t really mind doing little low-budget films because I never looked at myself as a movie star.” Ice remembered in his stellar 2022 book Split Decision. “But the drop-off in my music sales—yeah, at first that was a real fucking ego blow.” Much as one roots for Ice, it’d be hard to imagine any listener preferring VI: Return of the Real to Ice’s golden era rap masterpieces. The beats adapt for the post-G-Funk and Wu-Tang soundscapes, and Ice delivers the charm and wit, which are almost enough to carry storytelling that occasional hints at Ice’s peak game over 21 songs. The moving "I Must Stand" and the rapidfire "The Lane” are on 2000's Greatest Hits: The Evidence, the best place to hear both of those songs, where at least you can also get his soundtrack hit “Colors,” too.

5. Rhyme Pays (1987)

If not for some dated production and some touches of homophobia (which Ice was quick to frequently renounce in interviews), Rhyme Pays would be a notch or two higher. As it stands, Ice’s full-length debut starts one of the greatest five-album runs in rap history and the breakthrough of one of its most formidable artists. Starting with The Exorcist and Black Sabbath samples, as well as live drums by future Body Count drummer Beatmaster V, Ice established himself as a rapper of astonishing skill and range. The violence of the genre-inventing “6 ‘N the Morning” is still chilling, and the life of luxury exaggerations on "Somebody Gotta Do It (Pimpin' Ain't Easy)" are as funny as peak Weird Al. Ice proves himself as deft at throwing a party (“Make It Funky,” “409”) as he does laying down the facts (“Pain,” “Squeeze the Trigger.”) On the latter song, Ice closes the album by attacking both the law enforcement (“Cops hate kids, kids hate cops/Cops kill kids with warning shots”) and the government (“We buy weapons to keep us strong/Reagan sends guns where they don't belong”)  that would eventually try to shut him down over the Body Count song “Cop Killer.”

4. Home Invasion (1993)

At 77 minutes, Home Invasion could stand to be cut to a single LP. But at the height of his infamy Ice had a lot to say, and despite being the first Ice-T album to not improve on the previous one, Home Invasion features some of Ice’s most effective music, thumbing his nose at officials who complained about his influence on young white listeners by baiting would-be censors with his cover art and lyrics. For his Priority Records debut, Home Invasion delivers unadulterated Ice, with heated tracks like “Addicted to Danger” and “Race War,” and forgoes Ice’s usual humor to lean on Ice’s age and experience, one of his defining MC traits, on the autobiographical “That’s How I’m Livin’” the LA truce retelling “Gotta Lotta Love” and best of all on the edgy first single “I Ain’t New Ta This,” though these days the album’s best-known song is a deep cut that never received a single or music video release, teaming up with 2 Live Crew’s Brother Marquis on “99 Problems.” Without major label support, and many retailers still hesitant to stock his albums after the “Cop Killer” scandal, Home Invasion’s chart presence was short-lived, but 30 years later it holds up as a powerful, literary slice of gangsta rap game, and Ice’s most underrated record. Be sure to spin the bonus disc The Last Temptation of Ice for the fantastic “Ricochet,” a soundtrack hit to Ice’s 1991 film with Denzel Washington and John Lithgow.

3. Power (1988)

Duff McKagan called it "the soundtrack to my life in ‘88.” Kirk Hammett credits "Personal" as the inspiration for his "Enter Sandman'' solo. According to Bob Dylan's autobiography Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan was listening to Ice-T during the making of 1989's Oh Mercy, meaning he was likely enjoying this album and songs like "Girls L.G.B.N.A.F." Even fans of Rhyme Pays must have been struck by Power’s versatility, with Ice reinventing himself as a modernized version of the blaxploitation and crime novel heroes of his youth, even doing a spot on impression of his namesake Iceberg Slim’s spoken word Reflections in the homage “Soul on Ice.” The first hit “I’m Your Pusher'' built on a Curtis Mayfield sample to pioneer the rapped verses/sung hook format and show off Ice’s cinematic chops in the music video, described by author Greg Tate as “new jack’s first successful blaxploitation movie,” while applauding Ice as the “first gold rapper to emerge from a bona fide Black criminal enterprise, the gangs of Los Angeles.” Ice scored again with the crime drama hit “High Rollers,” but Power is Ice’s first front-to-back masterpiece, from the hard-edged title track to the slinky “Drama” to the entourage party in “The Syndicate.” Ice even transcended coastal rivalries to be the only West Coast act on 1988’s The Dope Jam Tour (Say No to Drugs), with Eric B & Rakim, Doug E. Fresh, Kool Moe Dee, Boogie Down Productions, Biz Markie. “I never thought I could out-rap any of the New York legends, but I was a bit more thought-provoking than the other rappers in the game.” Ice remembered.

2. The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech... Just Watch What You Say! (1989)

In most careers, this would be the definitive statement, but in an oeuvre as deep as Ice-T’s, this is just one of Ice’s classics. Darker, heavier and more political than his previous work, The Iceberg forgoes the rich and infamous lifestyle of his first two album covers (Ice chilling with his then-partner Darlene “the Syndicate Queen” Ortiz and DJ Evil E) for a harrowing sketch of a young Black man with three guns pointed at his head. The Black Sabbath and Jello Biafra-sampling opener “Shut Up, Be Happy” was heavy enough to serve as Megadeth’s entrance music for years. and the title track earned him spite from Tipper Gore and Oprah, who underestimated Ice’s intellect and debate skills when they tried to make an example of him on Oprah’s show. The Iceberg was both Ice-T’s edgiest and his biggest crossover move (it hit No. 1 on Harvard’s College Radio charts) to date, honing his storytelling into some of his wildest exploits (“Peel Their Caps Back,” “The Hunted Child”), dropping wisdom (“You Played Yourself,” “Freedom of Speech”), telling jokes (“My Word is Bond,” “Black ‘N’ Decker”) and rocking as hard as his punk and metal contemporaries (the hit “Lethal Weapon” and the hilarious “The Girl Tried to Kill Me,” featuring Body Count bandmates Ernie C and Beatmaster V), delivering banger after banger into a certifiable classic. Ice also touted his cinematic qualities with an self-designed MPAA-style sticker on the album: “'Rated X. Some material may be X-tra hype and inappropriate for squares and suckers.’” 

1. O.G. Original Gangster (1991)

The gangsta rap Exile on Main St. Something completely different. One of the greatest records ever, regardless of genre or era. 72 minutes of hip-hop brilliance that without a wasted second among its 24 tracks. The biggest hits were the soundtrack jam "New Jack Hustler (Nino's Theme)" and the American vernacular-reshaping title track, but the deep cuts are every bit as invigorating, from the brilliant "Mind Over Matter" through the unnerving, Black Sabbath-sampling “Midnight” and the closing "The Tower," infiltrated with drops of humor and wisdom like "Ya Shoulda Killed Me Last Year.” Listeners barely had a moment to catch their breath from all the curveballs by track 18, when Ice introduces his "Black hardcore band" Body Count and proceeds to out-thrash his contemporaries with a hard blast of punk and metal. As a  Musician profile noted, “Ice assembled a crew of four producers — D.J. Aladdin, DJ Su, Bilal Bashir and long-time associate Afrika Islam — and assigned them musical "missions," spurring creative competition in the old Motown tradition. The result is a fresh group of wildly contoured riffs and rhythms, from funk to speed metal to '70s rock, melded together in ways that render their origins unrecognizable while deftly complementing the moods of Ice-T's cinematic narratives.” Witty, catchy, groundbreaking and nearly always prescient (he does predict he'll never win a Grammy and that Nelson Mandela won't get a deserved Nobel Prize, because even someone as visionary as Ice-T didn’t know how ahead of its time this album was), O.G. Original Gangster reimagined gangsta rap as multifaceted music with novelistic lyrics, paving the way for 2-LP epics like All Eyez on Me, Life After Death and Wu-Tang Forever. The skits are funny and the interludes are catchy. Popular music would never be the same.

Bonus: Pimp to Eat (2000)

Two of horrorcore's greatest pioneers, Ice-T and Kool Keith, united for 2000's wild one-off Analog Brothers album Pimp to Eat, playing Ice Oscillator and Kool Korg respectively in a dizzying adventure packed with horror, sci-fi and sex. Our heroes, including Marc Moog (Marc Live,) Silver Synth (Black Silver) and Rex Roland JX3P (longtime Ice associate Pimpin' Rex) reimagine Marvel-style comics as an R-rated action movie, shifting between settings, languages and personas over avant-rap stories like “Analog Technics” and “More Freaks,” set in a futuristic 2005-6 but still sounding visionary in the 2020s. One could be forgiven for missing Pimp to Eat among Ice and Keith's workaholic creative turnout over the past 30+ years, but one would be remiss to skip over this gem of a record, the alternative rap equivalent of a collaboration between Charles Mingus and Sun Ra.

I Think About This a Lot: John Rzeznik in the Replacements Documentary

Gorman Bechard’s 2011 Replacements film, Color Me Obsessed, feels like a fans-only experience. It’s made for someone who cares enough to know where the title comes from (“Color Me Obsessed”, off 1983’s Hootenanny, a record underloved even by Replacements standards), which means a high percentage of the ‘Mats fanbase. If you like the Replacements, the lovable college rock losers famous for their ragtag music, appearance and performances, you’re probably a big enough fan for a two-hour oral history film about them. The band and their music never appear in the movie, but we get accounts from friends, fans and collaborators who've been touched in some way. If you care what people like Chicago's Sound Opinions critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis think about the Replacements, you are going to love this movie.

But it’s not a moment from DeRogatis or Kot, or any of the film’s considerable cast—writers David Carr and Robert Christgau, actors Dave Foley and George Wendt, and producer Steve Albini among them—that I keep going back to. It’s the Goo Goo Dolls' John Rzneznik. The Goo Goo Dolls are one of many bands influenced by the Replacements (Rzeznik even co-wrote a Dolls song, 1993's “We Are the Normal”, with Replacements leader Paul Westerberg). But on the Color Me Obsessed web site they stand out among musician participants—“Hüsker Dü, Babes in Toyland, The Decemberists, The Hold Steady...and Goo Goo Dolls.” The Goo Goo Dolls are the only one of those bands with a platinum record or multiple Grammy nominations, plus the only one likely to get invited to perform at the Macy Day Parade, which the Dolls' Rzeznik and Robby Takac have apparently done three times. I don't know what the kids thought, but people who spent the 1990s in grade school seemed mostly startled by NBC anchors referring to “classic rock group” the Goo Goo Dolls, and/or Rzeznik's face, his heartthrob good looks now hardened by plastic surgery. They're the only band in Color Me Obsessed with a smash worldwide hit, 1998's “Iris” from the City of Angels soundtrack, plus a slew of radio hits, including “Slide”, “Black Balloon” and “Name”, more popular than the biggest songs by the Replacements or any other band in Color Me Obsessed.

But there they are in the movie, Rzeznik, Takac and drummer Mike Malinin, talking the Replacements. “The first time I heard Don’t Tell a Soul, I got a copy of it for my birthday," Rzeznik recalls. "We were sitting in our friend’s apartment...and I opened it up, tore it open, put it in the CD player...and I heard it, and I pushed the eject button, put it back in the case and threw it out the window. And I was like ‘No way! This is not the Replacements.’”

I imagine people who saw this in theaters laughing. Who invited Prom King here? Mr. Don’t Want the World to See Me thinks the Replacements sold out? Did the movie’s filmmakers invite him here to make fun of him? A friend I recounted this too sounded similarly disappointed by John Rzeznik's career moves (“Has he even heard Superstar Car Wash?”). But Rzeznik is serious. He loves the Replacements and felt betrayed by the overproduced, ballad-heavy record that sounded less like Let It Be and more like, well, the Goo Goo Dolls. 

Rzeznik’s moment is a touching realization that artists don’t think of themselves as the bad guy. Rzeznik doesn’t feel like the prom king. He feels like the kind of outsider who’d find solace in the Replacements’ songs about loners and coulda-beens. He's a capital A Artist who writes songs from the heart, just like Paul Westerberg, only Rzeznik’s connect on a much bigger scale. He didn’t write Dizzy Up the Girl to be a corporate rock poser. It’s just the record he was feeling at the time. Paul Westerberg wanted to write hits too, signing with a major label and filming music videos. We might view the Replacements differently if Don’t Tell a Soul was the hit Westerberg hoped it to be. Maybe their scrappy past would be overshadowed by the polished soft rock band behind hits like “Achin’ to Be” and “I’ll be You” (the opposite seems to have happened—2019's Dead Man's Pop box set attempted to rescue Don’t Tell a Soul’s songs from their 1989 gloss). Let It Be or Tim could have been their Superstar Car Wash.

In The Onion's brilliant Sting sendup "You Know, I Used to Be Kind of Cool Once," the author concludes "Then again, Eric Clapton, of 'Tears In Heaven' fame, really used to tear it up, too, come to think of it. Or, hell, just take Paul Westerberg. Now there’s one to ponder." If one of Paul's maudlin solo albums were a big hit, more Replacements fans might view him the way some Police fans view Sting's solo career, or Cream fans view Eric Clapton's. But since the Replacements’ attempts at major success failed, they get to be scrappy underdogs with devoted fans who line up to be in a movie like Color Me Obsessed. Maybe if “Iris” tanked we'd be watching a Goo Goo Dolls movie and laughing at an appearance from Train.