By Ted Drozdowski. An insider's look at the recording that took place here at Ardent Studios, with stories told by producer Jim Dickinson and engineer John Hampton.

From 1980 until 1986, the Replacements rose from the ranks of the thriving Minneapolis music scene to become one of the most beloved, frustrating, and notorious bands of the American indie rock movement that begat alternative, emo, and even alt country. Years of shambolic, inebriated, and totally thrilling, life-or-death performances in tiny bars, VFW halls, and house parties across the country earned them a near-fanatical fan base, and also the reputation of being the best and worst band in the world—a simultaneous title they could lay claim to in the same night, the same set, even the same song. From the maniacal and brilliant playing of guitarist Bob Stinson, who could simultaneously channel Yes, the Damned, and the Beatles into poetic non-sequiturs of guitar chaos, to the pure punk energy of his teenaged little brother Tommy on bass, the Stonesy gallop of drummer Chris Mars, and the staggering emotion of frontman Paul Westerberg’s voice and songwriting, the Replacements were a dysfunctional knot of musical misfits, and a band like no other.

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