Thirty years ago today I thought to myself “Maybe this time they got it right this time and this record is gonna be AWESOME and HUGE.”

I was working at a record store and I was thinking about the Replacements album Don’t Tell A Soul which was released on this day, February 1st in 1989. Once again though, many of the elements that made the group a quintessential American Rock-n-Roll band for the 1980s were there but there was also some fatal flaw that tripped the whole damn thing up.

I realized that while all their records had some dang fine songs on them, none of the ones they were going to do for a major label were going to capture the grit and frays of their first four albums.

This particular clip of the album’s lead-off track, “Talent Show”, is a live thing from something called the International Rock Awards. I remember watching this the evening it originally aired. No one I knew heard of the International Rock Awards before. I don’t believe they ever happened again either

What are you listening to tonight?