Another look: "Come Feel Me Tremble" -

Paul Westerberg's unusual - what else? - documentary

EDITOR’S NOTE: With so many Paul Westerberg/Replacements fans stopping in recently - “Hi, kids!” it seemed the least I could do was take another look at my “Come Feel Me Tremble” DVD and write about it. I’m sure most of you have seen it. If not, I put a link to it on YouTube at the end of this post. Thanks everyone. And welcome!

Of course, it’s at the very end of the video/DVD — after the credits — that Paul Westerberg kicks in with exactly the kind of rocker that would have gotten Bob Stinson fired up, Chris Mars thumping the drums, Tommy Stinson on his toes, whoever the producer was banging on the desk and the neighbors — they HAD to hear him — just smiling, shaking their head; they’d been hearing this kind of stuff coming out of the basement for years.

“Everything Goes Wrong” with the classic Westerberg-style opening line “It’s easy to see it’s all my fault…” could well be the superscription for The Replacements’ star-crossed career and definitely appropriate for Westerberg’s own multi-label, multi-named musical salvos that only seemed to reach a chosen, passionately devoted, unstoppable seeking few. (I see you out there!)

Another look at Paul Westerberg's "Come Feel Me Tremble"

But The Replacements weren’t backing him on that song. Seemingly recorded around 2003, the band was long over. Guitarist Bob Stinson passed in 1995 and had drugged his way out of the band around 1986. Slim Dunlap, Bob’s eventual replacement, passed just a few days before Christmas last year. The more-or-less original Replacements played their last official gig in Chicago in 1991, appropriately enough on Independence Day. While Dave Minehan and Josh Freese stepped in for the re-Replacements’ brief “Back By Unpopular Demand” 13-date tour with Tommy Stinson and Paul back in 2015, that was pretty much it.

Yet, unless my Westerberg-oriented ears deceive me, “Everything Goes Wrong” would have been a kickass track on any one of their records. But as the title says, things didn’t quite work out that way for Minneapolis’s favorite band.

Agreed, suggesting everything goes wrong is way too harsh an assessment for those of us who love and treasure the roughly 150 Replacement songs that pierced the airwaves like no other. But that’s probably not all that far off from how Westerberg thinks about it. He’s not the cheeriest of souls under normal circumstances and now, at 65, pretty quiet these last few years, you wonder how he views his legacy? It’s a sure bet we see — and hear it — a lot differently than he does.

As for this DVD, you can probably tell from the half-ass cover, the inside information printed so small you can barely read it, the sequence of songs sort of thrown in there any old way, “Come Feel Me Tremble” is, in its own inimitable way, a genuine Westerberg artifact, like a three-quarters smoked giant stinky stogie, tinted glasses, weird hats and a succession of on-stage outfits direct from Goodwill.

Hunter Thompson — who you have to imagine would have loved Westerberg nearly as much as he loved Bob Dylan — used to write, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” That’s what you get in the 88 minutes of “Come Feel Me Tremble” - unvarnished and yes, untamed (something I suspect he’s proud of) pure Paul Westerberg.

Considering this was recorded 22 years ago when he was embarking on a solo tour that included stops in record stores as well as small halls, it still holds up pretty well. Especially considering most of the material came from a wide-ranging assortment of Westerberg devotees, each filming bits on their own. It’s “produced” — we use that term loosely — by Otto Zithromax (good name for a drug!) and edited (sort of) by somebody named Joe Martin, who, we bet, had at least a beer or two while working on this.

As always, Westerberg’s sarcastic sense of humor runs throughout the film. In fact, it reveals itself on the opening screen which reads: “This movie would not be possible without your illegal footage and photographs. Thank you. Love, Paul”

From there, we’re taken, in ramshackle fashion, through a number of recent songs from the Westerberg canon. Some Replacement songs do show up but that’s well into the video.

You see Westerberg in an assortment of strange outfits, performing songs like “High Time” and “Hillbilly Junk” and “Waiting For Somebody” among others, solo. Just him and his electric guitar.

Throughout the video there are occasional comments/interviews with him, like when he says “I tried the band thing for a fleeting moment…tried various combinations but it sounded better just me and my guitar so I went alone. It’s more difficult to tour now than it was 20 years ago. I play better now because I actually rest my voice and go to sleep and not stay up all night. Once I’m geared up and ready to go, I’m happy to do it.”

But are the songs as good without a band? Well, it’s certainly easier than making sure people are on time and their instruments are in tune and they can synch with as unpredictable a soul as has ever wandered into a recording studio. It’s cheaper, too.

On stage or in the record stores, Westerberg’s stage presence is pretty much what you’d expect. He’s quirky, seems overwhelmed by the shouted-out requests (which were, to be fair, all over the map — “Sixteen Blue” “Hootenanny”, etc.) at the live shows, particularly in the record stores.

He’s candid, says he has “severe ADD. That’s why the first take is always the best take. I don’t remember, my memory is bad when it comes to stuff like that. Some reviewer in Portland said he was too wasted to play his own song. I just didn’t remember the damn thing.”

Watching this now, all these years later, you wonder what he would think. One image that might get you like it got me was about 16 minutes into the film. A ghostlike image of Westerberg is projected on a brick wall — not sure how they did it — but it’s creepy. Sort of a reprise of “Rock and Roll Ghost.” You hear him singing “Got you down…like Christopher Columbus in a world that’s flat…or Harry Houdini, he has escaped your grasp.” Spooky!

Though he’s a dad and was married for while, he very much projects himself and writes as a loner (no band!) One song he really seemed eager to play was “Men Without Ties,” a B-side that’s an ode (?) to a lonesome man’s life. “Men without ties don’t dress for dinner. Do the Friday night frozen pizza thing. Don’t want no wife or no beginner…Everything you buy is soon expired. Some neighbors thinking that you’re gay. Others assume you’ve been fired. Smoking cigars all day…”

One revealing clip showed Westerberg lying on a couch, an interviewer asking for capsule summaries of his Replacement albums:

• Hootenanny: “Theft.”

• Pleased To Meet Me: “Frightened”

• Sorry, Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash: “Fearless”

• Don’t Tell A Soul: “Sad”

• Tim: “Coulda been”

• Let It Be: “Drunk”

• All Shook Down: “Ummmm”

  He also shares a revealing story about encountering Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and the differences between the two: “Once Kurt Cobain and I rode up in an elevator together and we didn’t say a word to each other. He was dying to be dying and I was dying to be somewhere else. We got off on the same floor 516 and I’m in 517. We fumble with the key, go in, slam the door shut.”

  There are some Replacement songs woven in there. There’s a killer version of “Unsatisfied” performed in a record store where, in the final verse, Paul yanks off his tinted glasses and says “Look me in the eyes…Is there anything there?”

You’ll hear “Can’t Hardly Wait” — a nice audience sing-a-long, “I Will Dare” with him sitting amongst the audience, bits of “Left Of The Dial” and “Alex Chilton.” But the specter, well, the ghost of The Replacements still hangs over his work. And, we guess, always will.

Earlier, he seemed to be reflecting on those days. Likely, he can’t help it and neither can his fans, right, kids?

“What went wrong is what was supposed to happen,” he says, sounding as if he’s been asked that question so many times, he can never bury it. “It was our job to fail on as big a scale as possible. And the fact that Bob died after the fact only fit, it fit! Once again, it was scripted. I’ve been waiting for Tommy to go for a long time and he’s healthy now. Is it my job to go next?”

There may not be another song. Not for us to hear, anyway. But we’ve already got plenty, don’t we? More than we asked for, really.

As I watched the video wind down, fans getting him to autograph T-shirts and posters, one fan presenting him with a baseball bat stamped for “Johnny Westerberg,” some shaking his hand, others giving him a hug, an artist, when you come to think of it, is always alone.

Even though he might be gifted enough to touch more people than he could ever have imagined, do you ever feel satisfied? I think we know the answer to that already. If you’re unsure, just check out the song at 1:05.43 of “Come Feel Me Tremble.”