While on a run recently, my phone on shuffle, “Can’t Hardly Wait” came on. It’s a song I’ve written about before, yet as I was running on this crisp December evening, past lawns festooned with inflatable reindeer and trees draped in lights, the thought came to me that “Can’t Hardly Wait” could be read as a song of Advent. It’s a plausible way to interpret this verse as a plea for Jesus to come and be with us already:
Jesus rides beside me.
He never buys any smokes.
Hurry up hurry up ain’t you had enough of this stuff?
Ashtray floors, dirty clothes, and filthy jokes?
As I ran along, listening to these lines, I started to think of other Replacement songs: “The Last,” “Darling One,” “Here Comes a Regular.” It then occurred to me that these, too, could be understood as advent songs. Weirdly, all happen to be the final tracks of their respective albums.
The OED defines advent like this:
- The ecclesiastical season immediately preceding Christmas.
- In Christian Theology: the coming of Christ to the world; the Incarnation.
- The coming or arrival of any person or thing considered significant.
Item 2 is illustrated by the quoted lyrics, from “Can’t Hardly Wait,” above. Item 1 is illustrated by the month when I discovered this thing and wrote the article you’re reading now. Item 3 is the most salient to what I’m going to call the Replacements’ Advent Canon. Each of the following songs indeed seems to be waiting for the “coming or arrival of [a] person or thing considered significant.” Each album thus ends on a note not of resolution but of longing for resolution. The documents are open ended, every last song future-minded.
So without further ado, a chronological trip through the advent-ial Replacements final-song oeuvre, with accompanying lyric evidence meant to make my case:
“Raised in the City,” from Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash (1981):
Raised in the city
Ready to run
Cruise to the lake
Fun fun fun
Disinclined to groove around
Raised in the city
Raised on beers
She gets rubber
In all four gears
Disinclined to lay down
Get outta my way
I can’t see it
Outta my way
Can’t see no plan
According to Genius, that last word is “band,” which makes little sense. Besides, when I listen I hear “plan.” The lyrics testify to life, but life undirected. There’s no map, no plan, just the energy to move forward. What’s palpable is the desire to see “it,” whatever it is.
~
“Gimme Noise,” from Stink (1982)
Are you waiting
Are you waiting
Waiting for, give it to me
Gimme noise
Gimme noise
Noise!
Noise!
Noise!
What’s one looking for this time of year but a blessed sound of assurance?
~
“Treatment Bound,” from Hootenanny (1983)
We’re gettin’ nowhere fast as we can
We got a noseful of them so-called friends
We’re gettin no place as quick as we know how
We’re gettin’ nowhere what will we do now?
This puts me in mind of the ending of “The Scattered Congregation,” a poem by Tomas Tranströmer: “Nicodemus the sleepwalker is on his way / to the Address. Who’s got the Address? / Don’t know. But that’s where we’re going.”
~
“Answering Machine,” from Let It Be (1984)
Try and breathe some life into a letter
Losing hope, we’ll never be together
My courage is at its peak
You know what I mean
How do you say you’re okay to an answering machine?
How do you say good night to an answering machine?
A song about the loneliness of dis-incarnation and a desire for its opposite.
~
“Here Comes a Regular,” from Tim (1985)
Everybody wants to be someone’s here
Someone’s gonna show up, never fear
The lyric speaks for itself. This couplet is one of the best sung passages in all The Replacements discography.
~
“Can’t Hardly Wait,” from Pleased to Meet Me (1987)
Lights that flash in the evening
Through a hole in the drapes
I’ll be home when I’m sleeping
I can’t hardly wait
“The natural image is the adequate symbol,” Ezra Pound wrote a hundred years ago. Perhaps the image of light flashing through drapes isn’t natural in the way Pound means, yet the image is nevertheless a symbol of the partial, inexplicable knowledge driving the singer’s hope for home.
~
“Rock ‘n’ Roll Ghost” (from Don’t Tell a Soul 1989 and Dead Man’s Pop 2019)
Well you said, “He’s better off dead”
You think that I might have heard a word
But I was much too young
And much too cool for words
Look at me now:
No one here to raise a toast
Take me by the hand and raise a toast
To a rock ‘n’ roll ghost
The story goes that this song was originally slated to be the last song of Don’t Tell A Soul, The Replacements bid at the big time. When the record company hired an engineer to mix it for maximum commercial impact, a different song was placed at the end of the album. The original, more earthy mix, released this year on Dead Man’s Pop, puts the song back where it belongs, at the end, when festivities are winding down, when a toast of farewell might indeed be raised.
~
“The Last” (from All Shook Down 1990)
Would it help to fall in love a little slower
I know it hurts at any speed
So you have another drink
And get down on your knees
You been swearin’ to God
Now maybe if you’d ask
That this one be your last
‘Cause this one child is killing you
This one’s your last chance
To make this last one really the last
“You been swearin’ to God / Now maybe if you’d ask!” How often that line has been directed squarely at me. And not only at me, I suspect.
