The Replacements Stumble into the Masonic 

The Replacements, perhaps the most aptly named reunion band in music, are finally bringing their brand of reckless abandon to San Francisco, having skipped over the city on their first string of (mostly festival) shows.

Any concerns that this is just the latest in a long line of bands to reunite without all the original members only to underperform will not be squashed by front man Paul Westerberg, who has a tendency to forget his own lyrics on stage — but the truth is he did that even in the band's prime. Still, the crowds that haven't forgotten the importance of The Replacements are always there to help fill in the missing words — and seats.

"If I could remember every song and how to play them, I would choose to do that," Westerberg told Rolling Stone in 2014. "When I forget, it's fun to have the crowd continue the song with the proper lyrics."

The indie-rock anti-heroes' April 13 show at the Masonic Auditorium is already sold out — just like the majority of the dates on this string of more intimate shows The Replacements decided to book after headlining a few festivals.

When it comes to their legacy, The Replacements' extra-musical offerings are almost equally as important (or at least remembered) as their discography. The self-sabotaging group, often cited as the greatest rock 'n' roll band to never make it, was notorious for drunkenly breaking into half-assed Sham 69 covers that fell apart just as quickly as they materialized. Sometimes, the whole set would consist of disjointed fragments of a seemingly random selection of songs — like a human jukebox skipping through its entire cache of records. Although this was not always the case, it did happen, and is best captured on the legendary 1984 Replacements bootleg The Shit Hits the Fans.

The Replacements' influence, which can be felt throughout almost as many genres as they cover, can be found most notably in punk, where the group's "fuck off" attitude, earlier albums (especially 1981's Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash) and live performances resonated with many aspiring punk musicians. The bay's own Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day credits the group with having saved him from playing in bad speed-metal bands. (Even SF Weekly's music blog, All Shook Down, was named for a Replacements album.)

But not every musician inspired by The Replacements became a huge mainstream success story. Conor Crockford, a punk and indie singer who's played with various acts and is currently struggling to start a band he "thinks" is called Lovelace, was inspired by The Replacements' attitude.

"They were a scrappy, underachieving band that showed failures like me could just go out and play," said Crockford, who fronted the now-defunct Dead Set. "And you could write songs about the kind of bruised romanticism I've always had and still rock out."

During The Replacements' later years as a band, they would often half-jokingly claim in interviews that they never intended to be associated with punk at all — they just couldn't play their instruments, so they turned up their amps as loud as they could. But The Replacements are acutely aware of their influence on the genre, and of the genre's influence on them in their early '80s material.

The Replacements officially reformed in 2013 after Westerberg and bassist Tommy Stinson (who had spent some time playing in Guns N' Roses) decided to pick up where they had left off, and they have been busy ever since — headlining Riot Fest and Coachella (where they were joined onstage by Armstrong). Then, staying true to their roots of doing whatever the hell they want, The Replacements recorded a 25-minute-long improvisational jazz piece and threw it up on their SoundCloud. The band also released a new eight-disc box set featuring seven studio albums and one EP that reveal the band's competing tendencies at creating alt-rock gems and drunken punk.

"It was inevitable at some point," Stinson told the Arizona Republic of the reunion. "We've stayed in contact. He and I never had any major falling out. We just kind of walked away from it."

Stinson's brother, Bob, the band's original charismatic lead guitarist, was given the boot in 1986 and died in 1995 after years of struggling with substance abuse. His replacement, Slim Dunlap, more recently suffered a stroke that ended his guitar-playing career. But with help from some, well, replacements, The Replacements decided to bring their troublemaking ways back to smaller venues with their "Back by Unpopular Demand" tour.

So, what can fans who attend the reunion show April 13 expect?

Imagine if Oasis had the spirit of the Sex Pistols. The Replacements go back and forth between awing crowds with balladry that sounds like it belongs to stadium crowds, and ragged, distorted punk that would fit in comfortably at Gilman Street. And who knows: They may break up on stage like they did the first time they broke up, in Chicago, in 1991, when Tommy Stinson, after croaking out "Hootenanny," sulked offstage telling the crowd, "It's the fuckin' last time you'll ever hear it."

Fans can expect to witness the inherent recklessness that separates a Replacements reunion from, say, the Pixies' perfect re-creation of Doolittle. In recent years the Replacements' human jukeboxing ways have become more deliberate, but the depths to which the band is willing to reach into that cache of records is as deep as ever.

Maybe the band will show up and perform its songs exactly how they're played on record — but probably not. And somewhere in between, the anticipation and anxiety that comes with not knowing if something is going to fall apart at any moment is where true excitement can be found.

Isn't that the reason we go see reunion bands anyway? To see if they still "got it"? Going to see a band today that didn't even always perform to the best of its abilities 25 years ago is the antithesis of watching a lip-synced SuperBowl halftime show or music video.

That's why it's so damn fun, and just the way The Replacements always wanted it to be — at least, according to the lyrics of their 1984 song "Seen Your Video":

"Seen your video!/ That phony rock'n'roll!/ We don't wanna know!"