A recent post by @batcountry1980 made me realize an essential truth about myself, and lots of other Gen X guys. There is one album by The Replacements—Let It Be—that I consider one of the most remarkable and special things I have experienced in my life. Nothing musical tops it. It crystallized something unspoken in my young life into musical form (and brought to light things in the larger culture), in a way that nothing else ever has. The emotions—an entire spectrum!—just pour out of every song, from ‘I Will Dare’ to ‘Answering Machine’ to ‘Sixteen Blue.’ The music is beautiful, mournful and ecstatic all at the same time. Paul Westerberg is a total genius. He’s the Bob Dylan of GenX, and true to Gen X form he’s been ignored by the larger culture and hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves. I don’t know what it is about those four guys or the music they produced, but they had something that spoke to me like nothing else ever has. (I delve deeper into the mysterious power of The Replacements, and other formative Gen X tropes in my novel, THE PURSUIT OF COOL.)