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Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 12:02:58 -0500
From: Reigst@aol.com
Subject: Bob Stinson, Lyndale Legend

In the spring of 1986 Bob Stinson asked Reipo (John Reipas) and I (Ray Reigstad) to stand up for him at his wedding. He was marrying a girl from Long Beach, California whom he'd met through our roommate Tom 'TC' Cook. Up until then she (the bride to be) had been dating a guy name Earth (a.k.a. Mark Lauer) who was playing in a band with TC, Go Great Guns.

Anyhow, Bob fell in love with 'Bunny' (as he referred to her) and Bunny dumped Earth for Bob and the wedding was held at the Blaisdel Manor on 24th and Blaisdel in South Minneapolis. Reipo and I wore white retro tuxedo jackets we'd bought at Tatters on Lyndale, and black Southern ‘Colonel Sanders' ties. When everybody asked Bob who we were, he shrugged and unwaveringly answered; "They're fishing buddies from Florida." It was a freaky scene. The band he'd founded, The Replacements, were at the zenith of their popularity and about 400 people attended the ceremony. Standing up there under that stuffed elk head and looking out at the audience was farcical at best and hilarious at most. It felt and looked like a movie set. A comedy movie set. Lots of rockers (all dressed up) interspersed with family members, distant relatives, friends, fans and media people. I remember seeing Bob's brother Tommy in the front row wearing an all red outfit with white shoes, hair coifed up as always. He looked like one of The Romantics. About two seconds after the official "I do," Old Bobby Stinson, Paul Westerberg (singer for The Replacements) and I went into the men's room. (Name deleted) produced a packet and proceeded to draw out long rails of blow on the aluminum tray that ran the length of the mirror. This is the guy who once said on stage (pointing to Bob first) "He's got a drinking problem and I've got a big nose." Side note: Later that year, Prince released Sign of the Times and the title track's lyrics were published on the back of The City Pages. One of the verses went: "Back home there are seventeen year old boys and their idea of fun, is being in a gang called The Disciples, high on crack and totin' a machine gun." Over in a basement practice room, on Garfield Avenue South, I'd changed the words in a briefly lived derision to: "At home there are CC patrons and their idea of fun, is being in a band called The Mats, high on coke, and totin' a Gibson." I would sing it to Stinson when he'd come over to our duplex. He'd say, "That's," pause, "not entirely untrue."

Anyhow, back at the wedding of the century, Reipo and I briefly quibbled over who was to sign the marriage certificate as neither of us wanted the friggin' huge-ass responsibility. I ended up autographing it before going into the men's room. The photos that were taken that day out on the front steps are classic. As soon as they were processed they already looked about thirty years old, at least. Nine years after that wedding Bob died and many of the same guests showed up at his funeral. In January of 2000, Reipo, Mike Josephson and I finally got the Static Taxi CD "Stinson Blvd." mixed, mastered and pressed. I will now put the liner notes here and hopefully that will fill in some of the gaps. Anybody who has a copy of Stinson Blvd. might want to skip this part. June 1st, 1988, 1 a.m. We're sitting in my graffiti covered Monte Carlo at 24th and Blaisdel (coincidence?). We have two 1-gallon jugs of keg beer from a party sloshing around on the back floor of the vehicle. I just ran a red and the cops have us pulled over. Me, John, Bob, and Chris. The policeman comes back to my window to give me back my license. "You're living on borrowed time, get lost." He says, all cockey and flips the plastic card at me. We had just picked up Chris "The Cub" Corbett moments earlier at MCAD. John knew him from art school and told Bob and I that this kid could really play bass.

Anyhow, we went into the basement of Uptown Pizza and played all night. Bob, John, and I had been hanging around together since 1985, and had been jamming together since before his departure from The Replacements. Now we were four. Now, we were Static Taxi. The next few weeks were spent in the musician's greenroom in the Minneapolis Art Institute. When that free ride expired, we were forced to find a place of our own. John got a hold of a guy in the classifieds named Ed Larson. He was a Minneapolis old-timer, and he had an old warehouse/grain elevator over by the University of Minnesota, behind Williams Arena. We rented the office of the otherwise abandoned building. A rather spacious room that was carpeted and even had a bathroom. Along with the new rehearsal space came drinking buddies. Since the Scarehouse was located along the train tracks it had become a meeting place for transients, winos, Vietnam vets, drifters, dropouts and people with no other place to go. A loose community galvanized by cheap vodka and beer, camaraderie and a general appreciation for freedom. A forgotten demographic constituting "The Compound," Kerone was the one in charge with Charlie 'Hillbilly' Buchanon right by his side. The two head honchos were from Ireland and Corothers, Kentucky respectively. Honorable mentions: Brother John (WW II POW) Jim (a lost alcoholic kid about our age from California) Cherokee Lee (the part-time repo man, from Cupertino, CA) Michael Target (crack addict and petty thief) King Ed of the Tramps, Packrat, Leo... We became friends with these guys. They were at most of our rehearsals. Our audience.

After we‘d unloaded a hundred rounds of .25 caliber bullets into one of the clothes bails that didn't get sent to Africa, Ed's wife Lorraine, insisted on booting us out. So Larson put us in one of the five boxcars he had outside on a piece of track that had been cut off from the rest. He often bragged that the aluminum inside the refrigerator cars made him seven times the money he had spent on acquiring them. "The boxcar Kids!" He'd say, laughing. Throughout 1989, fueled by LSD and beer, we, as Bob put it 'Forged our sound' in that boxcar. "Art blues!" He added enthusiastically. Some rehearsals went into the next day. Chris and I were both driving cabs for a living, and many Blue & White drivers took breaks to have a cold one and listen to us practice. There would be taxis parked outside the huge, safe-like sliding door. And inside there was red carpet that had been thrown out from the Radisson, colored lights and friendly conversation between assorted displaced persons. And always, there was music; Kerone screaming, "Take a walk on the wild side!"

We battled two cold winters in the boxcar with four kerosene heaters. Got it up to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. That was nice when it was -20 outside. Then in the summer of ‘90, in August, the warehouse burnt down, along with it went our power supply and Static Taxi's spirit. From that day on things unraveled. The party was over. We tried to hold the band together but nothing could stop the bleeding. We decided to fold in the summer of ‘91, Mike Laheka playing bass on the last few shows. As we watched our friend Bob kill himself we felt helpless and scared. We were always saying it would be a dream come true to kidnap Bob, bring him to an island to clean up, and then record the ultimate rock album. I guess this is as close as we'll get, 'living on borrowed time'. And that's pretty much the story of our band Static Taxi. The Boxcar Kids. On the side of our boxcar were the letters WWTX, painted in white on maroon. We always called it ‘World War Texas' .

Bob's old band, The Replacements, folded in 1991 as well. In July, at a gig in Chicago. Bob had been replaced with Slim Dunlap, who happens to be a real stand-up guy and The ‘Mats drummer (and Bob's friend had quit and been replaced by Steve Foley). Since then their music and myth has achieved legendary proportions, sort of like a flower that keeps blooming. People are always asking me to tell them stories about Bob. The funny thing is, when I met him-when my friends and I met him-we were not big ‘Mats fans. Reipo and I met Bob in the summer of 1985. Musically, we were more into local acts like The Suburbs and The Urban Guerrillas at the time. Of course, we had heard most of the albums that The Replacements had put out, but the band was not that huge back then.

The first time I laid eyes on Bob he was in Bunny's red pickup truck (he'd met her at our duplex one night at an after hours party and I was somewhere else). Anyhow, he was stretched out across the seat of Bunny's truck, in our driveway at 1202 West 28th Street. His face was gray. His face was actually fucking gray, like ashes. My first reaction was to call 911 if you want to know the truth. He looked awful; one of those three day benders of his. Later that week, Reipas, Mike Josephson, Bob, and I walked over to The Uptown Bar to get some beers. On the way there we cut through an alley behind Lagoon and Hennepin. Bob kicked in a garage window and yelled, "Run!" I guess that's a fair way to describe his nature. He seemed to live for those existentially out-of-place, self inflicted/induced moments. Always doing the wrong thing, on time.

I remember him telling Bunny this real sketchy story one time about his whereabouts. He had been on another binge and went missing for a few days. When he resurfaced, he claimed that he'd ridden up to Duluth with a guy who had a truck-load of explosives, and that he (Bob) had to ride along and talk to the driver to keep him from falling asleep, driving off the road, and consequently blowing everything up. The Replacements were recording their album Tim at the time for Reprise, a Warner Bros. subsidiary label, and Bob spent a good deal of the time at our house when he wasn't in the studio. One evening in July, Reipo and I were sitting at the kitchen table reading The City Pages when we saw an ad for a Replacements show at First Avenue, in downtown Minneapolis. It had started, or was supposed to about twenty minutes ago. We woke up Bob who was passed out on the couch and drove him downtown. The place was packed and the other guys were milling about onstage, probably wondering if their lead guitarist was going to not show up again or what. That was typical Stinson behavior. Not tell us about the concert and arrive late. It was a great rock show, one of the best I've ever seen. About as rock-n-roll as it gets.

Another time he urgently dragged us to the Uptown Bar, no explanation. Once inside he said that we had to meet a friend of his. We walk into the room where the stage is and there sitting at a booth is Weird Al Yankovic. Bob had had a beer with him earlier and I still cannot believe how fucking bizarre it was to be introduced to Weird Al by even Weirder Bob. Once in 1986, John did a cartoon drawing of Bob on the back of a long sleeved military shirt someone had given me. In the rendition, there was an eight ball and chain hanging from a shackle on his ankle. Looked exactly like him. It was in a basement room called 'Rhythms' at 3017 Garfield that Bob would come over and do Guess Who covers like "No Sugar Tonight" and "Hand Me Down World" and other oddball stuff like "Radar Love" when he was still a Replacement. I was singing and playing bass. Reipo was drumming on a chrome kit he bought at the pawnshop at Lake Street and Grand, and of course Bob was playing guitar and singing backup. "La la la la la la la la la la la la la" in a super-high voice. I believe the principal reasons Bob instantly took to us is because, one; we were not fans of his, did not want anything from him, and two; we all shared the same oddly defined yet sophisticated cavalier sense of humor, sort of a highly illuminated light-heartedness. Adroit, fast-paced but thought out humor was consequential to the old boy.

Standing at the little wooden podium, speaking at his funeral in 1995, I laughed and cried at the same time. As crazy as it sounds I always sort of thought of Bob Stinson as the older brother I never had. Some oddball connection I could never really define. Reipo and I called him Neil Winston. Sometimes it was Neil Lyndale. I'm not glamorizing him or anything, he could piss me off to no end sometimes. He didn't try to, but he didn't try not to either. It was just Neil Lyndale's brain. Complex to the point of simplicity, and back around. He always looked older than he was too. The doctor who did the autopsy on him said he had the body of a seventy-year-old man. Just like Charlie 'The Bird' Parker. They were both thirty-five years old at the time of death and they were both musical pioneers with their respective instruments. Guitar and Alto saxophone Puissant players. They both died broke and they both drank a lot of booze. They both liked heroin toward the end too. To Neil Lyndale, Static Taxi's boxcar must have been the ultimate hide out, as much as he loved trains and beer and rock and amplifiers. There were nights when I'd think to myself, "I can't fucking believe the wild sound in here." At times it was utterly inestimable. But of course it was totally sloppy sometimes, nowhere near alchemic.

Occasionally, we'd see Paul Westerberg staggering down Lyndale Avenue on our way to pick up Stinson for band rehearsal (we all knew how to play so it wasn't called ‘band practice'). "Saw Paul on the way here..." We would say to Bob in the backseat.

"Was he drunk?" Bob would in turn ask.

"Yeah, it looked like it, he looked pretty fucked up." And he'd just roar laughing.

Static Taxi's first official gig was July 25, 1988, at First Avenue in the main room. It was a twenty-minute cameo and they lowered the curtain back down when we started playing "Light My Fire"! November of 1999 saw the authorized bootleg release "Take City" by Mark Lindquist's Duluth punk label, Shaky Ray Records and we (John and I) put out "Stinson Blvd." in April of 2000. We had 1000 copies pressed. Then, in April of 2003, LA based Birdman Records released Static Taxi's 'Closer 2 Normal'. That's a whole other story. A lot of people try to sound like Bob but no one ever will. You have to realize how intensely complicated of a person he was to even begin to understand his playing. He was an eccentric, friendly, too-smart fruit in the truest form. At one point, I heard a writer sum up his style saying something like: Everything Stinson ever listened to as a child and in his early teens, all of his musical influences if you will, filter through that weird mind of his and come out as his own style/sound, the way he wants to hear it, or wanted to hear it the first time.

Back in the late 80's, Bob and I used to go into The Knut Koupe Guitar Shop, when it used to be on 28th and Hennepin in Uptown Minneapolis. First we would slam a few cans of cold beer down on the nearby railroad tracks in the afternoon sun. Usually PBR or Special Export. Anyhow, once inside the store he'd take down a Firebird or a new Les Paul (always something really nice and kind of expensive) casually plug into a Marshall amplifier and start tweaking knobs. If you ever saw Stinson play guitar, you know what I'm talking about. While jamming out "Mean Town Blues" by Johnny Winter (really fucking loud, mind you) he'd incessantly be twisting, turning, flipping switches, volume, bass, treble, mids, amp/guitar, one pick-up/two/pick-up/all pick-ups/one and three, tweaking and concentrating; yet appearing to be effortlessly running up and down the neck with his other hand. His face sort of gave the impression that he was after a particular tone and when he found it, it would be somewhat elusive. Almost like somebody trying to put their finger on something, some sound, that keeps moving and changing shapes and disguising itself as something else. But he kept ripping at the mask, sometimes just running his fingers affectionately over the contours and other times brutally abusing the instrument, trying to get to the fucking truth, if there was one. By now, a substantially large crown has gathered around us and people are turning to one another, "Hey, that's Bob from The Replacements, seriously!" or "Is that really him? No way, that guy looks like a bum! That ain't Stinson!" Lots of pimply-faced wannabes looking for a first amp or the usual Wedge crowd of local musicians, all pushing to get a closer look but simultaneously acting like they're too cool to care. The guys working at the counter let Bob Stinson blast the Marshall and pound on the guitar as long as he wanted to. It was always about ten or twenty minutes before he would unplug and carefully hang the guitar back up on the wall. If it was, say, $1,200.00 he'd turn to one of the employees and ask, "You don't think that's a little steep for that guitar?" or else he would say something like, "Those necks are made in Russia, did you know that? I'm not kidding. Those are Russian. You didn't know that did you?"

Then we'd go down to Lake of the Isles and sit on the train bridge, have a couple more beers, and look at the sunfish. Saturday July 9th, 1989: Las Vegas, Nevada. Static Taxi played last night at a club called T-Mex and we have another show tonight at a redneck bar named Doc & Eddy's. Bob and I are sitting around our motel room. Room 19. I'm asking Bob stupid questions. He's flipping through those free stripper newspapers. He really digs them. He collects them. He's got three it looks like, and he looks at them constantly. The only time he ever looks up is to the race on TV or when one of my questions is extra preposterous.

"Anything in them things?" I ask.

"All it is advertising, that's all it is." He informs me, eyes dead set on the paper.

"All ads?" I question, over from the second bed.

"Uh-hmm." Bob replies earnestly. He puts one down, picks up another, puts that down, picks up the first one again, puts down the first one just for a second, picks it up again, etc. Then sometimes he picks up the third one and appears to be making some kind of comparison with the first. "Do you think you're weird Bob?" I ask, laughing.

"Nuh-uh, but I don't think I'm normal either." He says innocently.

Talk atcha soon.

// posted by Jonathan Wright @ 2:48 PM permalink
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