With all the pop culture/music books on the market these days, from the puff pieces, the retrospectives, to the critical bios, you would think by now that one of the most influential bands from the ‘80s might merit a volume or two along the way. But you’d be wrong. Until Jim Walsh’s excellent All Over But the Shoutin’: An Oral History arrived, the Replacements, those rockin’ renegades of post-punk glory, have never had their legend recounted in whole.

Maybe that shouldn’t be surprising since the beloved ‘Mats have always proudly worn their underdog status on their tattered, flannel sleeves. Here’s the spitfire outfit that inspired a hundred bands in their wake, from Nirvana to Wilco, and yet somehow always managed to shoot themselves in the foot, mangling toes as well as sabotaging mainstream success. But we loved them for that—and much more.

Jim Walsh, the fine Minneapolis scribe, proves himself to be the man for this special assignment. Not only has he shared a longtime friendship with most of the band members, especially Paul Westerberg and Chris Mars, but he also delivered the eulogy for founding member Bob Stinson’s funeral back in 1995 (quoted verbatim in the book). That’s credibility earned, I would say.

Yet in my recent interview with Walsh, who still lives in Minneapolis, he explains how his personal relationship with the band almost got in the way of ever doing the book. He says, “How do I convey the ‘Mats experience? Someone suggested early on that oral history was the way to do it. I was uncomfortable writing from a god’s eye point of view because of my friendship with those guys. The more I thought about it, the more an oral history felt right, because they were such a haphazard experience, such a multi-hued one. I just wanted to throw a lot of ideas into a book, along with a narrative. I wanted it to really bounce from idea to idea like all great music does—like their music does.”

Like any great rock ‘n’ roll band, and more than most, the Replacements spawned a thousand and one stories about their notorious, rowdy exploits. With usually enough drink in them to embalm a half dozen corpses, the ‘Mats took no prisoners onstage. Trainwreck tales about epic alcohol and drug abuse chased them to the end, even after they’d sobered up in the last few years of their career. And that too became a burden—some purists thought sobriety didn’t suit these soused wonders. But liquor was just the band’s survival mechanism, not their reason for existence.

Walsh says, “They were a monumental, mythological band—and third-person point of view would amp that up even more, and I wanted to have more fun than that. But it was great to just call people and say, ‘Hey, tell me a story.’ That was the best part of it. I had two or three conversations with Dan Murphy (from Soul Asylum), and he would say, ‘Hey man, that was the highlight of my day, see you later.’ But it also freed me up a lot to not have to call Paul and check facts like, ‘Do you remember this?’ We would have killed each other.”

He admits, “It was kind of daunting to do this project, it stopped many writers. There was fear of the band, and fear that they wouldn’t get it right and be laughed at by all the smart Replacement fans—who are the smartest, most persnickety, demanding fans of all. But you start getting older, and friends of mine started dying, and maybe important stories weren’t going to get laid down if I waited any longer. It’s like you’re in the middle of your life and you’ve lived these stories—and I lived it.”

The book is organized chronologically, from their inception as teen delinquents way back in the early ‘80s (Tommy Stinson, bass player, was 12 when they began), through their vintage years with Bob Stinson and then Slim Dunlap on guitar, and then to their bitter collapse in 1991 from in-fighting.

All their romanticized escapades are here: from scouring the streets of NYC for blow before their appearance on Saturday Night Live and drinking with the host, Harry Dean Stanton, their kamikaze performances before record label execs, raiding Twin/Tone offices for the master tapes of ‘Mats songs to throw away in the Mississippi River, pulling fans from the audience for hootenanny nights, and many more.