Call it the great lost Replacements record – the one that never was, the one that could have been their crowning achievement. Released as a single forty-nine–cent download in 2008 and yanked from sale within weeks, 49:00 captures everything that made Paul Westerberg and his cohorts legends: the chaos, the hooks, the bratty irreverence, the sense that brilliance and collapse were always just one stumble apart.
For all the years of solo wandering that preceded it, 49:00 sounds like Westerberg finally reuniting in his basement with the ghost of his old band and deciding to play until the cops arrived.
