I took a break from my Album Death March to head out to Riot Fest Chicago in Humboldt Park last night to check out the reunion of The Replacements. Or at least “The Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg Show With Two Guys From Paul’s ’90s Touring Band.”

My tempered enthusiasm was about as high as it could get and still be considered “measured.” The Replacements are up there among my favorite bands and I never had a chance to see any incarnation of them live (heck, I never even saw Westerberg solo.)  Like many ‘Mats fans my age, I got into them in college shortly after they broke up in 1991. I missed a chance to see them perform and only would hear or read tales of their famously erratic live shows (brilliant one night, drunken fiasco the next, or sometimes both in one show.) Over the years, these guys seemed to be called underrated so often that they became overrated, but, still, I remained a fan of their lovable loser punk-spiked power-pop and casually heartbreaking ballads.

I arrived a few hours early with my wife and we made an attempt to catch Pixies on a nearby stage. We had seen them before, but thought this would be a nice appetizer before the ‘Mats came on. Unfortunately, when they hit the stage, we were too far to the side and the sound was terrible. Not to mention Frank Black and company opened up with a lousy new song that sounded like an un-fun version of “Rock and Roll, Part 2.” After a few songs, we bailed and headed over to the main stage (the “Riot Stage”) to get a good spot for The Replacements show.

As the younger kids trickled out from the audience after the 7:00 AFI show, the crowd got progressively greyer and older, but there was still a real buzz in there air. I was a tiny bit worried after the bad sound/lame start of the Pixies show (which I’m sure got better and would have been great if I had a good location,) and seeing the stage crew have troubles with a lighting set up behind the drums, but after the band came out and blasted through the first song from their first album “Taking a Ride,” all those worries were gone.

Again, I never saw them in their prime, but based on what I saw: they tore it up. They sounded like an early hardcore band with a loose, Stonesy-flair during their first few songs that were from their earlier, pre big-label contract days. Stinson, was of course, still sharp from playing with Guns ‘N Roses over the last decade, and the replacement Replacements (drummer Josh Freese and guitarist David Minehan) are solid pros as well. Westerberg was a wild card, flubbing lyrics and cracking jokes, but when he was on, he pushed songs into the stratosphere. I even got teary-eyed seeing them blast through of my personal favorite deep cuts from Let It Be: “Favorite Thing.” And by the time the monster riff from “Color Me Impressed” roared out of the PA, I was thinking to myself “is this the best concert I’ve ever been to?” But, like The Replacements themselves, the answer to that question was “it’s complicated.” Things slowed down a little for some of their more polished late-career numbers like “Achin’ To Be” and “Androgynous” (which I think sorely missed the piano arrangement.)

“I Will Dare” and “Merry Go Round” were fine, but weren’t as super-charged as the opening numbers. By the time they got to a Sham 69 cover “Borstal Breakout,” a fat drunk dude stumbled into me while trying to plow his way forward and almost got into a fight with a guy who looked like the President of the Anthrax Fan Club. I positioned myself between drunky and my wife and then he left before any blows were exchanged. Thankfully, this didn’t cause me to miss a note of an outstanding, almost arena-ready, power-pop version of “Little Mascara.” I thought this song– along with other numbers from their record Tim  like “Kiss Me On The Bus” “Bastards of Young” and “Hold My Life,” –really came to life onstage compared to the flatly-recorded album versions. The songs that didn’t do as well live were ones originally recorded with other instruments (piano, mandolin) and, I think, lost something onstage.

Some of their shenanigans, including destroying the digital clock the promoters kept onstage to keep the bands on schedule, were fun, but other times seemed to threaten to derail the proceedings. Westerberg berated Minehan about his use of a “Cure” guitar pedal and told him they could get “Bob Mould up here in an instant.” And of course, shortly thereafter, Paul flubbed lyrics but hey, what else did I expect? But, any time the evening seemed in doubt, the band rose to the occasion, like during the huge goosebump-inducing anthem “Alex Chilton” and a rocking version of “Can’t Hardly Wait.” If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that the band would shoot themselves in the foot on purpose, so when they succeeded it would seem even more impressive.

Maybe if I saw them back in the day, I would have been disappointed in this reunion show, but it’s all I got to work with here. Either way, I felt like I got a pretty decent version of The Replacements experience live. Some transcendent moments, some goofball antics, but all-in-all, the show was a blast. So, even though I finally noticed unusual lighting rig was in the shape of a middle finger, I left the muddy field of Riot Fest feeling like I got my money’s worth.