TOMMY STINSON
T.T. The Bear's Place, Cambridge, Mass., March 10, 1998

Tommy Stinson is such a tease. About forty-five minutes into his hour-long solo acoustic set here, he grinned mischievously, adjusted his flame-red acoustic guitar and regarded the crowd pressed inches away from his microphone stand. "I'm going back to my childhood on this one," he announced with a smile, then added, "But it's not what you fuckers are thinking. Sorry, but there will *not* be a Replacements song all night ... or in 1998, for that matter."

Sensing the collective twinge of disappointment before him, Stinson half-apologized like the class clown trying to explain to the school principal exactly what he was doing with that bag of firecrackers at recess. "C'mon, I got a new record coming out and I'm up here promoting it, you know, doing the thing," he pleaded, then put on his best court-jester Ronnie Wood smirk. "And this one's called 'The Making Of An Asshole,' which could be the title of the new record."

Even though he still acts like it sometimes, Stinson is no longer the teenage kid who played bass with his beer-soaked, late big brother's beer-soaked band, the Replacements -- or the 'Mats, as they came to be called when they staggered and stumbled out of Minneapolis to give kids something to listen to besides the Grease soundtrack. No, Stinson's a ripe old 31-years-old now (which, as he joked Tuesday night, was why he had to sit down midway through his 14-song set). Since that legendary band fizzled in a drunken haze almost ten years ago, Stinson's on his second post-'Mats group, the sarcastically monikered Perfect.

In fact, Stinson's jocular, intimate solo performance here -- one of only "four little shows" he said he was doing until Perfect hits the road this summer -- provided him (and us) with the opportunity to preview new tunes from his band's forthcoming album, throw in some cool covers (Big Star's "Nightime"), and revisit material from Perfect's '96 EP, When Squirrels Play Chicken and that of his first, post-Paul Westerberg band, Bash & Pop.

What the show made apparent was two things: how good a songwriter Stinson is on his own, and how much the kid's learned -- or copped -- from the old man, as far as his songwriting style's concerned. Frankly, it didn't much matter that there wasn't a Replacements song in Stinson's set because, really, who could tell?

Lovely, lilting numbers like "Friday Night Is Killing Me" and "Nothing" featured Stinson's high, heavily reverbed voice sounding eerily like Westerberg's Camel-crusted caress. And lyrical couplets like "It's closing time/I think I could use another rhyme" recalled his mentor's vintage last-call-at-the-bar reflections. So it made sense that when Stinson wagged his finger in mock admonition of the crowd and sang "you can't put your arms around a memory," he cracked up laughing in the middle of the chorus and added, "But you can try."

JONATHAN PERRY