"I Will Dare"

The Replacements - "I Will Dare" (1984)

A jangle guitar and hormone fueled song about the first week of a relationship.



Every alternative band of the 90s claimed to be following in the footsteps of The Replacements.  They were founded a year before R.E.M. and had a similar rise towards stardom, with small hits on the way towards big success, but instead of cracking into the mainstream in the 90s like the Athens, Georgia band, The Replacements faced lineup changes, alcoholism, and eventually broke up in in the summer of 1991. That same year R.E.M. released Out of Time, with huge hits "Loosing My Religion", "Shiny Happy People" and also the single "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" Why so much attention on R.E.M. in this little write up? Well, that band's guitarist Peter Buck was originally slated to produce the album that became Let It Be but The Replacements didn't have enough material together to record. When they finally did settle in to record, Buck was busy recording Reckoning and playing David Letterman with the rest of R.E.M. He did however, take the time to travel to Minneapolis and record the lead guitar solo on this track.

The whole song is jangle guitar and a skipping beat, giving the song a real upbeat and youth oriented feel. Buck's guitar solo has a country rock feel and repeats itself an octave higher immediately after he finishes it. The next distinct instrument you hear is the mandolin, played by singer and songwriter Peter Westerberg. The book describes the Buck guitar solo as 'Byrdsy" which is what I mean when I say country rock. That shaking tambourine finish also has a 60s sound to it. The sound that jumps out in my head is that the chorus sounds like the chorus to The Beatles "I'm Only Sleeping" but faster. Specifically the repetition of the V, IV and III of the root chord in a very similar pattern