A quick fun read about life on the road with the Replacements from someone that was there along the way. Fun stories from the very early days and cautionary tales from the major label era as well, Still have Trouble Boys on my list, but I enjoyed this one.

I really enjoyed this book. Spend a few hours touring with the band in their van. The book is filled with stories of being on the road. The writing is very good but it is short. Lots of great photos accompany the text. I do wish the book was a little longer. A quick and enjoyable read. This book will make a great gift for any music lover. Enjoy

I wavered on the rating for this book. I am a serious Replacements fan, so I found the deep dive into touring quite entertaining and interesting. The writing is humorous and conversational. The story themes became a bit repetitious though, and I found myself skimming at times. I found it an easy, quick, sometimes sad read though. I did kind of wish I could have heard the other side of some of the anecdotes, memory can be quite subjective. All in all, Lemon Jail is a worthwhile read, and I rounded up to 4 stars.

I like The Replacements and appreciated the band’s music but don’t know that much about them. This memoir isn’t the best way to find out that much about the band. This isn’t a tell-all or personal account. There’s mention of drinking and drugs and sexual encounters but not with salacious detail. It’s also not about specific albums or songs. It’s a non-sequential tour memoir by one of the band’s roadies, Bill Sullivan, who went on to be tour manager for many music acts including Bright Eyes, Spoon, Cat Power and Yo La Tengo. As a Boston-based music journalist, I appreciate the details about touring in Boston in particular. He mentions lots of popular venues such as The Rat in Kenmore Square. He writes: “The last show on the itinerary for the first tour was in Boston at the Rat in Kenmore Square. Boston is well known as a confusing city to navigate even with GPS. For us, in 1983, we would just look for the Citgo sign and keep turning toward it. The Rat itself played host to so many cool bands it’s impossible to list them. The stage was stocked with speakers and lights, and they didn’t care if you turned up.” Lemon Jail also reminds me of a long piece I wrote about touring with The Charlatans in the 90s.

I truly liked this book. Bill Sullivan, mainly roadie for The Replacements, has now issued this book, a memoir of his daze and haze while touring the 'Mats in the 1980s. This is an excellent addition to Bob Mehr's absolutely brilliant "Trouble Boys", one of the best books of its year, which is wholly on the band.

Sullivan has added a lot of nice self-taken pics of the bands, along with a mass of descriptions of the infernalia, paraphernalia, and self-destructive mayhem that the band always stood for, including descriptions of their infamous MTV stint, wearing Tom Petty's wife's clothes on stage, completely trashing their tour van, to unintentionally smuggling drugs abroad, breaking guitars on purpose just to see whether they actually can be fixed, , to playing five-hour sets just to make the one paying punter leave, and (let's not forget this) making Lemmy think The Replacements were TOO LOUD.

It's a fun ride, reminding us that alcohol is a drug and fuck, could someone please start taking the music business a little less seriously again, please?

A fun, quick look into the nascent "alt rock" scene of the early 1980s from an insider's perspective. Good book.

A breezy, self-declared (very) personal account of life, mostly on the road, with the Replacements, one of the greatest American rock bands, in spite of the band's fondness for self-inflicted "career moves"--consider it a companion piece (or the drinks at the after hours club) to Trouble Boys, the acclaimed biography by Bob Mehr. Definitely one for the band's diehards, as merrily shambolic as the stories the author shares.