Chris Steller (@chrissteller.bsky.social)

bobmehr3 on Instagram: "The great Lynn Blakey has passed. A North Carolina-based musician, Lynn played with Let’s Active, Oh-OK, & Tres Chicas & inspired o…" The great Lynn Blakey has passed. A North Carolina-based musician, Lynn played with Let’s Active, Oh-OK, & Tres Chicas & inspired one of the greatest songs of all time, The Replacements' “Left of the Dial.” On one level "Left of the Dial" celebrated the '80s American indie scene and paid tribute to the tiny-watt college stations at the far end of the FM dial, where the Replacements got most of their airplay. But it was also a love song, an evocation of Paul Westerberg’s infatuation with Blakey. They first met when the ‘Mats & Let’s Active shared a bill at San Fran’s I-Beam in late ‘83. He bummed cigarettes off her & they spent hours walking & talking in the rain. “I think Paul decided he had a crush on me,” said Blakey. As Westerberg recalled: “I was in love with the idea of being in love with her. I used that to pine with.”They would exchange calls and letters in between tours, before Blakey moved to Athens–the land of “sweet Georgia breezes”-where she joined Michael Stipe’s sister Lynda’s band Oh-OK. “The song is about that first year of Paul and I meeting and hitting it off and logistically it not working out,” said Blakey.“I figured the only way I'd hear her voice was with her band on the radio on a college station and one night we did,” said Westerberg. “We were passing through a town somewhere, and she was doing an interview on the radio. I heard her voice for the first time in six months for about a minute. Then the station faded out.” As Westerberg later sang: “If I don't see ya in a long, long while/I'll try to find you, left of the dial.”When Blakey first heard it, she was perplexed. “I was a college DJ but our station in [Greensboro] was like 103.1–it was on the right side of the dial. I was like, ‘Does he think I’m a communist?’” laughed Blakey. “It wasn’t until Paul explained it to me: ‘Most of these stations are on the left-hand side.’” Lynn told me this when I was working on my Replacements bio, Trouble Boys. She also provided the great photo of Westerberg & Peter Buck “playin’ makeup” around the sessions for “Let it Be.” Anyway, I’m very sorry for her loss. Sending condolences to her husband Ecki & all her loved ones. https://www.instagram.com/p/DUbk5IVEmwE/?igsh=MTF1NmI4OWsyc3o4ag==