Beyond the 130 - Husker Du

[Phenomenal Cat]

The nexus of melody and punishment.

They were a band...a rock and roll band.

Not to say that I couldn't take 'punk' rock seriously before they came along, but the songwriting was jaw-dropping to me as a 19-year old, and they seemed like the band that delivered on the promise of 'punk'. They weren't without humor, or chops, really, either. I feel kinda sorry for those who don't get them. They made so much music seem silly.

I'm loathe to go out on a limb for their "greatness" (if anything, they are deeply inconsistent - their WB period, in particular, is difficult for me to enjoy), but I think the sheer lightning in a bottle magic of Zen Arcade is one of those things that artists with dozens of great records could never aspire to. If we're going to argue that you only need to hit those sort of heights once (as I seem to be), then...yeah, they may as well be the greatest thing on Earth.

That was rock and roll for your real life.

....

Husker Du deserves your respect, even if they’ll never earn your love. You will often hear mention of The Minutemen in close proximity to any Husker Du talk. They had a good-natured rivalry, being label-mates, tour-mates, and even begging comparison by releasing nearly-concurrent double-LPs of blistering punk rock. If I have to choose, I’ll say that The Minutemen sought to be articulate, while Husker Du sought to express what could not be articulated. Listening to the Minutemen is like reading the (often hilarious) blog of a dispossessed factory drone while Husker Du is just one prolonged cry for help.

Guess which I prefer.

Husker Du is an altogether American proposition. When I’m reading on BCB about Primal Scream or Stone Roses or even Oasis, it’s clearly describing a movement from afar. I can understand how Husker Du could fail to resonate with anyone who didn’t have them in their wheelhouse by age 30. A lot of what this band does is based on teenage angst and the heartache and frustration of entering adulthood and finding that you never really escape high school. That’s what Husker Du did: They Escaped.

While Minneapolis brethren like The Replacements became the big fish in a little pond, Husker Du cast their net as wide as possible, displaying a work ethic you don’t normally associate with people who want to just play music for a living. They started their own record label, pressing and distributing their own work. Even the album covers were original works caringly constructed by drummer Grant Hart. Not until the very end, when they were resigned to a Warner Brothers contract they would never fulfill, could you actually see Husker Du on a television. If you dared to brave a crush of bodies, you could see them for five bucks. Many did, but not enough to create an adequate cushion between the personalities in this band.

Along with SST acts like Black Flag and the Minutemen, Husker Du practically created our modern touring circuit, making it possible before the age of social networking to get in a van and become a homeless musician for 6-8 weeks at a time. It wore them down. Like many struggling musicians, they worked odd jobs to make ends meet. Vacillating between the life of a punk rock musician and a ham-and-egger is all too often the fate of the pioneers. I’ve been on both sides of the fence. Monday Will Never Be the Same.

Flip Your Wig is the perfect balance between hardcore fury and pop indulgence and I can't get enough of Grant Hart's jazzy drumming.

"The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill."

2 words: Zen Arcade.

New Day Rising. If you remain unconvinced I have no use for you.

Their version of "Eight Miles High" is one of my favorite covers. I don't know whether that attests to their greatness, but there you go.

The music? I prefer the rougher, shouty stuff. That’s where I live – people try to put us down. Zen Arcade is when they moved into more insular, emotional territory. This where they graduated from good to great. Husker Du had integrity. We don’t require that of The Rolling Stones, but Husker Du is about as proletariat as it gets. When they signed to Warner Brothers, they delivered what may be their most concise, hit-friendly record, Flip Your Wig, to former label SST because they felt obligated to fulfill their obligations. Not that any of this should be of any concern to us. But it is valuable to reflect on their lyrics and realize that the guy who is speaking directly to you in hopes that you’ll somehow relate and empathize isn’t a complete dick. It matters because honest, ethical people are always in short supply. And you know what?

They've never reunited.

Damn straight.

[nathan]

I have a personal love for the Land Speed Record. It was recorded in my beloved 7th St Entry venue where I have seen so many wonderful shows over the years (even our own John San Juan) and am going to be at once again tonight (Jeff the Brotherhood). It really captures the claustrophobic intimacy of that room that it's almost uncanny. It sounds like home to me. A big pulverizing hug of a record. If I ever moved away from Minneapolis, Land Speed Record would be the record that I would play to remind me of home.

[Phenomenal Cat]

I have a personal love for the Land Speed Record. It was recorded in my beloved 7th St Entry venue where I have seen so many wonderful shows over the years (even our own John San Juan) and am going to be at once again tonight (Jeff the Brotherhood). It really captures the claustrophobic intimacy of that room that it's almost uncanny. It sounds like home to me. A big pulverizing hug of a record. If I ever moved away from Minneapolis, Land Speed Record would be the record that I would play to remind me of home.

And here I'd been told all these years that LSR was "unlistenable" I can't even remember the last time I heard it.

[nathan]

The CD, of course, sounds like shit. They couldn't even be bothered to give it track breaks.

Unlistenable? I mean, it's hardcore punk. It sounds as it should. And it sounds awesome to my ears.

[KeithPratt]

Zen Arcade remains one of my favourite albums. Cathartic, colorful, psychedelic, angry, solemn, full of hooks and so damn messy. I rarely listen to anything else by them.

[Guy E]

That's a great testimonial Pcat.

Seeing them live was a whole other level and I got the opportunity several times. I'm glad for that.

[bobzilla77]

They were everything I wanted out of hardcore punk once I discovered it. It was a big thing to me when, in the midst of all that power and volume, you could still hear Who stuff poking out of it. Not just the hot-air-blowing but the grandiose counter-melodies and interplay. Zen Arcade was like the knee-slide at the climax of the Kids Are Alright extended for over an hour.

And I made the observation about Daltrey on another thread, that he made vulnerability seem cool - that you could express it and still sound powerful, so maybe you didn't need to be afraid of it. Husker Du were beyond vulnerable, my favorite song on Zen Arcade is Pride, which sounds like a poetic expression of the state of mind where you start throwing chairs at the walls. In order to express this, they LITERALLY threw chairs at the walls and turned microphones on. But they didn't even need to ... the music is nauseatingly intense. If I'm not in the right mood and that comes on the mp3 player, it will make me physically ill.

But when you have been in that state yourself, maybe even found yourself stuck there for a time, there is something very beautiful about hearing it articulated in music. It's like a hand on the shoulder. These guys GOT IT.

And crucially it was that time where a guy like could see them in magazines and say, those guys are like me. They look like me and my friends. They were even more every-man types than Black Flag or the Minutemen, who were also dorks but seemed kind of odd.

[Phenomenal Cat]

More and more, when I think of Husker Du at their best, I think of Townshend and the Who. For all the bluster and unbounded energy, they were always talking about being outcasts - misunderstood but unrepentant. Zen Arcade hits me in much the same way that Quadrophenia does. But Zen Arcade is for me.

Mom and Dad, I'm sorry
Mom and Dad, don't worry
I'm not the son you wanted
But what could you expect?
I've made my world of happiness
To combat your neglect

[Bent Fabric]

Zen Arcade remains one of my favourite albums. Cathartic, colorful, psychedelic, angry, solemn, full of hooks and so damn messy. I rarely listen to anything else by them.

Yep.

The bits in bold - well, YEAH. "Colorful" may be the key word there. If you associate the first Doors record with the sort of menacing dark colors on the jacket, or Court and Spark or Harvest with the sort of "divorce-rock beige" of their jackets, I think you could follow the logic which says that Zen Arcade may be one of the most aptly jacketed discs of all time. It looks like it sounds and it sounds like it looks. Those little fucking piano interludes, the backwards guitars, the cacophony of "Hare Krsna", etc. - it's got this beautiful and vivid "water color over pencil" atmosphere from start to finish.

So rarely does ONE SINGLE RECORD find itself at the center of the conversation. Fuck - even people like Teenage Fanclub can spark up a recurring debate on the subject of "the pinnacle", but...one really can't have this conversation without acknowledging the multicolored elephant in the middle of the room.

Bob and Andy have said a lot of what I would say about it in their own ways - it captures an oddly stirring personal experience of adolescence in a way that nothing else does (I love Quadrophenia for what it is, but it doesn't seem nearly as "unmasked"). I'm a long way from acid and pimples, but...it still moves me enormously. I can almost forgive Mould for gradually becoming "the punk Paul Simon" when I listen to Zen Arcade.

[Phenomenal Cat]

I can almost forgive Mould for gradually becoming "the punk Paul Simon" when I listen to Zen Arcade.

Grant Hart didn't fare much better, but they couldn't have known they were making an actual album at the time of Zen Arcade. "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess" occupies that place on Side Three much like "I Just Want To See His Face" serves as the fulcrum for Exile on Main Street. It's actually brought me to tears more than once.

[bobzilla77]

I can almost forgive Mould for gradually becoming "the punk Paul Simon" when I listen to Zen Arcade.

Grant Hart didn't fare much better, but they couldn't have known they were making an actual album at the time of Zen Arcade. "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess" occupies that place on Side Three much like "I Just Want To See His Face" serves as the fulcrum for Exile on Main Street. It's actually brought me to tears more than once.

I don't have a problem with most of Mould's solo career, although I won't read his autobiography. It's just not as good as it was for his first eight years or so of making records, same is true of plenty of artists I consider great.

I get the impression from reading about it that Zen Arcade was pretty carefully planned out, and recorded largely in sequence with only two songs recorded but not used, one of which is a 30-second piano ditty. Some songs they had been playing live for months already when they recorded it, others like the interstitial parts might have been realized in the studio.

I know what you mean about The Tooth Fairy & The Princess. That was the other thing that was new to my life when I was 17, drug experimentation, and the "story" of Zen Arcade seemed to have a lot to do with this kid going through these intense traumas while he's dosing constantly. Every once in a while these surreal moments show up and they say a lot without saying much. What's Beyond The Threshold got to do with the storyline?

It's a one-horse town
One big desert
Asphalt desert
Asphalt jungle

Beyond the threshold, beyond the threshold

Change for the worse
Change nonetheless
Hey hey hey
Got no place to stay

Beyond the threshold, beyond the threshold

I hear machines
They burst at the seams
But tar and feather
All stick together

Beyond the threshold, beyond the threshold

Greetings from home
I wish you were here
Hear what I say but
You can't hear me at all

BEEEEEYOOOOOOND! THE THRESHOOOOOOOLD! EAAAARRRRRGH!

Not that you can hear a word of it other than the choruses, but if you bother to read lyric sheets, which I did, it was right there for you. That's the leaving-home blues, the set-up for the twin betrayal anthems that follow, Pride and I Will Never Forget You. Christ, that opening bass line still raises the hair on the back of my neck, the sound of every grievance against anyone you cared about that didn't return the favor.

In the same way I think Of Hare Krsna being a really key track on that record, because when you're experimenting with drugs and music at the same time, you can have these transcendent experiences without really trying, just by finding yourself open to this other thing that most people would turn away from, but tripping people find fascinating. It's easy to imagine running into those people when in the right state of mind, and dancing to their music and feeling the good vibrations, and it's expressed as this Bo Diddley beat with some Indian eye-ya-ya type sounds because that's how the rocker's brain processes such experiences.

They had their finger on the pulse, in a big way, as far as I was concerned in the summer of '85.

[Fonz]

I never connected with them. They were darlings of the indie press, and Peel, and maybe that put me off a bit. By the mid-late eighties I was after stuff that was less angst-ridden, less personal, and more celebratory or expansive, somehow...
I was a bit suspicious of american punk/hardcore.
Maybe if I'd have been a couple of years older OR younger at the time it would have made more of an impact.

[clive gash]

In a better universe "Turn on the News" is their "Stairway To Heaven".

[Osgood]

No mention for Warehouse? Shocking. Yeah, the sound is awful and could do with a bit of editing, but the songwriting is fantastic.

[Phenomenal Cat]

No mention for Warehouse? Shocking. Yeah, the sound is awful and could do with a bit of editing, but the songwriting is fantastic.

I was reluctant to review each and every album so that more people could respond. I would expect that everything from Metal Circus to Candy Apple Grey has champions/defenders. What am I missing on Warehouse? I haven't heard it in years.

[mission]

I come to Husker Du for the pop music and am always please I came:

Makes No Sense At All
Celebrated Summer
Pink Turns to Bue
Something I Learned Today
Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely
Could You Be The One
Dead Set on Destruction


The best compliment, however inadvertent, I was ever paid during my musicmaking years came from a hardcore guitarist who was plainly mystified by how shit I was but who was trying to be polite while we were backstage, sharing the same bill and passing the time of day. The only objective correlative he had for my drumming was Grant Hart - "So you're kind of like Grant Hart?"

Kind of.

[Rayge]

I don't pretend to have noticed it at the time, because, as is my wont, I don't even try to make out lyrics the first half a dozen times, just enjoying the noise of New Day Rising (album) and Eight Miles High particularly, but what's interested me about them this century, and made me go back to the records, is looking at the songs about teenage angst and getting out and escaping and so on in the light of both the song-writers being gay and not publicly out when the records were made.

I was also taken by the fact that the (as far as I know) hetero guy in the band was the one with a clone mustache.

[Phenomenal Cat]

I don't pretend to have noticed it at the time, because, as is my wont, I don't even try to make out lyrics the first half a dozen times, just enjoying the noise of New Day Rising (album) and Eight Miles High particularly, but what's interested me about them this century, and made me go back to the records, is looking at the songs about teenage angst and getting out and escaping and so on in the light of both the song-writers being gay and not publicly out when the records were made.

I was also taken by the fact that the (as far as I know) hetero guy in the band was the one with a clone mustache.

I was pretty blown away to find out (around '94, I believe) that Mould was gay. He was reluctant to become "big gay Bob", but it did compel me and my Husker-loving fans to go back to those lyrics. He likely could have done a world of good had he come out in '84, but his lyrics (and Hart's) resonate with so many people, I can understand how he would want to stay away from making a statement so specific to his circumstances. It's all there, and it made an impact on me without ever knowing the backstory. I did not find out Hart was gay until I read Bob's book a few years back.

[clive gash]

[Guy E]

I don't pretend to have noticed it at the time, because, as is my wont, I don't even try to make out lyrics the first half a dozen times, just enjoying the noise of New Day Rising (album) and Eight Miles High particularly, but what's interested me about them this century, and made me go back to the records, is looking at the songs about teenage angst and getting out and escaping and so on in the light of both the song-writers being gay and not publicly out when the records were made.

I was also taken by the fact that the (as far as I know) hetero guy in the band was the one with a clone mustache.

I was pretty blown away to find out (around '94, I believe) that Mould was gay. He was reluctant to become "big gay Bob", but it did compel me and my Husker-loving fans to go back to those lyrics. He likely could have done a world of good had he come out in '84, but his lyrics (and Hart's) resonate with so many people, I can understand how he would want to stay away from making a statement so specific to his circumstances. It's all there, and it made an impact on me without ever knowing the backstory. I did not find out Hart was gay until I read Bob's book a few years back.

One night after a Raybeats sound check I was talking with drummer Don Christensen and he asked me what good bands had been coming through the club. I mentioned Hüsker Dü and he responded with something about them being an odd gay couple. Really? His comment surprised me, but I didn't give it much thought. Zen Arcade still hadn't come out yet, but I was a pretty big fan from their first couple of singles, the EP's and that one incredible show in the club. I never much listened to Land Speed Record.

The first time they played Maxwell's was part of a tour that had been booked with the intention of promoting Zen Arcade, but the release date was delayed because SST didn't have the money to press the LP's. Hüsker Dü were moving so fast at the time. They played four songs that night destined for New Day Rising, which they recorded about two weeks later, before Zen Arcade had actually arrived in the record shops.

So I always knew they were gay, but never dwelt on it. For all the angst in their music they were cheerfully polite and approachable guys, happy to play a club where they got a square meal.