HUsker Du?

Zen Arcade
New Day Rising
Flip Your Wig

If you have a record player, these sound better on vinyl, and are cheaper, too.

They are abrasive at first if you're not used to hardcore but they grow on you nicely if you give them a chance. Some other threads that will help.

Search and Destroy: Husker Du : Classic or Dud, Search and Destroy.

Pick only one song: POO! Husker Du

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and if you are and if yr serious...ill send you some husker du...

Pete Scholtes OTM.

People started "frothing" about them around 1984 with Zen Arcade, or 83 with Metal Circus if you want to nitpick. From that time until their last album in 1987, they released so much great music:

Zen Arcade (would be untouchable if it were produced better)
New Day Rising (most fans' favorite)
Flip Your Wig (my favorite, is loaded with hits)
Candy Apple Grey (underrated, Grant Hart's songs are better than Bob's)
Warehouse (another great record)

I really prefer Bob Mould solo or with Sugar and Grant Hart solo. I have to imagine that if I had heard of them in high school in the 80s I could potentially have gotten into them (if I heard the Replacements ten years after they broke up instead of four years before would my love be the same?), but its really been a struggle to understand the appeal looking backwards. Also, their records are of such phenomenally poor sound quality that the dynamicism that people always speak of is utterly lacking from an album listening standpoint. I did like the section that Michael Azerrad devoted to the band in his book "This Band Could Be Your Life," however. Its another example of appreciation rather than respect or liking.

it is somewhat "juvenile," but how is that a problem for a rock band?

I would apply this statement to the entire Husker Du catalogue.

Matt - if you want "Sunspots" by Mould(really different from Husker stuff, but beautiful and a must have for sure.. i will send.)

emailed you...but thining now, i dont have much in a burnable format anymore. i'll have to look through.

i go in for zen arcade, but its a bit more rough than somepeople want. when i 1st bought it in highschool i was looking for new day rising or something...lord know what i thought i wanted then. but in recent years ive come to really like it.

on greg norton: what about the whole "whoever wrote it sang it" [sic] not in all the record sleeves....

sadly i wont get it...

ill listen to living end later and see

-- Pleasant Plains /// (pleasant.plain...), July 13th, 2005.

So did NPR's All Things Considered.

Grant Hart plays tomorrow, July 14, at the Turf Club in St. Paul. $3 cover.

I don't know if I'm going to buy any of his new records because I don't think I like the "Sugar meets Cher" direction he's gone toward.

not sure what exactly we all mean by "hardcore" here, but i'd say the huskers were hardcore when they started and were pretty damn close to anti-hardcore by the time they got to zen arcade. catchy verse-chorus-verse songwriting, some hippie sentiment and emotion, a bit of acoustic guitar, some piano, some psychedelic guitar jamming. it's hardcore tempered by a newfound love of mid-'60s beatles and byrds. check out: "pink turns to blue," "never talking to you again," "one step at a time," "turn on the news," "something i learned today," for starters. then see if you still think it's a hardcore album. or a pop album with low-budget hardcore production.

subsequent albums got progressively more poppy. and better produced. sometimes for the better, but sometimes not.

and, yes, do check out "makes no sense at all" from flip your wig, which was a year or so later.

but the tapes exist, somewhere.

"Sugar meets Cher": Had the pleasure of seeing Mould spin at a gay club in Minneapolis on Pride weekend two weeks ago, and it felt like a new genre. Still waiting for him to post the set list (here's an older one):
http://blowoff.us/set%206-11-05.html

http://www.thenortonsrestaurant.com/2006-03-31_Nortons_-_57.jpg

I want to eat at Greg Norton's restaurant!

Has anyone eaten at Greg Norton's restaurant?

I recommend the bass.

i think side b of flip yr wig is one of the best sides of a rekkid

I think you guys are getting your hopes up too much. Remastering can't fix the poor recording techniques and shoddy equipment that were clearly present at the recording sessions.

I hear the three of them are going back to re-record their entire catalogue with Jeff Lynne and Don Was on the boards.

^^ I'm being snarky, but I would totally listen to that version of Warehouse.

I hear the three of them are going back to re-record their entire catalogue with Jeff Lynne and Don Was on the boards.

You're kind of talking more about production than recording. Steve Albini has good recording technique, but that doesn't mean his stuff sounds like Jeff Lynne, although you could probably make Albini's raw tracks sound like Jeff Lynne through production if you wanted to, because you can make a well-recorded track sound like anything. Albini would have been a good producer and mixer for Husker Du. Spot always sounded a bit limp and thin to me... but apparently, I need to listen on vinyl?

wonder why i never heard how 'bad' the recordings were til 1998

spot gets a bad rap IMO, nothing else he ever did sounded like huskers...i think that's how the band SOUNDED. they were motorheads with horrible gear!

also i think the whole thing works for them

^otm

Mould produced the first Man-Sized Action record which is as harsh/thin as the Huskers records, maybe even more...

also the first Impaler record "If We Had Brains We'd Be Dangerous", which is real thin too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iqeqVwarGA

just saw bunch of new pressings of SST LPs at a record store last weekend, including all the Husker Du (even Land Speed and the 7"s), so curious who'd be releasing 180gm remasters

not that the SST albums couldn't use a remastering, but yeah, blaming spot for any deficiencies seems off the mark -- afaik the sst recording ethos was about documentation, treating bands as BANDS with a minimum of studio interference. so i mean, those records are kind of how husker du sounded. i think! i don't know. but i wouldn't want the du LPs to sound like sugar records or something (i've never really like the production on those, tho i haven't heard the new versions).

Yeah, seems like there were a bunch of new SST pressings unleashed into the world, picked up the Saint Vitus Thirsty and Miserable 12" over the weekend.

those records are kind of how husker du sounded. i think! i don't know.

I saw them live back then and yeah that's kinda right. Can't remember whether folks were grumbling over the sound of Husker Du vinyl back then.

afaik the sst recording ethos was about documentation, treating bands as BANDS with a minimum of studio interference.

also they literally had NO money.

haha, yes!
it was a weird time, you know? obviously part of the hardcore thing was a complete rejection of classic rock techniques (at least in the beginning). i think maybe people's frustration w/ the production might stem from the ways that husker du started moving in a somewhat more classic rock direction but spot was still recording them like they were a hardcore band? i kinda like the tension there, but would new day rising sound better if it was recorded like an allman bros. record? i don't know! maybe!

i kinda think new day rising sounds perfect anyway tbh

i suggested to joe carducci that a lot of the SST stuff could do with remastering etc when i was researching my black flag book a few years back, and he wouldn't hear any of it. he thinks they sound like they're supposed to sound (i just kind of wish they weren't so quiet on CD, and also that Land Speed Record wasn't just two tracks).

also i think the whole thing works for them

― Jandek at the Disco (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, September 5, 2012 8:57 AM (1 hour ago)

otm, it does. and most of their albums sound great cranked on vinyl. new day rising (my favorite) is the only one that i think really needs a remix/remaster, but i worry that what i like about it might be diluted in rendering it more ear-friendly. it's basically the american psychocandy.

Or REM given Iggy's in-the-red Raw Power remix.

I think what we all want is better sounding CD/digital versions. My Du vinyl sounds great and doesn't really need any fixing. but the digital versions are fucking awful. really really thin, tin can kind of sound. not good. i just would like to see a more accurate digital remaster that's closer to the power and heft of the vinyl.

What I can tell you is that for the first time ever, all three members now share legal representation, which sounds minor, but is a major factor that has impeded progress on reissues in the past. Dunno when anything might actually happen, and can't share (minimal) further details, but for the first time the ducks are lined up and the will is actually there.

Though they're not as muffled, the Warners records are, weirdly, even thinner-sounding than the Spot-produced SST stuff. I'm sure the amphetamines didn't help in the mixing process. I would totally buy reissues - love their tunes, but after awhile all that treble starts to give me a headache. I think it's a major reason why the Husker Du compilations I've put together on my own don't listen nearly as good as the track listings would suggest - 7 or 8 songs in and you already need a rest.

love their tunes, but after awhile all that treble starts to give me a headache.

this is so true for me too

Yeah for all the complaints about the SST records, Warehouse sounds TERRIBLE, just a horrible, horrible production. At least the earlier records captured something, fizzy and tinny though it was. In fact I can't think of a worse sounding major label album than Warehouse.

agree. at least with the early SST albums, you can turn them up loud enough to overcome the tinniness. there's nothing that can be done for warehouse. crying shame, cuz the songs are there.

yea warehouse sounds like bullshit, could you be the one should've been a massive song, it's not the songwriting that held them back it was the punky production. bob was really into speed right?

and imo the gated reverb on grant's drums isn't that cool

fuck im listening to flip your wig right now and i take that back completely

I like the production on every HD album except "Candy Apple Grey."

really? i like the production on the sst albums, with certain reservations, but the two WB albums are disappointing, and warehouse is way worse than candy apple.

Yeah, I'm at peace with it. I've come to appreciate the brittleness of "Warehouse."

Feelin' this remaster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NcZ5BwQukE

New Day Rising and Warehouse are the two albums that sounded particularly bad to me - Candy Apple Grey never bothered me, even on CD (I've since bought the vinyl though and it is an improvement).

lol pp

new song unearthed!!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/husker-du-rerelease-lost-statues-song-premiere-20130121

didn't they have a kind of one-take studio ethos. i think they also mixed pretty roughly and on-the-fly and never went back to fix it. so i don't think a remaster would do the trick, but a remixing might.

Greg Norton has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and his current band UltraBomb has started a GoFundMe campaign to help raise funds to cover his medical costs.

oof

goddammit

Noooooooo

oh crap, please be well greg

He survived at least and appears to be back playing
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4hBOxSOe1i86mKTUWQbDSs?si=4471c7c323be40c2

Apparently Bob Mould just got married.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cr8P7bLrYC2/?hl=en

(It's the next photo, not the jockey.)

Cartoon voice: “I’m seeing triple!!!!!”

It's always nice when stars get along with their stunt double.

Clearly likes people in the same mould

It's like Eddie and Valerie all over again.

THis is the 2nd interview with Greg Norton I've heard over the last couple of weeks. Not sure I'd really heard him or read him interviewed before. I'm not remembering him featuring majorly in the music rag interviews from the time, not sure how accurate a picture that is.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6GyEhHWhbtSUhM3zVROlIQ?si=d25d23ee9e23443e

Wait, Greg has a project called UltraBomb and Bob has a project called LoudBomb?

Bob is going to play at 2 celebrations on July 28 & 29 @ City Winery NYC of the 50 anniversary of the Nuggets 65 to 68 collection with Lenny Kaye leading house band and Patti Smith, Ivan Julian, Peter Buck and more on the bill