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at a glance...
Hometown: Minneapolis, MN
Formed: 1978
Members:
Bob Mould -guitars, vocals, piano, songwriting
Grant Hart -drums, percussion, vocals, piano, songwriting
Greg Norton -bass, vocals
Notes:
You have to start with Minneapolis to understand Hüsker Dü: bohemian, clean, tough, and cold as hell sometimes. Bob hangs out at record store, meets employees Grant and Greg, and they rehearse in Greg's basement. They get real good real fast, relying on adrenaline, guts, and - surprise! - tight rock hooks. Soon all the Twin Cities area is buzzing about the amazing new band named for an old board game. They soon hook up with excellent California punk label SST and release kickin' albums like Land Speed Record, which essays 17 songs in 26 minutes. Perfect double album Zen Arcade and shiny metallic beasts New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig make Warner Bros. snap them up like lutefisk on St. Olaf's Day, but WB only gets Candy Apple Grey and Warehouse: Songs and Stories out of them before heroin and ego destroy the greatest trio in American music history. Still legendary for their hyperdriven live shows, slashing muscle-pop and - surprise! - almost-kinda-sensitive-and-thoughtful lyrics (written by singers Bob and Grant), they are more influential than anyone will ever admit - they were the real thing.
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Hüsker Dü
Zen Arcade
SST, Released 1984
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Oh. My. God. This album should have its own religion, its own area code, its own language, its own flag. If you think I'm exaggerating, you've never heard it. If you've heard it, I can only assume that you have a good excuse, like no one ever having explained to you how important, how vital, and how freakin' amazing this album and this band were. Well, listen up, kiddies.
We'll start, as does the album, with Greg Norton's bass. No one ever talks about Greg anymore; they talk about Bob and Grant, because they were the songwriters and singers and guitarist and drummer. But Greg should be world-famous for his work on this album - he's everywhere, holding down an album that never quite flies apart the way it would kind of like to. And of course Bob Mould's guitar is a scalpel when it's not being a shovel, and Grant Hart may be the most underappreciated drummer of the last twenty years (Mr. Grohl, you have a telephone call in the lobby), and both sing and/or scream the songs they wrote with a Midwestern punksoul thing that everyone attributes only to the Replacements, even though the Hüskers were there first.
Zen Arcade is supposed to be some kind of concept album, but don't worry about that, I don't think anyone ever believed that rumor. What it is, is a double LP recorded and mixed in one 85-hour burst of insanity. (Gee, do you think drugs might have been involved?) It's packed with brilliantly written, passionately performed mature and sensitive songs, written by two great songwriters at their peak. Whether political ("Turn on the News"), personal (the adept acoustic punk of "Never Talking to You Again," and the messy and angry "Pride"), or psychedelic (the fourteen-minute instrumental closer "Reoccurring Dreams"), these songs will grab your heart and pull it out of your chest. These songs will make you want to get a guitar and learn a chord and tell the world how fucked it is. These songs are so good they will save your life.
If you like Hüsker Dü, check out:
Hüsker Dü Warehouse: Songs and Stories
Hüsker Dü New Day Rising
Motörhead No Remorse
The Minutemen Double Nickels on the Dime
The Replacements Let it Be
The Clash Give 'Em Enough Rope
X More Fun in the New World
Prince 1999
-- Matt Cibula
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