Oblique Saturdays

A series for Saturdays in 2026 inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's set of cards, Oblique Strategies (Over One Hundred Worthwhile Dilemmas). Eno and Schmidt created them to be used to unblock creative impasses and approach problems from unexpected angles. Each week I'll turn over an Oblique Strategy card and post a song or songs inspired by the suggestion. 

Last week's Oblique Strategy was this- Towards the insignificant- and my song choices went all existential, Pixies, Julian Cope and Tim Burgess. Suggestions from readers (Ernie, Khayem, JC, Walter and Chris) took in Talking Heads' Road To Nowhere, Nic Roeg's film Insignificance and its soundtrack song by Glenn Gregory and Claudia Brucken, The Indelicates and The Last Significant Statement To Be Made In Rock 'n' Roll, John Martyn's Solid Air, Richard Norris' Music For Healing series, anything by Nick Drake, and Frazier Chorus' Nothing (Land Of Oz Mix). That's as good a playlist about insignificance as we're ever going to assemble. 

Today's card is this- Put in earplugs. 

Which made me laugh out loud when I turned it over. 

Friends of mine attended the recent My Bloody Valentine gig at Factory Aviva Studios in Manchester (I missed out on tickets). They all wore earplugs, all found it deafeningly, unbelievably loud and couldn't tell, despite being confirmed and long time MBV fans, which songs were actually being played. Their account made me regret even more that I missed it in a way. 

You Made Me Realise

The loudest gig I've attended in recent years was Bob Mould at Manchester Academy 2 in March 2019, a gig that in retrospect I should have worn earplugs for. The hearing in my right ear has not been the same since. I wrote about it at the time...

Bob Mould at Manchester Academy 2 on Sunday night, twenty years after I last saw him play there. Back in 1998 he played almost entirely solo stuff, promoting his then new record The Last Dog And Pony Show, with just a Sugar song held back for the encore. This time around, promoting his current new album Sunshine Rock, he plays songs from the last forty years of playing and making records, from their earliest recordings to his latest. Backed by a high kicking bassist and a drummer engaged in a one man war of attrition with his snare drum Bob hits the stage loud and fast and doesn't really let up. His guitar/pedals/twin amp set up makes Bob sound like two or three guitarists and it's loud, really loud, with those crystalline melodies fired off within the sheets of distorted riffs. 

There are few gaps between the songs, no light show to speak of, no projections or backdrop- just songs from the Bob Mould back catalogue. He opens with 2014 song The War and then blasts straight into Sugar's A Good Idea, the bass riff on its own for a few seconds before being submerged in Bob's wall of guitars. Three songs in and we're into I Apologise off Husker Du's 1985 New Day Rising. There is then a liberal smattering of songs from Sunshine Rock, Bob's self-willed optimistic, happy album, an album written in the aftermath of the death of both parents and Husker drummer Grant Hart, songs like Thirty Dozen Roses and Sin King, and highlights from Sugar's 1992 album Copper Blue (Hoover Dam sounds enormous, bigger than the guitars and keyboards of the album version). People around me are adjusting their earplugs. 

Husker Du's 1982 hardcore single In A Free Land has been dusted down and in Trump's wake sounds no less relevant and no less alive. Bob has been unwell in recent days and on antibiotics for a chest infection, not that you'd guess- Sugar's If I Can't Change Your Mind roaring out of the amps, noise plus melodies, punk plus choruses. He pauses three quarters of the way through to thank us for coming and introduce Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster on bass and drums and then its back to business. Something I Learned Today, one of Husker Du's most vital songs, is a ferocious blast, spitting fire and piss and from this point, for the final fifteen minutes or so Bob and band go off setlist, launching into one Husker Du song after another, almost a medley- Chartered Trips, their cover of The Mary Tyler Moore theme Love Is All Around Us, a beautiful and raging Celebrated Summer with Bob stretching out the pause into the guitar picking section at the end, finishing with Makes No Sense At All, the single that paved the way for Pixies and Nirvana to name but two. No encore. Lights on. Ears ringing. Home.

Hoover Dam

Chartered Trips

Neither of those mp3s give any idea of how loud Bob was that night. At one point people were physically flinching and stepping back from the stage. I remember moving forwards into a gap and turning my head sideways on at one point as Bob turned the single guitar he was playing into three, all at max volume. 

Bob recently announced Sugar's reformation and a new single, Long Live Love. And gigs including one in Manchester at the end of May. Put in earplugs. 

Forty Minutes Of Grant Hart

Last Wednesday's Husker Du post, three albums from a period of a little over a year and a new box set of live recordings at gigs from 1985 sent me back to the Husker Du back catalogue and then into some of Grant Hart's post Husker albums. A Sunday mix seemed like a good idea (to quote Bob Mould who will turn up with his own mix sometime soon). Grant was a singular character in US 80s hardcore/ punk and a fine songwriter and drummer. I was genuinely saddened by his death from cancer in 2017. 

Grant and Bob had a difficult relationship- they could both be difficult with each other and the pair's non- communication in 1987 contributed to Husker Du's split. They made up in the end, when Grant's illness was terminal and laid some ghosts to rest. 

Grant's life was tinged with tragedy and difficulties. His older brother was killed by a drunk driver when Grant was ten. Grant inherited his drum kit. Both Grant and Bob struggled with their sexuality as young men in the early 80s punk world, a place where homophobic attitudes were often very close to the surface (Bob came out in the 90s, Grant was openly bisexual). In the late 80s Grant had an HIV Positive misdiagnosis and was spent some time dealing with heroin addiction (which contributed to Husker Du's break up). In 2011 his house caught fire and burned to the ground and his mother died a month later. 

Let's remember Grant this way, with eleven songs that burn with passion, desire, emotion and the punk rock flame...

Forty Minutes Of Grant Hart 

• 2541
• Turn On The News
• Green Eyes
• Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely
• She Can Hear The Angels Coming
• My Regrets
• The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
• You Can Make It At Home
• You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water
• Old Empire (BBC Session)
• Keep Hanging On

2541 was a solo single from 1988, from Grant's debut solo album Intolerance (December 1989 on SST), an album on which he played all the instruments and produced. After the guitar assault of Husker Du Grant shifted to organ as the central instrument for Intolerance and on 2541 acoustic guitar. 2541 is a story song, a couple move in together and then split, told in a few verses with some very well drawn touches and details. A personal song that has universal appeal. She Can Hear The Angels Coming is also from Intolerance. Grant got the front cover of Sounds when Intolerance was released. I still have a copy in my archive (boxes in the loft) of music press and magazines. 

Turn On The News is from 1984's double album Zen Arcade, the releases that lifted Husker Du apart from their peers. Doomy piano note, TV news samples at the start, a long fade in and then the three Huskers power into some frenzied punk/ psyche. Great backing vocals on this one as Grant howls away up front and Bob riffs away.

Green Eyes and Keep Hanging On are from 1985's Flip Your Wig, Husker Du's pinnacle in songs and sound, and also home to some Grant Hart masterpieces. Keep Hanging On is everything a Grant Hart Husker Du song should be. Green Eyes rings and clamours, with cymbals splashing and guitars crunching. 

Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely is from Husker Du's major label debut 1986's Candy Apple Grey. Not to damn Candy Apple Grey with faint praise but it's one of the foundation stones of 90s alt- rock, a slightly more introverted and slowed down approach, acoustic guitars higher in the mix. Don't Want To Know... was a single too which came with Husker Du's assault on The Beatles' Helter Skelter. Don't Want To Know... is neither acoustic nor slowed down. 

My Regrets is from 2009's Hot Wax, an album I love. Grant started it in 2005, travelling to Montreal to record with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mt. Zion before finishing it on his own. My Regrets is the album's stately, confessional closing song, with dense clanging guitars and stirring vocals. You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water opens Hot Wax, the lyrics a series of Buddhist sayings and the music a burning fire.   

The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill is from New Day Rising, one of two Husker Du albums in 1985. After the three word howl of the title song Grant's song bursts in, all feeling, noise and melody. On finding out that Heaven Hill is a US brand of whiskey, the song's lyrics and subject take on a different tone. 

After Intolerance Grant formed nova Mob, a band in which he played guitar and sang. In 1991 they released The Last Days Of Pompeii, an album with lyrics taking in Pliny The Younger, Werner von Braun and the Nordic God of War. Their second and final album, self titled, came out in 1994. Old Empire opened it and was played at a BBC Session in 1994 hosted by Marc Riley. 

You Can Make It At Home is from the final Husker Du album, a double released in 1987 called Warehouse: Songs And Stories. It is packed with great late period Bob and Grant songs but it also sounds like an end is nearing, it's there in the tone and the feel. On You Can Live At Home, the final Husker Du song on the final Husker Du album Grant and Bob duel to have the last word, Bob peeling off  notes amid feedback, Grant banging the drums and singing the line over and over, 'you can live at home now...', the song a long fade out, no one wanting to find the way to bring it to a stop. 

Miracle

Between July 1984 and September 1985 Husker Du released three albums, the first  of which (Zen Arcade) was a double (and preceded by a non- album single, their scorching cover of Eight Miles High), followed by New Day Rising and then Flip Your Wig. Fifty two songs. Each album raised the bar, both songwriters, Bob Mould and Grant Hart, in a million miles an hour race to keep moving, keep writing and playing. 

Zen Arcade is a punk concept album of sorts, Bob Mould telling the story of a young boy leaving home and finding the world is a difficult and tough place to live in. It is a blur of riffs, melodies and rhythms, high octane punk rock filtered through psychedelia opening with Mould's killer Something I Learned Today and Grant Hart contributing a pair of huge songs- Pink Turns To Grey and Turn On The News. On the last song, Reoccurring Dreams, they play a hardcore jazz- punk instrumental, fourteen minutes long and not a moment wasted. 

Something I Learned Today *

New Day Rising, released six months later, is even better. Grant Hart was a songwriting, singing drummer whose long hair, love beads and bare feet marked him out as a non- conformist in US punk's sometimes fairly orthodox world. On New Day Rising he throws in The Girl Who Lived On Heaven Hill, Terms Of Psychic Warfare and Books About UFOs. Mould, struggling with alcohol and sexuality, countered with the title track, Celebrated Summer (where Husker Du slow down and Mould plays an acoustic guitar) and I Apologise among the album's songs, an embarrassment of riches. It sounds tinny and scratchy to modern ears, the guitars at times like a jetwash being sprayed on a metal fence, the bottom end hardly there at all. 

The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill

Six months after that they put out their last album for SST, Flip Your Wig, the band producing themselves for the first time and the sound bigger and fuller, the songs even better, everything slightly clearer (that's not to say Mould had turned the distortion down, he really hadn't)- Every Everything, Green Eyes, Hate Paper Doll, the single Makes No Sense At All, Divide And Conquer, Keep Hanging On (Grant's Husker Du peak for me), Find Me and Private Plane. Mould says Flip Your Wig is their best album and I can go with that. The fact it came within fourteen months of Zen Arcade is incredible.

Keep Hanging On

I don't think you'll hear a better song that that today. Please let me know if you do. 

Husker Du also toured incessantly, the three men playing across the USA and Europe, scorching a trail of melodic, emotional, hair raising live performances, playing as if Armageddon were upon them and they had just thirty minutes left and everything depended on Husker Du giving their all. Bassist Greg Norton has recently been working on a box set of live performances from 1985, an album called 1985: The Miracle Year. The first disc (single CD or double vinyl) is a full show from First Avenue in their home town Minneapolis, 30th January 1985, kicking off with the three word blast of New Day Rising and then powering their way through a set that takes in It's Not Funny Anymore (from 1983's Metal Circus) and then cherry picks from the Zen Arcade and New Day Rising. The sound is rough, it is like being there, the guitars are buzzsaws and hornet's nests, the drums are frenetic, the bass is big and muscular (more so than on some of recorded versions), and Mould and Hart sing their throats raw. They do the covers, searing versions of Eight Miles High, Ticket To Ride and Love Is All Around

The second CD/ pair of records is taken from a variety of gigs- Boulder, Long Beach, Newport, Washington, Hoboken, Cleveland, Frankfurt, Lausanne and Seattle- including songs form their at that point unreleased major label debut Candy Apple Grey (Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely, Hardly Getting Over It and Sorry Somehow). It's thrilling stuff, life affirming and exhilarating to listen to to forty years later, transcendent even. You can hear it all at Bandcamp. Husker Du can never reform- poor Grant died in 2017 aged fifty six. But we can remember them through these recordings, a band full of life. Bob Mould has recently reformed Sugar for some live shows next year. But that's another story. 

A Good Idea

* This version of Something I Learned Today is one I found on the internet years ago, remastered and with the bottom end boosted. I can't remember who did this and its entirely unofficial- it does demonstrate that if Greg Ginn ever allowed someone to remaster the Husker Du SST back catalogue it would be a very worthwhile exercise.  

Celebrated Summer

The end of August is a real transitional period, the dog days of summer almost done, the August bank holiday marking an ending (and being the last bank holiday of the year before the dread C word comes around again), the threat of September and autumn close enough to feel- September is biggest calendar change marker apart from 1st January, the switch from one time to another, the return to school, the resumption of normality after the days of high summer. 

There's a melancholy to August that Bob Mould mounted and framed back in 1984 with what could be the standout song from an album not short of great moments, Husker Du's New Day Rising. Celebrated Summer opens with a distorted, ringing guitar riff. Grant and Greg come in and the three piece power into the song, rapid fire guitar chords and thumping drums, Husker's mix of melodies and punk. But then it breaks down, and Bob switches to a 12 string acoustic, suddenly closer to the microphone, tender and rueful. They smash back into the electric guitar and thundering rhythms but the cat's out of the bag, the energy of the hardcore scene now spliced with something else. After another minute of riffing and soloing, Bob at his mid- 80s best, the 12 string acoustic comes back for the ending, Bob asking, 'was that your celebrated summer?'

Celebrated Summer

Sometimes I See You In The Water

Back to Bob Mould to end the week. In 1992 Bob formed Sugar with Dave Barbe and Malcolm Travis. His first two solo albums- Workbook and Black Sheets Of Rain- hadn't sold well and Virgin let him go. Back in a trio and released from his record contract Bob found a rich vein of form, working out of R.E.M.'s rehearsal room in Athens, Georgia and within the year Sugar played live, recorded two albums and signed to Creation in the UK (then on the crest of a post-Screamadelica, Bandwagonesque and Loveless wave). The first album, Copper Blue, came out and was an immediate hit, album of the year in the NME and spawned several singles.

Copper Blue doesn't have a weak moment, showcasing ten first rate Bob Mould songs. The production is fuller than it was with Husker Du, the drums and bass bigger and chuggier. The guitars fill up more space, crunchy and melodic. In the wake of Nirvana's success there was a crowd ready for more punk with choruses and suddenly Sugar found an audience. A year earlier Bob couldn't get arrested. The second song- A Good Idea- is a tale of two lovers down by the river, on a warm summer night where 'the air is thick with the smell of temptation'. They go in to the water at his suggestion- 'why don't we lay in the water? Let the water run over me...' he says and she replies 'that's a good idea'.  Inevitable tragedy ensues, she submerged beneath the surface, temptation turning to death by drowning.

A Good Idea

You're Gonna Make It After All

Bob Mould at Manchester Academy 2 on Sunday night, twenty years after I last saw him play there. Back in 1998 he played almost entirely solo stuff, promoting his then new record The Last Dog And Pony Show, with just a Sugar song held back for the encore. This time around, promoting his current new album Sunshine Rock, he plays songs from the last forty years of playing and making records, from their earliest recordings to his latest. Backed by a high kicking bassist and a drummer engaged in a one man war of attrition with his snare drum Bob hits the stage loud and fast and doesn't really let up. His guitar/pedals/twin amp set up makes Bob sound like two or three guitarists and it's loud, really loud, with those crystalline melodies fired off within the sheets of distorted riffs. There are few gaps between the songs, no light show to speak of, no projections or backdrop- just songs from the Bob Mould back catalogue. He opens with 2014 song The War and then blasts straight into Sugar's A Good Idea, the bass riff on its own for a few seconds before being submerged in Bob's wall of guitars. Three songs in and we're into I Apologise off Husker Du's 1985 New Day Rising. There is then a liberal smattering of songs from Sunshine Rock, Bob's self-willed optimistic, happy album, an album written in the aftermath of the death of both parents and Husker drummer Grant Hart, songs like Thirty Dozen Roses and Sin King, and highlights from Sugar's 1992 album Copper Blue (Hoover Dam sounds enormous, bigger than the guitars and keyboards of the album version). People around me are adjusting their earplugs. Husker Du's 1982 hardcore single In A Free Land has been dusted down and in Trump's wake sounds no less relevant and no less alive. Bob has been unwell in recent days and on antibiotics for a chest infection, not that you'd guess- Sugar's If I Can't Change Your Mind roaring out of the amps, noise plus melodies, punk plus chorsues. He pauses three quarters of the way through to thank us for coming and introduce Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster on bass and drums and then its back to business. Something I Learned Today, one of Husker Du's most vital songs, is a ferocious blast, spitting fire and piss and from this point, for the final fifteen minutes or so Bob and band go off setlist, launching into one Husker Du song after another, almost a medley- Chartered Trips, their cover of The Mary Tyler Moore theme Love Is All Around Us, a beautiful and raging Celebrated Summer with Bob stretching out the pause into the guitar picking section at the end, finishing with Makes No Sense At All, the single that paved the way for Pixies and Nirvana to name but two. No encore. Lights on. Ears ringing. Home.

Chartered Trips

Moving Trucks

Bob Mould has a new single out (and an album to follow and a tour next year). Following the deaths of both parents Bob was self aware enough to know that this could lead to a bleak Bob Mould album (and you only have to listen to Black Sheets Of rain for instance to know that Bob can do bleak). He forced himself to write positive songs. Sunshine Rock sounds just like an upbeat Bob Mould song should, ringing guitars, surging chords, that vocal tone, but when the strings come in towards the end, it all shifts up again.



I've dipped in and out of Bob's solo career, more out than in recently, but there's always something worth rediscovering. Twenty years ago he was on Creation and put out The Last Dog And Pony Show. This song is a keeper, the tale of a man watching his partner pack up and leave and then using the break up as a way to move forward, 'no moving trucks to hold me down'.


Moving Trucks

Grant Hart

I was deeply saddened yesterday by the news that Grant Hart had died aged 56. It seems a bit silly to be actually saddened by the death of a musician you've never even met but there you go. Husker Du are a band whose songs and albums hold a place close to heart. Someone once said that Bob Mould's songs in Husker Du were more consistently excellent but Grant's peaks were peakier and it's easy to roll off a list of Grant Hart songs that completely hit the spot- The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill, Books About UFOs, Green Eyes, Keep Hanging On, Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely, Pink Turns To Blue, Turn On The News, She's A Woman (And Now He Is A Man), Sorry Somehow, Never Talking To You Again, Flexible Flyer, She Floated Away...

Grant Hart was the hippie in a hardcore band- long hair, love beads, drumming with bare feet- who realised early on that drumming in a hardcore band could end up being pretty boring if that was all he did. So they became much more than a hardcore band, spearheading indie-punk through the 80s, paving the way for others to follow. Grant Hart was a drummer who knew how to write melodies and a songwriter who mainly dealt with the heavy stuff, but could cover it with shards of light. He took much of the blame for the break up of the band but he seemed to be the easy one to blame- he didn't hide his problems with drugs. His first solo album Intolerance is open about it. His post-Husker Du albums are full of great songs too- 2541, You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water, She Can See The Angels Coming, The Main, My Regrets, Admiral Of The Sea- all come close to his Husker songs and pack an emotional punch. Grant and Bob were estranged for much of the rest of Grant's life, appearing together only once to play two Du songs. They seem to have become more reconciled recently, communication opening up with a band agreed website to sell merchandise and a box set of their early works coming out in November. Their SST recordings still belong to SST who don't seem to want to sell. And they should, so something right and proper can be done with the back catalogue.

Last year I wrote a Husker Du ICA for The Vinyl Villain- you can read it here. I named my 10 track compilation after one of Grant's songs, Keep Hanging On (a song from Flip Your Wig) and used it to close my imaginary record. This is what I said about Keep Hanging On and I stand by every word even more now...

'Keep Hanging On- there are so many songs I could or maybe should have closed this album with but this one always hits me right there. From Flip You Wig, buried away towards the end of side 2, the guitars are deliciously distorted, Greg’s bass builds, the drums thump and Grant sings his heart out. His voice sounds like he is just about hanging on but ultimately this is uplifting, life affirming stuff.

Only angels have wings, girl
And poets have all the words
The earth belongs to the two of us
And the sky belongs to the birds

You've given me so much happiness
That I'll wrap up and give you this song
You gotta grab it with both hands
You gotta keep hanging on’

Thank you for all the songs Grant. They mean so much. 


Bob Mould put this tribute on his Facebook page yesterday morning-

'It was the Fall of 1978. I was attending Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. One block from my dormitory was a tiny store called Cheapo Records. There was a PA system set up near the front door blaring punk rock. I went inside and ended up hanging out with the only person in the shop. His name was Grant Hart.

The next nine years of my life was spent side-by-side with Grant. We made amazing music together. We (almost) always agreed on how to present our collective work to the world. When we fought about the details, it was because we both cared. The band was our life. It was an amazing decade.

We stopped working together in January 1988. We went on to solo careers, fronting our own bands, finding different ways to tell our individual stories. We stayed in contact over the next 29 years — sometimes peaceful, sometimes difficult, sometimes through go-betweens. For better or worse, that’s how it was, and occasionally that’s what it is when two people care deeply about everything they built together.

The tragic news of Grant’s passing was not unexpected to me. My deepest condolences and thoughts to Grant’s family, friends, and fans around the world.

Grant Hart was a gifted visual artist, a wonderful story teller, and a frighteningly talented musician. Everyone touched by his spirit will always remember.

Godspeed, Grant. I miss you. Be with the angels.'

The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill

2541

Come Around

I wrote a piece for The Vinyl Villain's Imaginary Compilation album series, ten Husker Du songs to brighten up your life. It's here. I also found this, a remastered version of Zen Arcade's opening song. The Youtube poster who put it up had done the new version himself, brought the bass up and balanced out Spot's trebly mix. A very good job done.

Something I Learned Today

At around the same time a friend reminded me of Bob's 90s band Sugar and their 1993 ep Beaster. Having signed to Creation and got some genuine success with Copper Blue they put out Beaster as a follow up The six songs on Beaster were recorded at the same time as Copper Blue but stand out as distinctively different- the guitars are heavier and denser. Very dense. Like other Bob Mould records (like Zen Arcade) Beaster was a kind of concept record and had a lot of religious imagery. Opener Come Around comes around slowly with bright acoustic guitar but then the Les Paul and Marshall stack kicks in, along with Bob's deliberately difficult to make out vocals.

Come Around

Celebrated Summer

The action and success at the velodrome in Rio over the last few days has been unmissable, edge of the seat stuff. Laura Trott, Becky James, Katy Marchant, Jason Kenny, Bradley Wiggins, Owain Doull, Ed Clancy, Steven Burke, Katie Archibald, Joanna Rowsell Shand, Elinor Barker, Callum Skinner, Mark Cavendish- all truly something else.

Husker Du's Celebrated Summer, fifth track on 1985's New Day Rising, is a peak by a band with many, many peaks. The opening burst of guitar followed by thumping drums and bass raise the hairs on the back of the neck and the 12 string acoustic guitar breakdown in the middle and at the end show Bob Mould wasn't going to be hemmed in by hardcore's rules. Breaking out and breaking through. Melody combined with their ferocious energy. The lyrics, as so often with the Huskers, suggest something gone, something lost, the summers of youth- was that your celebrated summer?

A Level results today for my students. More tension and hopefully more celebrations.

Celebrated Summer

It's Not Peculiar

I was involved in an online discussion a few days back about Husker Du- a friend put forward the suggestion that their cover of The Byrds' Eight Miles High was their best song. Debate ensued with some agreement but also a reluctance to say that their best song as a cover, especially with a pair of songwriters as gifted as Bob Mould and Grant Hart.

Their last album, Warehouse: Songs And Stories (from 1987), also caused some discussion. Made as the band were getting fully on each other's nerves (they split shortly after), Grant and Bob's songs alternate across the four sides of vinyl, with Bob getting the upper hand numerically (deliberately according to both Bob and Grant). Grant was in the grips of heroin and his drumming is a little untogether on the record while at the same time Bob has audibly stepped up his song writing. The guitar playing is a blitz throughout, jagged shards and buzzes of feedback, the melodies chiming through. The dynamics of the songs are intense too- slow build ups, faster tempo choruses, fade ins and outs, clanging chords after the song has finished. I could pick any of Bob's songs off Warehouse to illustrate the strength and depth of his talents. This one will do nicely.

It's Not Peculiar

And just in case you were wondering whether he still has it, he does. This is from his newest solo album Patch The Sky- less angry maybe, more at peace with himself, but no less contrary.

Sugar And Mould

Brian at Linear Tracking Lives is counting down his top hundred songs of the 1990s and included a song by Bob Mould's post-Husker Du power trio Sugar, off their final lp FUEL (File Under Easy Listening). Round these parts Copper Blue is the Sugar album to go to, brilliant from start to finish, but Brian did send me back to FUEL and this song which I always loved. Your Favourite Thing has one of those masterly, fluid Bob Mould guitar riffs that he can knock out in his sleep but other guitarists can only dream of.

Your Favourite Thing

Eight Miles Again

Husker Du's version of Eight Miles High is just indescribably good, a 7" single worth its weight in gold. Blistering, white hot, ferocious, 60s rock meeting 80s punk, with Bob Mould lacerating his vocal chords and fingertips.

Eight Miles High

There are several live clips on Youtube. This one is Husker Du live in Camden in 1985. Astonishing, sheets of metal feedback from Bob and manic drum thumping from Grant Hart.



Live in 1987 at a Dutch festival from someone's collection of home recorded VHS tapes, slightly less manic...

You Can Live At Home

We've had precious few guitars here recently so here's a blast of Husker Du's indie-punk perfection, what turned out to be their last recorded notes. By 1987 the Huskers were thoroughly fed up with each other and the band. During the making of Warehouse: Songs and Stories Bob Mould told Grant Hart he would never have more than half the songs on any Husker Du album and true to his word Bob's tunes outnumber Grant's again. They sequenced the twenty songs alternately by writer but the last song is Grant's. You Can Live At Home is mini-punk epic, with shards of guitar and echo laden vox. Mould hits a chord around the two minute mark that sends shivers up and the spine and the long coda fade out sees the two men vie for the final word on Husker Du, Bob soloing away and feeding back while Grant repeats the song title over and over. It is as good as they ever were (the Husker Du purists would disagree with me on this one. Warehouse came out on Warners. Sell outs and punk traitors y'see).

If it sounds a little tinny and small, this is what small bands with small budgets sounded like in 87- the radio loudness wars and punchy digital sound were years off. It'll shrink sonically in comparison to other stuff if you play it on shuffle. But it'll sound better. Husker Du were real one offs. Truly, there is no other band who could combine 60s idealism and writing, 80s punk, and melodies like this one could.

You Can Live At Home

I'm On The Centreline, Right Between Two States Of Mind

The other half of Husker Du's songwriters was Bob Mould, who had the more successful solo career. Sugar hit the big time with Copper Blue (on Creation in the early 90s), Workbook and a string of solo abums sold well and were highly rated, he took time out to write WWF scripts for TV (wrestling not wildife), and he did some housey electronic stuff (which bamboozled some of his fans). Recent interviews suggest he's mellowed a bit from the slightly dour figure he was. I like Bob Mould even if some of his solo albums can be hard work.

This is Hoover Dam, from Copper Blue- full of crunching guitar, melodrama and some strangely cheesy 80s keyboards. Turn it up.

Hoover Dam