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. 

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 card said Into the impossible. I went with an instant response, The Drum by The Impossibles (the Andrew Weatherall remix from 1991). Ernie agreed and mentioned his 7" copy of the original by Slapp Happy from 1974. Ernie also had Peter O'Toole singing in The Impossible Dream in the 1972 film Man Of La Mancha. Walter went with Medicine Head in 1973 with a mathematical impossibility, One Plus One Is One. Anonymous consulted a search engine and got Into The Impossible by Saint Profane and another Anonymous (or possibly the same one) suggested Impossible by The Charlatans. Khayem came up with Kylie's Impossible Princess and Bon Iver's cover of Talk Talk's I Believe. 

Spendid commented that there were several ways to take the suggestion Into the impossible and settled on Jessica Curry's So Let Us Melt, a computer game score that captures the 'impossible wonder of childhood... but comes closer to describing the aching loss of adulthood'. Indeed. Jessica's album is here- it's well worth your time. 

I did wonder, as a response to Spendid's comments, if I should be resisting the temptation to go with gut instinct when turning over the card, not just go for a song or artist name that the card suggests, but be a little less literal and a little more more lateral- surely what Eno and Schmidt intended.

Today's Oblique Saturday card is this...

Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place

I slept on this. Extreme music is an interesting one. Artists that go to extremes are often admirable and worthy of our respect but they don't always make for fun listening experiences. I'm sure you can think of your own examples. 

I often think of Gnod as an extreme band- a Manchester collective with a rotating cast of players, born from a scene in the 00s around Islington Mill in Salford. They work with sound and light artists to create fully immersive experiences. They have played at a night called Gesantkunstwerk (German word, translates as 'whole arts work'). They cite Kurt Vonnegut as being as important to their music as any musical influences. So it goes. 

In 2017 they released an album called Just Say No To The Psycho Right- Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine (as statement even truer now than it was then- the psycho right- wing capitalist fascist industrial death machine is out of control in the USA right now). Gnod's music is loud, everything into the red, sludge powered psyche- rock. Maybe it's difficult to be extreme while making guitar music in the 2010s/ 20s but Gnod do it and do it well. 

Real Man

Early Husker Du- the Land Speed Record Husker Du- are extreme too, a live album from 1982 that flies through seventeen songs in half an hour, breakneck, amphetamine hardcore punk. By the time they hit 1984 and their double album concept opus Zen Arcade, they had an album that ended with the fourteen minute long jazz- hardcore punk instrumental Reoccurring Dreams. In between the two they opened 1984's New Day Rising with the title track, a coruscating wall of buzzsaw guitars,, breaking glass and thumping tinny drums, just three words repeated over and over...

New Day Rising

I then thought about going into the industrial techno area, the 'full on panel beaters from Prague' (quoth Andrew Weatherall) of the 90s, the sound of a metal bin being kicked, or Belgian hardcore and Dutch gabba, dance music taken to its extremities. Weatherall himself visited this area with Dave Hedger as Lords Of Afford, gratuitously hardcore techno as heard on this 1994 remix of Steve Bicknell...

Untitled (Lords Of Afford Mix)

Taking the word Extreme literally threw up Extreme Noise Terror, the extreme noise band from Ipswich. In 1992 they appeared on stage with The KLF (a duo who definitely took things to extremes) at the Brits, a noise metal version of 3am Eternal that ended with Bill Drummond firing a machine gun (firing blanks) at the assembled Brits audience. Then they dumped a dead sheep outside the venue. 

The KLF v Extreme Noise Terror 3am Eternal (Top Mix)

It occurred to me that extreme music can sometimes become a competition, a band racing to take their sound to the nth degree, the furthest point it can go. In 1989 Napalm Death recorded You Suffer, their speed metal/ grindcore reduced to a song that is 0.03 seconds long, released on 7". The lyrics apparently are, 'You suffer/ But why?'

The first half of the Oblique Strategy card is Go to an extreme... The second half is ...move back to a more comfortable place. I'm not sure I like the idea of music being comfortable- comfortable sounds dull and easy, like a sofa or a pair of elastic waist trousers. I've nothing against either, trousers and sofas are important parts of life, but I'm not sure art and music should be seen as such. 

There's a fairly well known phrase, 'art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed'. Banksy has used it but it's attributed to Cesar A. Cruz and a 1997 poem with the same title, a poem about the horrors humans inflict on each other- imperialism, war, capitalism, bigotry- and suddenly we're back at Gnod again. 

But comforting the disturbed is important, music as medicine and as a means of relief, as transportation. I know that music can do this- it's been incredibly important to me in the time since Isaac died in November 2021 and I've written before about a long Saturday afternoon, a week after his death, an afternoon where it seemed like it never got light and that it might go on forever. My physical symptoms were appalling, not least raging tinnitus. I hadn't been able to listen to any music since he died, nothing seemed to be what I wanted to hear. But I needed something that afternoon, if nothing else just to mark the passing of time and drown out the noise in my ears. I put on one of Richard Norris' Music For Healing EPs, probably the December 2021 release, two twenty minute ambient tracks and they did the trick, some aural balm, just enough to make an impact on me. I followed it with some ambient Americana by SUSS and somehow the music helped. A few weeks ago, to mark Martin Luther King Day, Richard released The Corn Is Coming, a four minute ambient track, made in an hour as part of the Mutual Defiance/ In Place Of War campaign. It's here. 

Feel free to make your own Oblique Saturday suggestions in the comment box. 

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

Burning Groove

Everyone loves a cover version, don't they? In 1987 Mike Watt, suffering from depression in the aftermath of fellow Minuteman D. Boon's death, pitched up in New York and stayed with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore for a while, playing bass on some of the sessions that would become the EVOL album. In an effort to get Watt active and enthusiastic about music again they hatched a plan that become Sonic Youth offshoot Ciccone Youth. Watt covered Madonna's Burning Up (as Burnin' Up) playing all the instruments (except for a Gregg Ginn guitar solo). Watt's cover is rough and ready, fuzzy and lo fi, a thing of beauty in many ways. 

Madonna's original dates from 1983, early 80s New York dance pop that has buckets of charm and some key Madonna tropes already well in place.

Burning Up

The sessions Watt played with Sonic Youth resulted in this cover of Madonna's 1985 smash Into The Groove.

Into The Groove(Y)

Like Watt's cover it's lo fi and sounds made for ghetto blasters and C90 cassettes, with grungy bass, a hissing drum machine and handclaps and Thurston's ultra- drawled vocal. When playing in the studio Sonic Youth would play the original version through one of the channels and fade it into and out of their own version. Yes, I'd love to hear a recording of that too. In the meantime here's Madonna's Desperately Seeking Susan associated single. if you get both playing at the same time on your computer you might be able to recreate Sonic Youth's experiment. 

Into The Groove

When Ciccone Youth's album The Whitey Album came out in 1988, a few months after their landmark Daydream Nation, many people assumed they were taking the piss or covering Madonna ironically. Thurston says this was most definitely not the case, that they loved the song, danced to it in NY clubs and were paying tribute to the woman who'd played in two No Wave bands, including one (spinal Root Gang) that eventually transformed into Swans. Sonic Youth loved that someone from their downtown scene had broken out and become huge. 

The Whitey Album probably overdoes it, fifty minutes when it could have been a really good twenty minute EP but Sonic/ Ciccone Youth were into sprawling records in 1988. The album includes the track Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening to Neu, a track with J Mascis on guitar and the first time I was aware of Neu's existence and Ciccone's cover of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love, a cover with a vocal recorded by Kim in a karaoke booth and the video filmed with her lip syncing, looking cool as fuck in cut off jeans, while footage of the Vietnam War is projected behind her. 

Bizarrely, Robert Palmer had already crossed over into the US 80s indie- punk scene with his cover version of Husker Du's New Day Rising, played live at San Diego University Amphitheatre in 1987.  

Saturday Live

Husker Du, live in 1985 at the Camden Palace. Fifty- seven minutes of melody, feedback and speed, verse/ chorus songs shredded and sandblasted with utter conviction. They blast their way on stage with New Day Rising, Grant's drums double fast, triple fast even, Greg Norton bouncing round the stage, his basslines so much more present than they sometimes were on the recordings and Bob Mould playing guitar and singing those three words like there is nothing else on earth that matters more at that moment. They then career intensely through their back catalogue of recent records, the Flip Your Wig and New Day Rising albums and the Metal Circus EP. Grant's It's Not Funny Anymore is followed with barely a pause by early song Everything Falls Apart and then The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill, Grant's song about a friend dying of cancer and alcoholism, trailed by Bob draining his amp of feedback. It's breathtaking stuff, song after song, walls of sheet metal noise, fast tempos and Grant throwing in drum parts that are almost jazz- hardcore punk jazz- but jazz all the same. 

Part of Husker Du's magnificence lies in their presentation, their punk taken to a fast, loud, noisy melodic extreme versus their demeanour. Bob, tall, short hair, t- shirt and jeans, eyes closed. Grant, long hair, a barefoot singing drummer. Greg, lanky, bouffant hair and handle bar moustache. They look unpunk, non- punk. To underline their rejection of the Stalinist approach to punk with which they had no truck, they play Ticket To Ride towards the end, the Beatles transformed into bright white noise but with those melodies at the heart of it. Two minutes later they're into Recurring Dreams, an epic by Husker Du standards, six minutes of wordless psychedelic punk rock, guitar strings bending and stretching. They soar into their cover of Eight Miles High, so high now they've cleared the ozone layer and entered escape velocity. Bob, still with a thousand yard stare to the back of the Palace, launches the three of them into Love Is All Around, the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Most of the audience look stunned, blown away. Credits roll. 

Spot

Spot, Glen Lockett, in house producer for SST and countless classic US indie- punk albums from the 1980s- Husker Du's Zen Arcade, Minutemen's Double Nickels On the Dime,Minutemen's Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat, Black Flag's My War, Descendents' Milo Goes To College, Meat Puppets self titled album all included- has died aged 72. He had been ill for several months. His work with the bands mentioned above was a huge part of the sound and appeal of those bands- set up as if playing live, capture it in the studio, press record. He met Greg Ginn while working in a restaurant in Los Angeles in the 70s and was part of SST from the start. 

Those records, trebly and under- produced by modern standards but fizzing with raw energy, intent and heart, are part of the story of independent music, an underground scene that set many trains in motion. Here are two songs to remember him by, one by Husker Du and one from the Minutemen.

Turn On The News

The Glory Of Man

R.I.P. Spot.

Edit: it has been brought to my attention- thank you Ian- that Spot did not produce Minutemen's double album opus Double Nickels On the Dime. He did produce their The Punch Line and Bean- Spill EPs, debut album What Makes A Man Start Fires? and the 1983 EP Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat which contains this moment of untutored punk brilliance.

Little Man With A Gun In His Hand

You Gotta Keep Hanging On

In 1985 Husker Du released Flip Your Wig, an album that saw them end their time with SST before their move to a major and a record chock full of songs that the band self- produced, the confidence in the melodies and higher quality production evident from the moment the needle first hits the groove. That it was recorded and released only a year after Zen Arcade and a few months after New Day Rising shows how fast they were moving at this point. Bob Mould and Grant Hart were close to their peaks as songwriters, each one contributing back catalogue highpoints. 

Towards the end of side two Grant hits the bullseye with this song, a cathartic and heartfelt three minutes and nineteen seconds. After a clanging distorted guitar chord Greg Norton's bass and Grant's bass drum and cymbals ride in, pushing the song to the crest of the wave, the moment Grant starts singing his heart out. Bob's guitar is underneath not on top of the song, single notes and arpeggios rippling and chiming (although his solo at one minute thirty five is a blistering, paint stripping affair). Grant continues on through the second and third verses and then the refrain, a man who never meant anything more than this, hollering and screaming, 'oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God' and 'you gotta keep hanging on' until Bob and Greg's poppy backing vocals take over to the end. You gotta keep hanging on. 

Keep Hanging On

New Day Rising

What a relief it was when the call was made yesterday and the news channels started to show the line reached and then the crowds dancing in the streets of America's cities. Even over here, thousands of miles away in another country, there was a profound sense of elation that for once, the first time in the past decade pretty much, a political result has gone the right way, that a push back against the reactionary right wing has been made. These things matter. 

New Day Rising

Isolation Mix Twelve

I'm not sure that the title of these mixes holds true any more but onward we go. This week's hour of music is coming from the punk and post- punk world and the long tail that snakes from the plugging of a guitar into an amplifier and someone with something to say stepping up to the microphone. Some Spaghetti Western as an intro, some friendship, some politics, some anger, some exhilaration, some questions, some disillusionment, some psychedelic exploration and some optimism to end with.

In History Lesson Part 2 D. Boon explains his friendship with Mike Watt, the importance of punk in changing their lives, the singers and players in the bands that inspired him and, in the first line, the essence of punk as he experienced it.

'Our band could be your life
Real names'd be proof
Me and Mike Watt played for years
Punk rock changed our lives

We learned punk rock in Hollywood
Drove up from Pedro
We were fucking corn dogs
We'd go drink and pogo

Mr. Narrator
This is Bob Dylan to me
My story could be his songs
I'm his soldier child

Our band is scientist rock
But I was E. Bloom and Richard Hell
Joe Strummer and John Doe
Me and Mike Watt, playing guitar'

Ennio Morricone: For A Few Dollars More

Minutemen: History Lesson Part 2

Joe Strummer/Electric Dog House: Generations

X: In This House That I Call Home

The Replacements: Can’t Hardly Wait (Tim Outtake Version)

Husker Du: Keep Hanging On

The Redskins: Kick Over The Statues

The Woodentops: Why (Live)

The Vacant Lots: Bells

The Third Sound: For A While

Spacemen 3: Revolution

Poltergeist: Your Mind Is A Box (Let Us Fill It With Wonder)

Echo And The Bunnymen: Ocean Rain (Alt Version)

Pete Wylie: Sinful

Carbon/Silicon: Big Surprise

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

Rising

This bit between Christmas and New Year is actually the best bit of the festive season, not quite sure exactly what day it is or what you're supposed to be doing. Into this blur of overdoing it and the general fug that surrounds us I'm going to chuck these random pieces of pop culture. The picture above shows Kirk Douglas, a Christmas film kind of bloke if ever there was one (The Vikings, Paths Of Glory, Spartacus) relaxing in his mid-century modern style home. Kirk recently turned 102 years old.

One of the best presents I got this Christmas was Beastie Boys Book, a book by the two surviving Beastie Boys and their associates that is no ordinary rock autobiography and all the better for it. In one chapter Ad Rock describes his Toyota Corolla and the mixtape that sound-tracked that period of his life in the early 90s. Ad Rock says that The Humpty Dance by Digital Underground is the greatest record since the invention of recorded sound (or something similar) and let's be fair, it is a classic golden age of hip-hop, crossover dance hit. Based around a Sly and The Family Stone drum sample rapper Humpty Hump (rapper Shock G's alter ego) brags about his amazing sexual prowess, attained despite his comical appearance, the boring uniformity of other rappers and the Humpty Dance, a loose, anything goes, just-get-down-and-do-it kind of dance as opposed to the drill formation dancing of MC Hammer. Sure, there may be aspects of the song that are a little dated but we could all do with a little bit of doing the humpty hump...



Two apologies- I don't have an mp3 of The Humpty Dance at the moment so it's video only and also the video is TV friendly so bleeps out the profanities.

Tim Burgess is a good Twitter follow and always seems like a really nice bloke. He recently tweeted this clip, The Charlatans in October 1990 at an amphitheatre somewhere on the West Coast of the USA playing their debut single Indian Rope- loose limbed, organ led garage shuffle. There's a really nice breakdown section in this live version...



Indian Rope is a fine song, a sign that from the start this group were not bandwagoneers at all and had a winning way with a tune.

Indian Rope

Lastly, for no reason other than it needed to go somewhere and this post is as good a palce as any, here is Robert Palmer, live at San Diego State University in 1987, the man from Addicted To Love and Some Guys Have All The Luck, covering Husker Du's New day Rising, the righteous blast of hardcore punk that opened the album of the same name.



Have a moment to let that sink in. And here's Bob, Grant and Greg cleaning your ears out back in 1985.

New Day Rising

There On The Beach, I Could See It In her Eyes

After writing about them at the weekend I've been thinking about Minutemen a bit this week, digging out some of the records and cds, thinking about an ICA for The Vinyl Villain and then it occurred to me that I could tie together two of this week's posts quite neatly.

One of the Minutemen's key songs is Corona (off Double Nickels on The Dime but more famous as the theme tune to Jackass. Let's try to ignore tattooed MTV idiots stapling their arms and scrotums and focus on the song). D. Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley all wrote lyrics for the songs. Inspired and turned on by punk rock they decided early on that they would write lyrics that meant something. D. Boon wrote Corona after a trip to Mexico.

Mike Watt can explain the song better than I can- 'Corona is very heartfelt. D. Boon wrote that one on a trip to Mexico. After all the drinking and the partying, the morning after, there's a lady picking up bottles, to turn them in to get monies for her babies... it really touched him. Music was personal with us, it's how we were together, and then the [punk] movement let us do it in front of people. The movement was so inclusive, and it seemed that if you wanted in, you had to bring something original – it was kind of a toll. And for D. Boon, I remember him telling people, “Okay, whatever we play, it sounds like the Minutemen”. And that's what I hear in Corona.There's a little Mexico in there, it's got a little 'thinking out loud' – what D. Boon called our lyrics. Like, D. Boon's thinking about what's going on here: we're having a party at the beach, and this lady, by using the empty Corona bottle – it's not like D. Boon liked Corona beer! – no, she's using that bottle to help. So there's a real connection there. That's why I really like Corona – it's a strange mixture of things, but to me it's the nice things about the Minutemen'.

There's so much about this 2 minute 25 second song- the Mexican riff at the start followed by the trebly guitars and double time drumming, the fizz and buzz of the bass, D. Boon's punk poetics- he manages to say so much with so few words-

'The people will survive
In their environment
The dirt, scarcity, and the emptiness of our south
The injustice of our greed
The practice we inherit

The dirt, scarcity and the emptiness of our south
There on the beach
I could see it in her eyes
I only had a Corona
Five cent deposit'

Corona

In 2003 Calexico put out their fourth album, Feats Of Wire, the one that brought all the pieces together with some career high points. One edition of the cd came with some bonus tracks, including a cover of Corona, a pretty logical song for them to cover. Calexico slow it down a bit and add some lovely mariachi horns

Track 32 (Corona)

While looking for a picture for this post I found this image of a pair of SST labelmates, pictured in front of a poster for Husker Du's 1984 double album, D. Boon (who died the following year when their tour van crashed) and Grant Hart (drummer of Husker Du, who died this year of cancer).

New Day Rising

Sometimes with a blog post the music comes first and the picture second and sometimes the picture comes first and the music follows.When I found this picture, about to appear in a new book about women in punk from Sam Knee called Untypical Girls; Styles And Sounds Of The Transatlantic Indie Revolution, I had to post it.

New Day Rising

New Day Rising from 1984, the same year the picture was taken, is the first song on the album of the same name and is a righteous blast of fast, melodic punk rock from three men playing as if their lives depended on it.

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

Do The Du

Slipping back to 1985 today after I came across this twenty five minute clip yesterday. Husker Du live at The Stone in San Francisco on March 1st. The film starts towards the end of the set with Diane, Hate Paper Doll and Divide And Conquer (both from then recent release Flip Your Wig) and into an encore of Eight Miles High and Makes No Sense At All. For the final song, a romp through Louie Louie, the Huskers are joined by members of all four support bands- SWA, Saccharine Trust, Minutemen and Meat Puppets. Seeing Husker Du, Minutemen and Meat Puppets on the same bill seems extraordinary now but was standard for the time.



What seems funny about this video now is that it was professionally filmed but is so shonky. The sound is pretty hit and miss, Bob Mould's guitar inaudible in places against Greg Norton's bass. Whether that's the sound at the gig or just what the cameras are picking up I don't know.

The group also show how different things were in 1985. Touring without much in the way of label support- SST had never had any money- they more or less just booked some dates, got in a van and off they went. Minutemen's creed famously was 'we jam econo', in other words they cut their costs as far as they could, packed and unpacked their own gear, slept in the van or on fans' floors, touring as cheaply as possible. Touring connected with them fans and promoted records (which could be bought if SST had got them into the record shops in the town they were playing). These bands have not been anywhere near a stylist or a focus group, there's no lightshow, no backdrop, no projections, no gap between band and audience- all the things that modern signed bands take for granted. Different times.

This is also a new discovery for me, an unreleased outtake from 1984's New Day Rising album. Corruscating independent punk from Reagan's America.

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.