Sugar - Classic Or Dud

i think huskers would be way bigger than burma. i guess i consider 1000 ppl big business relatively, i dunno.

either way a husker du reunion will NEVER happen

― gr8080 sings the blues (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 4 March 2011 22:49 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^^^^THIS, and matt otm throughout this thread.

I interviewed Bob Mould for his "Body Of Song" album and I asked him at the end of ithe chat what the prospects were of a reunion. He said that it was not likely.

First of all, he claimed that contrary to my assumptions, there are not promoters waving bags of cash at them to do so.

Even without that tempation, he said too many hurtful things have been said by the other two (or maybe just one... I didn't use it in the interview and I don't have the transcript and might not be able to dig up the audio; all I have is the story I turned in) that he deemed it an impossibility.

That said, I cannot believe that nobody with a check book at least took their temperatures. I don't believe it would have been on par with The Pixies in terms of interest but I know a lot of people who never got to see Husker Du live who would pay for the chance now.

I include myself in that, actually.

Mould is too comfortable financially and psychologically to need a HD reunion, I was told.

Husker Du live : you're not missing THAT much.

i have many, many bootlegs that argue otherwise, us steel

IIRC, Mould did an interview, I guess when his last lp came out, where he said not only wasn't there going to be an HD reunion, but also that their SST albums weren't going to be expanded/reissued/remastered because all three guys had to over see/sign off on the project. He then advised fans to hold onto their vinyl.

I've also seen interviews with Hart where he claimed Mould tried to low-ball/strong-arm all the rights away from him and Greg, pissing him off and pissing away what little good feeling came of the hell-freezes-over one-time-only demi-reunion (where, incidentally, Mould chose a Hart song and Hart chose a Mould song - perhaps not coincidentally, "Never Talking to You Again" and "Hardly Getting Over It").

yo stevie -- which husker bootlegs are the best? i don't have any!

It's a pity that the end of Husker was so unnecessarily ugly and messy...that whole thing with Mould telling Hart he'll never have more than 45% of the song on any record and then Hart inevitably firing back after the split, just shake hands and either get a reunion gig going or completely call time on it in the right way. I'm anxious to see how he will depict that last year or so in the autobiography.

It was more complicated than that, too, involving everything from AIDS scares and suicide to drugs (Mould cleaned up first and got the upper hand; Norton, as far as I can tell, has stayed out of it).

x-post Tyler, I have a great Trenton bootleg I've enjoyed. Most famous may be "Lyndale's Burning," Minneapolis '95: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0DF8LFZM

i have about 20gb of husker boots :)

well,maybe 10. on a load of data cdrs

It's impossible to side with either Mould or Hart: one has been sober for years and doing well, the other wasn't.

awesome, thx stevie. i'll check it out -- i take it it's 85 not 95?

tyler - there's a boot from 86 i think, in minneapolis, where they debut a lot of candy apple gray, and also cover 'you're so square', that's pretty amazing. also track down the children's crusade boot, which contain three or four more sets of land speed record-era awesomeness. youtube had some great live du, too.

trenton bootleg josh mentions above is great especially because, iirc, bob has a real tantrum about spitting in the audience at one point.

oh oops, i thanked stevie instead of josh. thanks to both of you!

Lyndale's is awesome, although I think Celebrated Summer is listed and the actual track is...something else. Don't remember.

Yeah, they didn't really talk a lot onstage.

and also cover 'you're so square', that's pretty amazing.

Stevie, is that the version that morphs into "the wit and the wisdom"?

i think ppl might exagerate grant's drug use a bit, i've heard he's fairly sober now.

but grant isn't like other people.

my old band was playing a big benefit show for a mutual friend's divorce, you had to do some anti-love songs...we were going to play "never talking to you again" and didn't know grant was on the bill, anyway i screwed up my confidence and walked up to him and told him we were going to play it, he said right away he's come up and play it with us. he even had us cut out the bridge, which he said was boring...but yeah i was in heaven i couldn't believe it. could you imagine bob doing that? (my band was a nowhere band, not a big deal even locally)

he's around a lot, his house just burned down but he was living with a friend of mine, i think grant is more of a true artist than bob in a lot of ways, i don't think he was made for this world. bob seems smart and together but honestly his new solo stuff is so boring and dead to me. even a weird uncomfortable grant solo show when he's like playing the same song three times in the set, or repeating the last chord from a song like 15 times and being weird to the audience, it's always something.

royalties, most of which come from his post-Husker years

pretty sure every SST artist gets more royalties from their post-SST years until the non-SST reissues come out

Not sure what a "true artist" means in 2011, tbh. No snark intended.

? Why would it mean anything different than say 1989? or 1992? Or least to the extent that whatever year it was got in the way of the 'artistry'?

pp, yes its that boot - its sometimes known as boston 1986 but when i bought it on vinyl in the 90s it was credited as a minneapolis show. i'm pretty sure i got it before living end came out, and what i liked most about it was that bob and grant sang harmonies on each others songs, whereas on the studio versions, for the most part, grant's double-tracking harmonies on his songs, and bob on his songs. the version of green eyes on this boot is my favourite: the final chord always leaves me real choked.

? Why would it mean anything different than say 1989? or 1992? Or least to the extent that whatever year it was got in the way of the 'artistry'?

Well, I wouldn't define living in poverty as part of the requirements of true artistry.

grant hasn't been living on the streets, he was living with his elderly mom taking care of her. She moved into a home. Then the house burned down. You reallyseem to want to view him in a negative light. I think he's a true artist because of his art. He always had such a gift for songs, for melodies, that were so distinctively grant. Bob is more successful, but after sugar he is a bore.

I loved both of them.

I'm very sorry about how badly Hart's life has turned out, especially so since in HD I considered him as good as Mould. It's quite likely that had Hart the opportunities he might have churned out as many terrific post-HD songs as Mould. Because I admire domestic bliss more than poverty, and I took from your earlier remarks that Hart's problems the last twenty years made him a Truer Artist, which I can't accept (although we agree that I have no use for Mould after Sugar). Maybe I incorrectly interpreted your posts.

Because I admire domestic bliss more than poverty, and

"Your Favorite Thing" sounds like "Friday I'm in Love", but sucks much more.

thanks!

i feel like building a time machine just to go back to 2001 and slap myself seconds after the opening post in this thread. copper blue may be the best end-to-end album he was ever involved with.

also, reissues in july! and i guess he's touring again as sugar?

He played at Shepherds Bush Empire last night - the whole album of Copper Blue (I couldn't go).

interview

i think j. wurster is his drummer now; not sure about bass

Been saying it for years: Sugar >>>>>>>>>>> Husker

Nice try

Alfred … OTM?

no

Understand that I discovered Husker backwards from Sugar, and while I appreciated Mould's songcraft i the eighties (and still do: Flip Your Wig is one of my essentials) he finally crafted a sound commensurate with a songcraft that never stopped expanding on those three Sugar releases.

Grant hart >>>>sugar
I like sugar but let's get real

Alfred not on the money. But yeah, Mould's pop instincts are stronger in Sugar than they were in Husker Du. But then, he didn't need to fly the pop flag so high in Husker Du, and when he did, it only made that band even better.

I don't doubt Hart could have created as many good records as Mould did between 1989 and 1994.

I love the first Sugar album and EP, but Grant's first two solo albums are every bit their equal, minus the polish, maybe, but great nonetheless.

Sugar boils down to Mould applying the eagle-eye of "Hardly Getting Over It" and "Makes No Sense at All" to vortices of sound.

Any band that doesn't have a David barbe song >>any band that does

Only Barbe song is part of their studio album catalog!

*only one

Yes and it almost negates the entire catalog!!!

Album one, track one ftw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JFtmMF4UIc

Disappointed eric went on about My Bloody Valentine and "My Favorite Thing" without noticing that "My Favorite Thing" totally jacks "Blown A Wish." I want this bit of trivia to be popularized already.

Copper Blue is a top ten all-time record for me.

I listened to the Copper Blue reissue on Spotify and it sounds terrific. Really want to pick up the vinyl.

For the longest time I assumed this band was terrible, beyond the couple of singles they played on my local alt-rock station. This was based entirely on their albums turning up constantly in used bins all over central Illinois in the later half of the 1990s.

poor Matthew Sweet!

the version of "The Slim" on Besides is amongst my favorite performances by anyone; by contrast the original sounds tame.

looks like the 2nd disk of the FUEL rerelease is the same as the bonus disk of Besides, which is a fabulous set, with another heartbreaking "Slim" to close it off.

Do any of these reissues have Bob Mould's song "Can't Fight It" from No Alternative? What a great song.

LOVE these remasters. Got the download from Merge on the weekend, and am anxiously awaiting the albums with all the bonus stuff.

I assume the remasters are the same ones that Edsel used for the reissues? I grabbed the 3-disc Edsel version of Copper Blue a bit earlier this year. Thinking I'll probably do the same for Beaster and FU:EL later, though the Edsel version of Beaster seems pretty pricy now considering the lack of extras beyond the videos.

Weird, I was at that Chicago show on the 2nd disc of the Copper Blue remaster. I only went for openers Scrawl (who were brilliant), but since I loved Husker Du, I figured I'd check out Bob's new act. About four songs in, I bailed. It sounded to me like tepid, warmed-over Du rejects. But I regret leaving, since they played "Armenia City In The Sky" later in the set.

here i shall reiterate my request for scrawl to reunite

nevertheless, u tarfumes were mad

Almost a year to the day after the Sugar show, I saw Scrawl open for PJ Harvey (same venue). They were even better that time.

I think Scrawl still occasionally reunites for one-offs, but only in Columbus. Really wish they'd do a tour.

OH MAN
Peej and Scrawl? Together? So dreamy.