Favourite Hüsker Dü Album?

you guys ever seen this? i like this a lot...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxXeRnd36cI

wait...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxXeRnd36cI

i know a LOT of people who say chartered trips is their fave song

Kristin Hersh for one, iirc

First LP I heard (I'm sure I've related this elsewhere): Land Speed Record, anxiously awaited as I was in the 7th Street Entry on the night it was recorded. Didn't like the album, tbh.

That Indianapolis show actually seems like an off night: Why is nobody moving? But I'm ashamed to say I never noticed (or forgot) that Greg played without a pick, which is amazing.

Has grant played live since his latest solo album came out?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbKIWTdw148

Bizarre purchase from 99c store in Lakewood, CA: 3" CD single of 2541 still in massive plastic case about 2 feet long. They also had Das Damen & HR 3" CD singles but I passed on those.

please tell me he is not missing his entire upper set of teeth
he has played in chicago at least once and will again in a week or two but i'm not sure if it's with a band or not.

xpost he definitely played a show here in NYC, last month I think.

Keep meaning to take an afternoon road trip and go eat at Greg Norton's restaurant on one of my visits home...

something doesn't seem quite right about seeing a non-fattey grant hart

i don't care if he's fattey or not but please god let him have teeth!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNf2VAjbmn0&feature=related

wtf @ appearance of U2 on the s/t to this clip

Great AV Club interview with Hart.

wtf @ u2 big country and garbage are all playing in the background

New Day Rising for me, closely followed by Candy Apple Grey.

FWIW, Celebrated Summer is my favourite Husker Du song. Beautiful melody, lyrics that sum up (for me) the appeal of Mould as a lyricist, and crazy guitar wig-out at the end too. What more could you want?

I misread that youtube link as Husker Du : When Were They Thin?

mould is in like CRAZY good shape now...i swear he looks younger than pictures from the early 80s

One of my closest friends knows him well, and, yeah, he's never looked better.

must be all that gym work?

Flip Your Wig for the high points ("Keep Hanging On" "Games" "Green Eyes" "Makes No Sense At All") though I'm tempted to vote Warehouse--seeing "Could You Be the One" on MTV was a transformative exp. when I was a kid.

sometimes i feel like flip yr wig could be my fave hsukers album if it didn't have 'the baby song', which i just find to be supremely irritating.

They're a bit like the Replacements (in many ways!) but specifically in that they always had a few throwaway songs in amongst the heartbreakingly brilliant ones, I think.

There's too much throwaway material on even their classic SST mid 80s albums - luckily these are more in the line of incidental or at least short pieces but they either interrupt the flow or bookend these records. They never had that 'throw it on, who cares' rag-tag image of the Mats so it sits a little uneasy with me. Their retrospective image as this 'heads down, up to 11, one step ahead' peerless influence might give potential fans a slightly misguided impression when actually sitting down with the albums.

disagree. 'the baby song' is the only throwaway moment on flip yr wig, for eg, and its what a minute or so? the rest is solid good times. what constitutes a throwaway, anyway?

yeah baby song is the only one to skip on flip your wig

The only thing I don't like about The Baby Song is the flubbed ending.

I have to go Zen Arcade. Heard Candy Apple first, then Warehouse, then Flip Your Wig. This was all just post-breakup (1988-89). I disliked Flip Your Wig so much (at the time) that I left off listening to the earlier stuff for a few years, didn't rediscover them til maybe 91-92. Zen Arcade was a total mental disembowelment for me. I've never quite got over it. Every few years I listen to it trying to pick out the songs I'd leave off to make it a single album and can't choose even one (except maybe "Turn on the News" which is really obvious and surface-level compared to how the rest of the record works) and go total abandon on it, massive volume, tinnitus for weeks.

For years and years, I'd have said New Day Rising, 'cause Zen Arcade made me feel like "this band will never top this" and then New Day Rising hit, and it was even tighter. And then Flip Your Wig was a big letdown, as I was hoping for at least one "Plans I Make" type song. But I've been listening to Zen Arcade, and it's the last moment before they became impressed with their own songwriting ability. They're still totally a band. They work together to make the songs blaze. Songs blaze on New Day Rising, but the people are starting to pull apart, and they've left the scene, man. Even if we didn't notice yet. Its a Rubber Soul/Revolver sort of split, between ZA/NDR.

gotta be new day rising. which was also the first i heard. sometime in middle school i guess. maybe it was 9th grade.
the one i always thought was underrated is candy apple gray, so i'm glad to see so much love for it on this thread!

She went into the movie
She's been there ever since
She walked out to the lobby
For a box of Junior Mints

I have to disagree about the "left the scene" thing: They were playing $7 all-ages shows to mostly punks well into the material for Candy Apple Grey--the show where I first heard "Sorry Somehow" was the one with the massive pogo to "What's Going On." As far as pulling apart, New Day Rising opens with Mould-Hart's best collaboration, though they did bury the bass on that album.

so i voted New Day Rising again, since i havent listened to any of this since the last poll

it won last time so i wouldnt be surprised if zen arcade gets the lurker vote

bumpity bump

For me it's Zen.

I was a massive Huskers fan and even remember declaring that Warehouse was the best thing they'd ever done when I rushed into Rough Trade to buy it, on release day.

I was only trying to blag the massive Zen Arcade poster the Rough Trade counter at the time. I was a student bastard back then. Didn't learn anything then and am thicker now.

It's still Zen Arcade.

New Day Rising if it wasn't so tinny. I get bored of saying reproduce them all - apart from Metal Circus and Everything Falls Apart which are, erm, crisp.
They should have been so much more.

Mould got to grips with production with Sugar. But that was all

though they did bury the bass on that album

'Spot' on Peter. Greg Norton's melodic bass went missing from New Day Rising onwards

Maybe he just got less melodic?

I'll get stuffed.

I loved Husker Du.

the massive Zen Arcade poster

I had that on my wall as a student, it was about 6' x 4', I loved that thing.

I hope it's not "challops" to say that a good third of ZA bores me. It's stuff like "Pink Turns to Blue" and "Never Talking To You Again" that keeps me coming back, but stuff like them I'd rather listen to the next three albums.

though they did bury the bass on that album

'Spot' on Peter. Greg Norton's melodic bass went missing from New Day Rising onwards

Well yeah as a generality b-but 'Terms Of Psychic Warfare'!

'Terms Of Psychic Warfare'

Slade's comback single!

Re: "left the scene".

Yeah, even by the end, Husker Du were still playing to people who owned at least some Clash or Dammed records, but they stopped being ballz-out on Flip Your Wig. I don't think they cared who their audience was even when they were writing songs like "Real World" and "Bricklayer". Nor do I think they were running away from the "hardcore" sound. They were an introverted band from the get go, but I feel Mould and Hart retreated into their own songbooks around the time of NDR, and that may be why Norton's presence keeps receding. Mould and Hart had found their own voices, so the presence of outside trends disappeared from the songs. Probably why some people like the last three and nothing earlier.

Norton has some great runs on Warehouse, like ''Friend You've Got To Fall'' but the production does him even less favours than Mould, when y'know, with Warners and that, it should be a little less tinny.

didn't bob say he had to play greg's basslines for him on one du album?

I thought I heard that somewhere..that bit in the OBCBYL book where Bob suggests certain people (Greg) were only in the band at that point for the money might suggest something, plus that recent interview with Grant where he suggests he wouldn't be interested in playing Greg as opposed to Mould - all a bit WTF? Greg however was still contributing material at this point, B-sides but material all the same.

playing 'with' Greg

the weird thing was, though...that this last year at a mike watt show, grant got up with watt's band and then greg came out and they all jammed together and seemed like they were having a bro-down.

(grant actually played drums which i don't know if that's happened in years onstage)

anyway...i'd advise taking a lot of what grant says in interviews with a grain of salt, or several.

didn't bob say he had to play greg's basslines for him on one du album?

― Wat ho, goatee'd man? Thy skinnee jenes hath byrn'd my corneyas. (stevie), Friday, March 26, 2010 10:34 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also, not sure if that's true, but having seen Greg's current project - The Gang Font (jazz rock band with Eric Fratzke and Dave King, drummer extraordinaire of Bad Plus and Happy Apple) he's got WAAAAAYYYY more chops than you would expect...

http://www.myspace.com/thegangfontfeatinterloper

like basically, maybe he's just been woodshedding all these years, but live he had WAY more chops than grant and bob have ever had at their respective instruments

oh hey, i have no probs with greg at all, i think his playing (on live boots, etc) is great