Gotta Lotta POLLING To Do - ILM Artist Poll #29 - Your HÜSKER DÜ Nominations Thread

I assume folks are familiar with this?
http://youtu.be/1qwrl_dru5A
Because holy shit.

You know, Data Control from The Living End is pretty good...

some of that 7th entry footage is so insane

Just for folks that don't know about it, that whole show is on Youtube and was at the exact same venue that Land Speed Record was recorded at - live to two track - a month or two earlier. They play two sets, the first one being the whole of LSR in the exact same order with the addition of a looser song called Drug Party about halfway through. I don't listen to LSR very much (though it's good for short, thrashy blasts - Bricklayer does it for me), but to be honest you may as well just watch this show instead, it makes a lot more sense with the visuals giving it a bit of context. The second set is seven or eight more melodic songs in more of a post-punk vein like the early singles and Everything Falls Apart. Think about half the songs from this second set never made it to any of their records - maybe they were saving them up for a later release and then they got superceded? And to think they were sitting on Diane for two years before that got released...

Oh yeah, watch that Live in London recording that Tarfumes linked to btw, I still have that on VHS tape somewhere. There are times on that where Bob Mould just seems to be burying himself so deep in the music in some kind of pissed or blissed communion with the noise. Not one of my favourite songs but the version of Diane on that is awesome too. Think that ilx poster Stevo was at that show iirc.

A record I really should sell, but I never sell anything:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_IWqfvyO_nw8/RdnUWFBy2iI/AAAAAAAAATA/86S8o3lKpoU/s400/HDstatues.jpg

Never saw that London footage!

!!!!!!!

Sometimes I don't think it's until "Warehouse" that Mould finally catches up to Hart in the pop department. "Flip Your Wig" certainly comes close, but Mould takes a step back on "Candy." But "Warehouse" is the first one where I have real trouble deciding who has the better set of songs, though none of Mould's are as good as "She Floated Away" or "You Can Live at Home."

Here's something weird:

Song credits were usually (Hart) or (Mould). Sometimes (Hart/Mould).

And then there were times like on New Day Rising when songs were credited to (Mould/Husker Du), which makes it seem like Mould somehow wrote a song with himself.

Usually, those (Person/Band) credits imply that one guy thought of the words and the band made the music. So for "New Day Rising", Mould came up with the lyrics "New day rising!" and the music came from all band members.

Except, you go to the BMI Database and credits for "New Day Rising" or "How To Skin a Cat" are given to Mould and Norton only.

In other words, if Hart and Mould collaborated on a song like "If I Told You", it's credited (Hart/Mould), but if Mould and Norton wrote a song together, it was attributed to (Mould/Husker Du).

The hell?

I was trying to search through the archives for a past youtube of a Husker show that Frank Kogan posted (or said he liked). Can't find it now..

XP Sorry, I'm going to be sidetracked looking at that BMI database for a while. Is there a PRS equivalent?

Maybe that was a deal that Grant and Bob struck with Greg, to give him credit for those two songs. Otherwise, he wouldn't have gotten songwriting royalties on anything other than "Everytime" (which likely doesn't amount to much).

There's a bunch of Talking Heads songs credited to "David Byrne/Talking Heads," which just seems like Byrne being a dick.

Kogan? I'm surprised. I associate Frank with the time he congratulated Nirvana for their "synthesis of Husker Du type music with Bob Mould type vocals." (xxpost)

Mould. Buck. Young. Trick.
http://youtu.be/3RMJwwl0h0U

That's great--into the Neil Young Covers file it goes.

I VOTED! :D

Shit, I better do my ballot tonight, I'll be too busy later in the week.

Sent.

^^ 10 ballots have now been received.

voted!

super easy to compile list of songs, but not so easy to put them in an order
my first three all begin the same way

DRUMS DRUMS DRUMS

Serious question: (since this is apparently the day I have dedicated to thinking about Hüsker Dü all day, even on my way to the dentist)

Can someone change my mind about Candy Apple Grey being mostly weak? That album just kinda makes me bored aside from a few notable exceptions -- Sorry Somehow (<3 this song so much), Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely (I used to like it compared to the rest of them), and Hardly Getting Over It (which is like the classic mopey Bob song for me -- his singing is so weird on it and it kinda reminds me of a Chris Bell song for some reason.)

But other than that, kinda sterile, and not my thing. (Note: I initially had it on cassette and used to know exactly how long it took to ffw through Eiffel Tower High.)

Even the song titles have the same boring rhythm

All This I've Done for YOU
No Promise Have I Made

Also Dead Set on Destruction is good. Grant's singing sounds energetic.

oops that you was not supposed to be caps

ha

"Candy Apple Grey" is my least favorite Husker's album.

It has a handful of great songs on it, but the rest is just color by numbers, it seems. It's when Bob started singing every song exactly the same way or something and Grant kept singing more melodically. The Grant songs are way better than the Bob songs on that album, to me at least.

I was enamored of pretty much everything Husker Du did at the time, so I liked Candy Apple Grey a lot. I don't really want to listen to it to check, but thinking about the two ballads, my guess is they wouldn't hold up at all. I did vote for "Dead Set on Destruction," which I gave a quick listen to and it still sounded great.

Kind of agree about "Candy apple grey". It was my first Husker Du album and liked it enough until I dug deeper and got more albums. But some of it is weak - "I don't know for sure" is such an obvious rewrite of "Makes no sense at all". There's good on there, but better elsewhere. I think there's 3 songs on my ballot from it, but I've not edited it down from 30 to 20 songs yet.

I still have a soft spot for Candy Apple Grey, but no, I can't defend it either.

Along the lines of every song title is somewhat the same, seems like 8/10 songs start with the same drum roll.

And I do like Eiffel Tower High. went. into. the movies. SHE'S BEEN THERE EVER SINCE. BOX OF JUNIOR MINTS.

BTW Hardly Getting Over It reminds me of Speed of Sound but I can't really say why aside from the similar parts at the end.

I wrote a song with lots of words
but I don't know for sure
It could be good and it could be bad
but I don't know for sure
It could be something blablablablabla
Something something
So What
I DON'T KNOOOOOOW

i'm paraphrasing obvs but this album has some all time lazy songwriting from Bob
Grant's songs, however are great!!

Sorry Somehow is SO GOOD.

I always thought "Could You Be the One" was the rewrite of "Makes No Sense", but now you got me thinking.

they're all the same!

XP - "Eiffel tower high" has made me want to find a box of Junior Mints since 1990, and I finally found one this year in a speciality sweet shop in Cardiff.

any old gas station in the USA has junior mints
just don't leave them in a hot place or you will get the monomint

Love Candy Apple Grey, and for a while it was my favorite record of theirs. I still like the mopey Bob songs, and at the time I took them as a sign of growth/expansion (ditto the organ on "Sorry Somehow"). The only dud on it (relatively speaking) for me is "I Don't Know For Sure," which sounds like a half-assed "Makes No Sense At All." But "Dead Set" is all time.

"Sorry Somehow" features maybe the most empathetic Grant vox other than on "Green Eyes." Or maybe "Flexible Flyer." Though of course shred-vox on "Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill" >>>>>>>>.

xp - Yeah, I can see that. I guess you're seeing the high points and I'm still annoyed that I had to ffw my tape. My edit of Candy Apple Grey would be an EP with 6 songs on it. It's 2012, maybe that's how it should be.

I like Grant's vocals throughout this album, honestly.

Here's another question: what's the general opinion on "Green Eyes"? I used to be so embarrassed to like this song because it's so earnest and cheesy, but oh did I like it.

I can't think of any Grant vocal that I even mildly dislike, now that I think about it. Bob, on the other hand, became progressively less interesting to me as a vocalist when he became less screamy. I'm not saying he shoulda been all-screamy, but the earnestness of his non-screamy voice is about 90% of why I could never get into any of his post-HD stuff.

And "Green Eyes" rules.

"Green Eyes" is beautiful. Another Pixies story is that Black Francis apparently used to start the day listening to "Green Eyes" over and over again. Certainly you can hear it echoed in "Wave of Mutilation."

BTW, in the off chance anyone out there has not heard Grant's solo debut, it is nigh-perfect.

yknow what else? i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that grant sings great songs about girls

girl who lives on heaven hill
pink turns to blue
she floated away
books about UFOs
diane (omg do i have a weird story about this one)

and so on!

"She's a Woman and Now He is a Man"!

yeah i mean lots of em! those were the ones i thought of before i got tired of typing!

This is fun harvesting votes for this poll. I've been listening and re-listening to a whole bunch of stuff, and the best part is that I get to do it again next week with the rollout.

Finally put my ballot in. It wasn't easy. Had to keep saying to myself, "Okay, so you really would prefer to never hear this one again compared to the one in front of it?"

Can someone change my mind about Candy Apple Grey being mostly weak?

Ha, the first three songs I was going to cite as evidence of its greatness are the three you mentioned anyway... I love it, it's not quite my favourite but it was the first of their albums I heard and I fell in love with it immediately. I like all three of the mopey ballads, 'I Don't Know For Sure' sounds nicely pissed off and has some cool chord changes, 'All This I've Done for You' is a great anthemic closer ('Dead Set on Destruction' would have been too)... There's nothing on it I dislike really.

At some basic level I pretty much rejected Candy Apple Grey and I still don't quite know why. I'm sure the jump to Warners played a part. But I remember listening to it and wanting it to be good. All the songs mentioned had been in my head since hearing them live the previous year, and some are among their best--"Don't Want to Know" has got to be. But even now the production kept it low on my ballot, if it stayed on.

Bob, on the other hand, became progressively less interesting to me as a vocalist when he became less screamy.

Yeah, he was just doing something very amazing and very jazz as a punk singer that he kind of returned to here and there as a pop singer, but not as much. You hear it in his solo live acoustic performances a lot, abstracting things out in a soulful way.

Breakdown of my ballot, by album. (Anything not listed is a zero, obv.)

Metal Circus: 2
Zen Arcade: 2
New Day Rising: 5
Flip Your Wig: 4
Candy Apple Grey: 2
Warehouse: 4

Doesn't exactly reflect my order of album preference -- Zen Arcade is underrepresented because to me it's so much more an album than a set of tunes, and Warehouse is overrepresented for the inverse reason I guess. But it's hard to argue that New Day/Wig isn't their absolute peak.

Oh, and the reason that doesn't add up is there was one single-only vote.

Doesn't exactly reflect my order of album preference

Same with me except with New Day Rising.

Weird how that works. The same goes for another SST band: Meat Puppets II has the better songs, but Up On the Sun is the better album.