Bob Mould: Classic or Dud?

His sexuality was the http://images.ientrymail.com/famousdeaddb/paulharvey_small.gif REST OF THE STORY of my pals and mine's high school obsession with Hüsker.

"You like that song? Do you? Did you know that it's about A GUY? SEE? Look how tolerant we all are…"

Mould's Hüsker songs preferred on the second person pronoun over gender specificity.

Grant, too.

Well, I wouldn't take indie alone to task for it, most rock scenes of the day had issues. It's just that you expect people who posture about their dissent with the mainstream to be more supportive.

that's presumptive. Jerks listen to the same music as non-jerks.

long interview with the guy on the (local) NPR yesterday with some call-ins. there was a good qn from chris osgood of suicide commandos about his writing process in the crazy in-the-van years, and he basically said "notebooks".

then there was a very guarded qn from the interviewer along the lines of, "so many people love HD so much, they look back on those days fondly, they'd like to know why you all hate each other". and he was basically like "eh, i'm older now but i still don't like those guys"

i'll try to find it

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/06/14/bobmould/

xpost He thinks Norton was lazy. Didn't do enough on the business side, didn't write songs, had to have his bass parts redone by Mould or Hart on later albums. AND HE STILL EXPECTED TO GET PAID!

Him getting mad at Norton for not writing songs… I always assumed that Norton just gave up trying to compete. When he did write a good one, it got relegated to a B-side!

Yeah, it's not so much that Norton didn't write songs, but that he didn't write songs and wanted decent money.

One WTF moment is when he reveals he vetoed 2541 from one of the early Hüsker albums cos it sounded to similar to something by the Dream Syndicate (Tell Me When It's Over, maybe - he doesn't say). He thinks that's when Hart started to feel bitter. He accepts now it was one of Hart's best ever songs but clearly doesn't feel that bad about vetoing it.

i dunno, you tour america as the third member of a band with ppl like mould and hart, you deserve some $

It's not like he's getting any composer royalties.

playing w/ The Roots on Fallon tomw night

I really need to listen to those first two Bob Mould solo albums again. I liked them quite a bit back in the day, but it has been years since I put them into the player.

Christgau reviews the Mould memoir and Earle's Husker bio. He's not pleased: "For an amateur, Mould’s an efficient stylist. But he either leaves his gifts as a raconteur at the dinner table or hasn’t matured into empathy quite as ripely as he thinks."

the band’s drummer and co-leader, Grant Hart, still scuffling in the Twin Cities, however valiantly Earles praises his negligible solo music

i could be misreading Christgau's gnomic sentence, but i think that's rather unfair to grant's music, which is hit'n'miss, but hits so well when it hits (thinking 'you don't have to tell me now' or '2541' or 'if i was afraid' here).

The Christgau review is worth it for one phrase alone, describing Hüsker Dü as a "transmutation of wrath into flight".

i also liked the passage where he quotes (and expands upon the quote) Azzerad on how grant's drumming was such an intrinsic part of husker du's sound. i remember the first editor i ever worked for describing sugar as 'pub rock', even though she loved husker du, and while i preferred sugar's steadier, sturdier rock drums as an alt_rock teen, there's something about grant's drumming that evades that four-square stomp in favour of something almost jazzier, certainly weirder and more inventive, that swaps the obvious fills and flourishes for something more unexpected.

Hart's drumming is more like rhythm guitar than it is like "proper drumming", although that would be at his most restrained (ie. most content to restrict himself *to* rhythm) - much of the time the drums are all blur and treble, like Mould's guitar

Christgau is unnecessarily rough on Grant Hart's output. I'll still take Intolerance over any Bob Mould solo record.

I do wish Husker Du would get back together, though. They broke up a couple years before I was old enough to see bands.

I'll take Intolerance and Good News ... over Candy Apple Grey, on most days. Certainly over any Mould solo, save perhaps Copper Blue and Beaster.

In an interview I did with Hart years ago, he noted how Mould's coming out of the closet was so not surprising by the time he formally did it that the only surprise was that Mould struggled so much with it for so long. I gathered them being gay was not exactly an open secret, just something they never really talked about. Or at least that was Grant's perspective.

And how lame of Mould to claim that Norton didn't contribute enough. I gather one of the major points of contention between Mould and Hart was that the former thought the latter was contributing too much, and that he all but promised the next Husker disc was not going to be split 50/50, songwise. And of course, Mould was in a position of power at this point, having cleaned up first, while Hart, strung out, could be easily, opportunistically scapegoated.

Whenever I listen to old Husker Du music, I'm struck by two things:

1. Bob is a master guitarist. The fact that he's playing DJ music instead of guitar is a waste of his talent. It would be like DJ Shadow playing acoustic folk music.

2. Grant's songs are just as good as any of Bob's. On New Day Rising, they're better.

kornrulez6969, point 2 OTM. Point 1, I do agree, but I think Bob probably felt burned out on electric guitar, and probably on the expectations on him in that arena. It's like why Pete Townshend always says he rather go sailing than do a Who tour (but does them anyway).

And I actually think a Du reunion would be a disaster; they haven't played together in decades, and the constant gigging in the 80s is what made them such a powerful unit. But maybe I'm just saying that because I was lucky enough to have seen them, on the first Warehouse tour. I don't remember where I put my keys, but I remember that show like it was yesterday. But then, despite the fact that a full-on Jam reunion would likely suck, I'd still go see them, so I definitely get where you're coming from.

you know, as much as i love bob mould's music, i can never forget something everett true wrote about him in melody maker: that bob mould was cursed to always sound like bob mould. and as much as i like that sound, it's seemed a bit of a creative dead end since Beaster - not that one or two tracks from his solo albums since haven't been amazing - and all the DJ stuff has yet to convince me there's a fresh direction within him.

i also wouldn't want to see a Du reunion, and I never saw them, and still wear the repro Warehouse tee I bought 17 years ago as a 16 year old.

I saw Bob countless times when I was in college, solo or with Sugar. Sold beer to Greg once. Never met Grant.

I've been listening to their albums since I was a high school senior. They're still one of the few bands from then that I listen to now as a married man in his late thirties with two kids.

And all that said, I hope they never get back together. It wouldn't even be close to being the same. Bob and Grant playing together at Karl Mueller's benefit was way more of a final epilogue than any of just have expected.

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2011/06/23/bob-mould-roots-jimmy-fallon-change-your-mind/

Whenever I listen to old Husker Du music, I'm struck by two things:

1. Bob is a master guitarist...

^so true. The guy could really play.

scrolling back to xgau's review it would have been nice if he spent more time on the book and less on husker du's music (as illuminating and evocative as his description of that early 83 show is). idk, haven't read it yet, but there must be more to mould's experience as a gay man in the hetero-world of indie rock.
maybe the book fails to deliver the goods on this rich and unexplored territory but xgau's review barely glances at that. and his dismissal of mould's prose is unsupported by any quotes.

the Times review was better at pointing to examples.

this, to my mind, is a more thoughtful and better-written review of the actual book.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/books/see-a-little-light-by-bob-mould-of-husker-du-review.html?_r=1&ref=dwightgarner

He writes prose like he wrote lyrics: dourly, and with almost no trace of humour. He warns at the beginning that readers should not expect anecdotes, and boy does he deliver on that warning. He comes across as self-justificatory, misanthropic and really rather boring. --"Ithappens" quote from upthread

I get the impression that most reviewers of the book think about it like this ilx poster's view expressed upthread. It makes me less interested in reading it.

Uh, I guess some reviewers.

well Mould and 99% of all memoirists. "self justificatory misanthropic and really rather boring" also describes about 99% of HC punk IMHO

Christgau did remind me of a show I saw later in 83: Husker Du/Minutemen @ Danceteria. Cowabunga!

so serious question: did the Hüsker boys attract male groupies or something?

hetero me didn't even know Mould was gay at the time I saw Husker Du perform

ask Bob M that one Alfred but from the audience his sexuality was not obviously apparent, to say the least

I've had a long-running conversation about this w/one of my best friends who's gay & also been a professional musician his whole life. back in the early 90s when I was a magazine editor we tried to do a "personal testimony" kind of article about his experiences in the (surprisingly) closeted/macho rock world.
The piece never got written mostly cause my buddy is a gifted songwriter but not a journalist (which I guess proves Xgau's point sorta) anyway his 80s band opened for HuDu in FLA. he hung out w/Grant Hart (platonically) after the gig and said he was a nice guy but got no gay vibes from anybody in the band.

Brief review in WSJ by Ken Kurson.

"startlingly serpentine" eh

Are there even such a thing as male groupies? In the strict Pamela Des Barres definition of the word?

The whole homosexuality thing with Husker Du… I don't know how to put it. I don't want it swept under the rug when talking about the band, but it was such a "novel" thing back in the day for most punk fans, it has a tendency to get overblown. "Were Grant and Bob lovers?" Why would you even ask that question. Was Kim Deal fucking Black Francis?

And besides, didn't Grant father a child? Yes, gay men can do that, but it does blur the whole situation, especially when you're asking cockamamie questions about relations between the band members.

I met a friend of Grant's once who described him as bi, and yes, he had a kid.

I certainly thought Norton was the cutest guy in the band before and after I knew about the other two's sexuality.

"Were Grant and Bob lovers?" Why would you even ask that question. Was Kim Deal fucking Black Francis?

Those two questions are not, er, equal which should explain why there are numerous excellent reasons one would ask the first question.

I'm not trying to be confronational or seem like I'm dismissing the first question, but it seems like the only reason it ever gets asked whether Bob and Grant were lovers is because they were both gay and playing in the same band.

The head games and tension that existed throughout the band's tenure as a reason to ask… it seems to me that there have been hundreds of bands that went through that (hell, I just read the Pavement bio where Malkmus pulls a Mould and sits in the back of the van with his hood up, not talking to anyone.) The whole, "WELL, they must have been ASS FUCKING, those homos…" seems a bit disingenuous.

Again, Kevin. I'm not trying to disparage ya, but I'd also like to hear for what reasons you wonder.

Oh I see. I thought you were dismissing outright the question of their sexuality. Still, there are ways to conceive of any erotic/romantic tension between Mould/Hart more positively, i.e.g, as a engine for songwriting or musical energy. Plus it's just a flat-out more politically compelling story than Malkmus sulking or whatever, ya know?

I assume most intraband friction stems from erotic tension. It's natural to wonder whether two gay men in a band were lovers.

The first NYT (daily) review says they took their BFs on the road with them at times.

Azerrad's Our Band... mentioned it too.

Eh. I mean, I've never wondered if the members of Veruca Salt were lovers or if Fred Schneider and Ricky Wilson ever had a thing going.

Use your imagination!

Hell, if we're using our imagination, why do we keep excluding Greg Norton?