HUSKER DU V. Replacements

Are you tone deaf? You could also say (I wouldn't) that songs like "Lay It Down Clown" and "Little Mascara" pretty much come from the exact same grain.

This is a tough one, but I gotta say Husker Du based on little more than personal preference.

But then, I'll admit- all of their records have terrible production and uneven song quality. The Replacements sound much better as a band and have a considerably higher percentage of good songs to bad ones. Westerberg's voice is untouchable, and their hooks were gigantic.

It took me years to get into Husker Du, and I frequently avowed that they sucked. But then, once, as I sat in the parking lot of my shitty job, blasting music from my shitty car stereo, frustrated to no end by the shitty circumstances of my life, "Pride" by Husker Du came on, and everything suddenly clicked all at once.

In spite of their uneven qualities, Husker Du channels rage, angst and frustration unlike any band from that time. Their music is truly desperate, and I connected with it during those times more than I ever have with the Replacements, songwriting be damned.

Ghosttaster OTM. I had more or less the same experience - love the Mats albums and later came to Husker via solo Bob and Sugar, but only selected songs as none of their albums satisfy me entirely.

I think making Warehouse into a double was a big mistake - the band may well have fallen apart anyway but I don't see how this would have helped them

What those albums could have sounded like with a Gil Norton, Vig or Wallace at the helm.....as opposed to Spot (he worked for the Minutemen - he did not for the Huskers)

Thing is Huskers were much more of a sonically powerful band that its a bigger disappointment that their albums sound like shit - I can only imagine how New Day Rising or Flip Your Wig would have sounded had they come out in 1992 or whatever.

Totally agree. You hear one Husker Du song, you've kind of heard them all. I just took the liberty to listening to 5 of the above listed songs in succession, and they all mine pretty much the exact same territory with the one pitiful exception of "The Baby Song." Jesus, how did Bob Mould let that get on an album?

Basically the Baby Song = Hart/Mould war over songwriting quotas = end of band

I knew it was the Baby Song that did it

I would have been torn in 1984, and it's still not an easy call. TBH, I'm inclined to go with The Replacements, despite my strong inclination to disagree with polio just on principle. The 'Mats are easier on the ear, funnier and more self-effacing, able to get across emotion without bombast, more varied in tone and texture, and more closely connected to the 70s rock I love best (Stones, Big Star, Kiss).

That's not to take anything away from Husker Du. Thin sound or no, I love Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, at least like everything they did. The only reservation I have about Husker Du is a product of their unswerving dedication to "intensity", whether emotional or sonic. These things go hand in hand in their music, the squalls of screaming mid-high fuzz and the earnestly wounded emo wailing, you shouldn't see me crying ice cold ice. Suspect that they're Mould's legacy much more than Hart's, as Hart wrote most of the goofy and generous Husker Du songs I love best: the folk, country and rawk stuff like "Books About UFOs", "Turn On the News" and "She Floated Away".

More than any 80s band I can think of, Husker Du need and deserve a careful remastering and reissue campaign.

re: Ice cold ice stuff - Near the end of the band and definitely on the solo records, the parenthetical statements Mould makes gets on my nerves.

And just a reminder that the Hüsker Dü poll is coming soon, sometime in 2013 or 2014.

If the Man Sized Action record Mould produced during those yrs is any indication, Spot probably made those Husker records sound less thin or at least exactly how they wanted them to sound.

Huskers for me always.

Husker Du is in dire need of a nice catalogue reissue campaign and quality remastering job. I think it would serve their legacy immensely.

i completely agree, but bob and grant apparently can't get it together enough to get the tapes back

Bob Mould's book kind of makes him sound like a jerk

him being Bob Mould himself

Guitarists with high-end hearing loss and personal issues with the bass player always mix poorly. ALWAYS.

The original vote (50-39) is almost a perfect approximation of where they stand for me--in 1985, also today. Husker Du is one of my three or four favourite bands ever, but the right song will make me intensely nostalgic for the Replacements.

I note that "Hot Tub Time Machine" uses a Replacements song on the soundtrack, but nothing by Husker Du. Husker Du wins.

Husker Du are a great band, but the Mats destroy them. It's just not a contest.

otoh, it's just a contest

Husker Don't.

I don't know if you can just remaster Huskers. I was just listening to Candy Apple Grey on Spotify and - wow. They might need to be remixed. There is almost no bass.

Mould was a really good songwriter. "Eiffel Tower High" on that album is really put together well - great chord progression, harmonies through much of the song. Unique stuff, and very good.

"Hardly Getting Over It"!

I note that Husker Du are very arguably an influence on Fucked Up, who put out one of the best albums of 2011, and that The Replacements really impressed Winona Ryder.

more than arguably, i'd say

Since the Replacements never influenced any awesome 2010ees P4K approved musics like Fucked Up and since turning on chicks like Winona Ryder is totally against the rock'n'rollist constitution, I guess we have to give this round to Hart & Mould.

Mould also has Sugar in his favor.

arguably

Sugar is not a plus.

i want to say that the replacement had a bigger and more direct influence on american pop than husker du. a lot of people took their basic sound and sensibility and ran with it, from approximate contemporaries like soul asylum and the goo goo dolls to later descendants like the hold steady and all american rejects. then again, i suppose husker du and mould had a huge influence on emo and hardcore, so it's hard to say.

replacements

Sugar is most definitely a plus! Very little solo Westerberg is worth the time of day. Someome suggest a best-of his solo stuff and I'll give it a spin, though.

There actually is one:

http://www.amazon.com/Besterberg-Best-Paul-Westerberg/dp/B0007Z9RAM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1334804761&sr=8-3

The one song I know I love is "Lookin' Out Forever." I don't remember much else.

Husker Du had a pretty huge and last impact on midwestern underground rock.

lastING even

Oh I guess I should have read your whole post, contederizer.

"Makes No Sense at All" is a mind=blowing record. To go from punk rock to bubblegum is one thing, but to get there from HARDCORE is another!

Not to mention that it's just done so artfully.

you mean the song or flip you wig in general?

No, that song in particular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j13khaeFUcA

westerberg's shtick has aged sorta badly for me although there are some great tunes

feel like mould is partly responsible for emo. his songs don't move me as much as they did (i was much more into his husker stuff back in the day), but hart's best stuff sounds better as time goes on.

hart's best stuff sounds better as time goes on

otm, though i love a lot of mould's stuff too

i suppose husker du and mould had a huge influence on emo and hardcore

also a massive influence on nirvana's nevermind; i remember krist saying around the time of release that their blend of melody and noise wasn't anything revolutionary, that husker du did it before.

i love both bands. they're both very, very different from each other, despite being nominally from the same genre and geographically the same area. husker du are intense, but the mats are maudlin. different flavours for different moods.

husker du for me w/o hesitation.

husker du>grant hart solo>replacements>bob mould solo>chris mars solo>nova mob>paul westerberg solo>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>sugar which is a nightmare that i am glad got left back in the early 90s forever

i know i am forgetting something obvious in there but whatever

i love sugar's first two, but i do understand the hate.

The Replacements just seem like so much more interesting a band. So much more interested in exploring, even if much of the time they were only going to new musical places to take the piss. I like them both, and in the 80s probably liked Huskers more, but I listen to the Replacements much more often these days - they have a timelessness about them that Husker Du just don't. I'd take the Let It Be-Tim-Pleased to Meet Me run over anything in the Husker Du catalogue,

And Bob Mould's pissy, sancimonious book made me sick of his self-pitying ass.

"sanctimonious", even.

The Replacements just seem like so much more interesting a band. So much more interested in exploring

If Zen Arcade wasn't more exploratory than any one album the Replacements ever did then I'll eat my Gibson Flying V sideways.

I'll rep for Sugar, but yeah like Stevie I can understand people not liking them.

Let's not forget that the Du weren't the only ones with production issues; if their records were under-produced, then Replacements records post-Let it Be were horribly over-produced.

when i interviewed sst's joe carducci for my black flag book, he argued vociferously that du's albums didn't need remastering, and that they weren't badly produced: what you hear is what they sounded like, and what they wanted to sound like, that sheet of white noise guitar sound, grant's weird, jazzy drums, the pin-prick bass sound. i sort of feel you have to embrace what they are; when i first started checking the du out, after copper blue, i was alienated at first by grant's drums, by that thin, hissy guitar sound, but that's what i grew to love about them - the anti-rock gestures, the pull back from bombast.