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

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

^ everyone heard the Anthrax cover of Celebrated Summer already?

Never forget: classified ad from the nascent Pixies looking for a bassist "into Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul and Mary."

Will anyone say a good word for anything from Land Speed Record? I can't remember exactly at what point I bought it, but probably before New Day Rising came out. I played it through once, and I'm pretty sure that was it.

Really liked Christgau likening it to ambient music.

Hüsker Dü: Land Speed Record [New Alliance, 1981]
Like a good Eno ambient, this raving nonstop live one provides just enough surface detail--recombinant noise guitar, voices tailing off like skyrockets, slogans such as "data control," "do the bee," and "ultracore"--to function as mood rather than trance music, though admittedly not for the same kind of mood. Guaranteed to assuage the nervous tension of co-op conversion, labor strife, bad orgasm, World War III, and other modern urban annoyances. In other words: aarrghhh! B+

LSR is good for what it is, but I still kinda think of it as the Chuck Cunningham of Husker Du's discography.

The Chuck Mosley of the Husker Du discography.

Christgau's review was part of why I bought it. Even now, I had to look up "remcombinant."

I'd be interested to know what people think of "Don't know yet". Do you think it's a waste of space like "The wit and the wisdom"? Or is it a beautiful piece of psychedelia? The second view is my opinion. I'm sure I've said this years ago on here, but when I heard "Don't know yet" it was like finding something I'd be looking for - I'd always thought the idea of psychedelia was better than 90% of the actual music, and was looking for backwards guitars, weird dissonances, that sort of thing, and I found it in the last track of "Flip your wig", of all places.

To me it's the sound of familiar Mould chord patterns and sonics chopped and psyched up, which is why it's so good

one guy i made tape of sugar/husker stuff for said they loved the music but hated his voice - double-tracked on Copper Blue it is sort of like alt-Phil Collins

LOL wouldn't be the first or last time I've heard his voice compared to Phil

But I still think BM sounds incredibly similar to Gabriel.

Can't wait to get really started on this, but used to love " Don't Know Yet". It was my introduction to ambient/ cafe del mar/ coffee table schmooze .I'm almost serious.
Used to drop that one as a mix tape closer all over the shop.

"alt Phil Collins" Heh heh. There's one solo song of Mould's first (Dreaming I am) which I adore, BUT, on them opening lines to the first verse, it is Collins ffs.

No Promise Have I Made is the closest the du ever came to Phil Collins, but I love the song.

First time I ever listened to Husker Du in high school, I thought Bob sounded like Axl's verses in "It's So Easy" and Grant kinda sounded like the high parts.

I… I don't know if I would support this little theory today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRwUJ5dmsv8

^ Just to rep for some early stuff, probably not going to vote for it but here's Call On Me, which is a Land Speed Record era tune but sounds a lot more like Mission of Burma than anything else

Husker Du is probably one of my 7 or 8 all-time favorite bands...and yet, I've never heard Land Speed Record.

The dude in high school that introduced me to Husker Du was wearing a LSR t-shirt when I met him.

Thought it was bad-ass in that Desert Storm era.

some of that 7th entry footage is so insane

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

and3w 2 years ago
Arcade Fire say a prayer to their pussy god every fucking night, wishing that they could sound as good as this.

"QUIT YER BITCHIN, IT'S ALL IN FUN! SHUT UP!" i assume is re the new wave fashion

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.