RIP Grant Hart

this is a sick find - soundboard of a 1983 show, vocals panned hard left... they sound INCREDIBLE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnc_k8dLO44

New piece from Stephen Thomas Erlewine

http://www.citypages.com/music/grant-hart-never-left-the-underground-or-minnesota/444557673

Well shit.

Just read the Voice interview linked in there, and found this:

"I read you lost a guitar in the fire that was pretty important to you.

Oh, man. The guitar I thought I was going to play for the rest of my life. I came home from tour and it was the first tour I left this guitar home. I’d gone out with a different guitar. It was really prophetic; it’s almost like I betrayed the guitar by disappearing and leaving home with a different guitar. It was a single-pickup ES-25 by Gibson."

That's the guitar I was talking about. He never told me it got lost in the fire, and the different guitar is the one I sold him when we couldn't make the ES-125 (errata) work anymore. This makes me so goddamn sad. Fuck. Just breaks my heart.

Ah man, so sorry to hear that. You did your damnedest, though.

And I'm certain the reason he never told me is that he knew how sad it would make me, given how much I knew he loved it and how much time we spent with it. Feel free to throw that story in the face of the next person that tells you how Grant was an asshole or a con man or a narcissist, but lovable despite that because blah blah blah. He was above all else a really sweet man who never aimed for injury. Fuck heroin and hep c and cancer, and fuck the husker du narrative in general.

I feel like a heel just posting my own shit on here but whatever, more thoughts, more repetitive crossposted Facebook. Fuck it.

"As I read interviews and remembrances today, I stumbled across this, from the village voice:

"I read you lost a guitar in the fire that was pretty important to you.

Oh, man. The guitar I thought I was going to play for the rest of my life. I came home from tour and it was the first tour I left this guitar home. I’d gone out with a different guitar. It was really prophetic; it’s almost like I betrayed the guitar by disappearing and leaving home with a different guitar. It was a single-pickup ES-25 by Gibson."

That's the guitar I was talking about, and the "different guitar" was the guitar I sold him when we couldn't make it work. After the fire, I asked him about the ES-125, and he changed the subject. I'm sure he did that because he didn't want me to feel bad. The next time someone tries to sell you on crazy/insensitive/wild man/out of control Grant, feel free to throw that story back in their face. As the eventual and unavoidable media elegies that focus on what a troubled/tortured artist/tragic figure he was, and the (accurate) stories of drug abuse appear, remember that Grant honestly owned his addictions. He never considered himself tragic, and he never was. And in a moment of crisis that few of us will ever understand, after the death of his mother and the loss of his home, he chose to spare me from the sadness of knowing he lost that guitar, and that in some very honest metaphysical Grant way, the new guitar I sold him was to blame.

That, to me, is the other Grant that I was lucky enough to know. Kindness that balanced justified bitterness, exuberance that many confused with mania, lies told to shape the world into a better place than it was, but closer to where he knew it should be."

I interviewed Grant by email about five years ago, before The Argument came out, and it was mostly about what that entailed. He gave me some amazing answers; you can almost see the twinkle in his eye as he typed them out.

I mean, this on his negotiations with Domino: "As an artist I am constantly erecting dolmens and obelisks and hot-dog stands to ensure my immortality and thus my godliness."

Josh, I noticed the byline for the first time. You're responsible for the most comprehensive recent interview.

I've been wracking my brain about this but found it finally....was an amazing moment (also seemed to indicate that Greg and Grant's relationship wasn't as bad as sometimes portrayed)...but yeah Grant opened for Mike Watt and at the end, Grant got behind the drum kit in the first (at least that I'd seen) in YEARS and Greg Norton got up there on bass and they did a 15 minute version of "Little Johnny Jewel" by Television....

Setlist: Grant Hart — 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis MN, 15 May 2009

Remains To Be Seen
2541
[new song] ("I don't say sorry")
Come, Come
Books About UFOs
It's Not Funny Any More
Admiral Of The Sea
Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely (w/fake "Never Talking To You Again" intro)
Barbara
St. James Infirmary (w/fake "Never Talking to You Again" intro)
[new song] ("I knew since then")
Back From Somewhere
Evergreen Memorial Drive
Never Talking To You Again
* You're The Reflection Of The Moon On The Water

** Little Johnny Jewel

Grant solo show opening for Mike Watt. For the last song (*) of Grant's set, he was joined onstage by Watt
and his band. For Watt's final encore (**), Grant returned to play drums, and Greg Norton came up to play
bass. Thanks to James Lindbloom for the information and to John Mulhouse for filling in the front end of
Grant's setlist (which he cautions my be slightly out of order).

btw this is very Grant and hilarious I think chris mentioned it upthread but if someone was being annoying and yelling for a particular song, he would start to play it, then stop and do another song to troll them, then eventually give them what they wanted (which was inevitably probably something he was gonna play all along)

Don't Want To Know If You Are Lonely (w/fake "Never Talking To You Again" intro)
Barbara
St. James Infirmary (w/fake "Never Talking to You Again" intro)
[new song] ("I knew since then")
Back From Somewhere
Evergreen Memorial Drive
Never Talking To You Again

Was that a saxophone solo during "What's Going On?" in flappy's video?

WGO indeed!

ok... this was posted by a friend of a friend on Facebook...he's from Serbia and said Grant played Serbia in 1994 when no Western artists would come there due to international sanctions

given what I heard was his fairly haphazard to say the least approach to management, booking, etc. my mind is boggling how that happened

I remember that Watt opening set very, didn't he call out some woman aggressively and caustically at that one or maybe that was the "Hot Wax" release show?...He could freeze out a room like no one's business.

His vers of "St James Infirmary" was so good.

have any of your interviews been excerpted in NYT obits before, Josh?

bad editing in said obit… "Mr Hart's contributions as drummer were not as visible as those of Mr Mould, the more obvious bandleader."

I remember that Watt opening set very, didn't he call out some woman aggressively and caustically at that one or maybe that was the "Hot Wax" release show?...He could freeze out a room like no one's business.

His vers of "St James Infirmary" was so good.

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, September 15, 2017 9:15 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yeah i don't know, i get the shows all mixed up but yeah when the banter turned cold it was really something

Amazing story, UMS! Great interview, Josh!

Wonderful piece, Al. And this is otm: Call “2541” the “Maybe I’m Amazed” of genteel poverty

Would totally buy Having Fun with Grant Hart Onstage

btw - Josh that's the best interview I've read w/Grant

yeah, thanks for the link

Thanks. For obvious reasons I wish there were a lot more of them out there.

do you have an archive transcripts?

I've been bitching about this forever but can we briefly discuss how fucking insane "New Day Rising" would have been if you swapped out "How to Skin a Cat" & "Whatcha Drinkin" for "2541"?

Was 2541 written at that point? That's nuts!

I like Robert Forster's version too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_uiLSk6lLE

yeah josh that interview is great

Was 2541 written at that point? That's nuts!

― Cyndi Larper (stevie), Friday, 15 September 2017 15:28 (one minute ago) Permalink

It was written for the record, they practiced it, Bob didn't like it.

stevie, read the bit at the bottom of this page:

http://www.thirdav.com/hd_images/msp_sites/2541_house.html

Grant always kind of down played it but I think there is a reason that it was his first solo single

Really gutted about this. RIP Grant

do you have an archive transcripts?

I must - and the cassette, too - but tbh my editor at the time (who is now at NPR) was so cool I'm sure it was published more or less verbatim, even if I half remember a couple of other stories that may or may not have been from this interview.

About to drive from NYC to Bethesda with friends
There are things it will be obligatory to play on this drive, idgaf

Also - things I didn't know about grant until yesterday:

He has a kid?
Fake Name Graphics was grant?

Also - is there audio of that show w the little johnny jewel encore? Or even just the encore?

I've read that he has two kids, both adults now I think.

xpost OK, found the original transcript, and I was totally right, there is a big hunk where he goes off the record. Talks a bit about Bob, the immediate aftermath of the band's breakup, and, tangentially, the Replacements. Angry and interesting and maybe not totally surprising, yet ... off the record, so don't know what to do with it.

Let's all grab a beer and discuss it.

Post it on 77

Eh forget I said that

I've been struggling with how to write about Hart's queerness, of which I've seen little but passing mentions.

I honestly didn't even know he had kids or a family.

Alfred, this guy tried awhile ago, re Grant and Bob

http://dentalhospital.tumblr.com/post/123117605615/bob-and-grant

I've been bitching about this forever but can we briefly discuss how fucking insane "New Day Rising" would have been if you swapped out "How to Skin a Cat" & "Whatcha Drinkin" for "2541"?

― chr1sb3singer, Friday, September 15, 2017 10:23 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark

totally completely fucking insane!!!
omg

yeah it's kind of infuriating in retrospect, it's one thing if it were left off this perfect record but to leave it off in favor of two obvious throwaways is pretty shitty

Now That You Know Me, is this the only Grant solo track that was (if I'm remembering right, I think I have a copy of it somewhere) demoed or played with Husker Du?

xpost
I mean I don't know if it was those two songs specifically but if I wrote "2541" and was told it wasn't good enough and those two songs stayed...I don't know if I would have been in the band for two more yrs.

I read that Bob's (stated) reason was it sounded like a contemporary Dream Syndicate song? (mighta been from his book)

I honestly didn't even know he had kids or a family.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, September 15, 2017 12:06 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wasn't this a partial catalyst in the breakup of the band? his kid was conceived around this time, right?

or at least, it happened close to when they broke up

xp yes, Bob claims in his book he said to Grant "hey uhhh.... eh it kinda sounds like the Dream Syndicate single now, maybe we shouldn't." and then suggests that was "the beginning of the end." obviously take a salt shaker w that

Is he thinking about "Tell Me When It's Over?" Because I hear that, if only very loosely.

well sounds like he meant it planted a seed of discontent xp