Fans of Husker Du should check out this blog page, which has put up a complete set of the band playing Maxwell's in 1984, a month before the release of Zen Arcade. The sound is patchy, but the set is breathtakingly powerful.
My favourite Husker Du record has always been Land Speed Record, which most people I know seem to find unlistenable. For me, it works because it holds together breakneck speed and absurd noise with just enough melody for the whole thing to function. It's raw and rough and crazy, but its best songs are almost sweet as well.
The songs available on the above page are a great example of the band at their best doing essentially the same thing-- they plough through 15 songs virtually without pause, addressing the audience only at the beginning and then again well into the set when Bob Mould tells them to stay on their side of the stage since someone's already given him a bloody lip. The closing cover of Roger McGuinn's "8 Miles High" (originally released on a 7" and on SST's Duck and Cover! compilation, also arguably one of their many finest moments) is heartbreaking and worth the album's download alone. The set covers songs from almost the entire breadth of their career to date and play everything tight and fierce, but desperately lovely. In its own loud, abrasive way, this is a very pretty set of songs.
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3 comments:
I like that one best, too. I don't get why New Day Rising got to be such a classic. Well ok, I do, I just don't agrree.
Come on, New Day Rising is a phenomenal record. It's wonderful. It's different, sure, but it's still the same band at a separate stage of brilliance.
I woke up yesterday morning wondering why Husker Du originally wrote "Push the Button" at half the time, played it live like that for a while, then sped it up by a factor of two, before collectively slowing down as a band. Don't bands usually start slow and get faster, or start fast and get slower? It'd make sense if Land Speed Record was what they sounded like when they first started out, but they started out around the same pace as they eventually ended up. Doesn't that just baffle you? It baffles me.
However, I love Land Speed Record, I love New Day Rising, I love most of Zen Arcade, and I love Flip Your Wig (except "Baby Song," which I've excised from my MP3s of the album). In much the same way as I love both The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, simply because I love Thomas Pynchon. You know?
I'm just here to fuck with you.
No seriously, I like it, all the other ones you mentioned and even Candy Apple Grey has its moments, but there's a reason why i like the things I do.
Sometimes bands slow down and wish they were faster, then realize it's not for them? I dunno.
In much the same way as I love both The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, simply because I love Thomas Pynchon. You know?
yeah appreciating the artist and progression in their work, etcetc. I feel you. Post more about books, here or there; I need someone to tell me what to read.
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