bob mould

There are many reasons to love Bob Mould, but the biggest one for me is that he brings the fuzz. Gimme some good fuzz box, just enough to rattle the fillings in my teeth a tiny bit, and I’m yours for life…  I feel lucky to have seen Husker Du live on several occasions. I even took my beloved sister, 14 at the time, to see the Huskers play their legendary gig at the Plaza, where they ran through Warehouse: Songs and Stories from start to finish. But it’s the first time I saw them play that stands out most in my memory as a life-changing event.  When I was 10th grade, a nerdy older kid named Michael gave me a scratchy cassette tape with nothing other than Husker Du’s cover of Eight Miles High recorded on it. I’ve made my feelings about cover tunes known on multiple occasions, but this one breaks the mo(u)ld. While the original version of the song is flawless, I think I might like the Huskers’ version even better. The tape won me over immediately and opened me up to a whole new world of great post-punk music. I went out and bought Zen Arcade right away, which turned out to be exactly the right thing for me at exactly the right time - aggressive, angry, angsty, and noisy, but also vulnerable, profoundly human, and deeply melodic underneath the multiple layers of noise.

Husker Du was not the first band to have made punk rock with candy-sweet hooks, but they were the best. They came through New York in support of New Day Rising in the spring of 1984. The gig took place at the Peppermint Lounge.  I doubt that place is still around. It’s probably been converted into a Modell’s Sporting Goods store or some other grim Giuliani-era type of thing…  There were two shows that night, nine and midnight.  The midnight show was restricted to over-21s, so I only got to see the early show. This was long before the availability of instantaneous information, so the only concept I had of Husker Du as actual people was from the fuzzy rendering of the three of them in the cover art for Zen Arcade.  As they got up on the stage to tune their instruments, I was taken aback.  Bassist Greg Norton had a Rollie Fingers-style moustache, and drummer/vocalist Grant Hart was a weird hippie looking guy with long hair that looked as if it hadn’t been washed in months.  But Bob Mould - chubby, unkempt, and just generally ill at ease – seemed the most out of place.  He struck me as being a middle-aged guy in a young man’s body... Never judge a book by its cover.  Mould, as I quickly discovered, is one of the all-time great pop life antiheroes. All it took was a couple of devastatingly loud swipes at his awesomely badass (and very un-punk rock) Flying V guitar, and I was won over forever. The music was so loud, so fast, so insanely hopped up.  They played for about a half hour and then just sort of collapsed from exhaustion.  I wish every gig could be so direct and efficient.  I’d seen Bruce Springsteen play for five straight hours a few years earlier, and as much as I loved the unrelenting cavalcade of great songs, I much prefer it when a band just gives you everything they have quickly and then takes leave of you before your mind has a chance to wander…

Husker Du became tamer with each successive album after New Day Rising, but this was not to their detriment.  It allowed Mould in particular to develop his chops as a great writer of catchy pop songs, always with just enough of a noisy edge to make things seem slightly on edge.  As a lyricist, he articulates things that resonate deeply with me and my kind.  If there’s a recurrent theme that runs through his body of work, from the Huskers, to his numerous solo albums, to the records he did with Sugar, it’s that love is a minefield.  You walk through at your own peril, with a very high probability of getting hurt, sometimes badly.  It’s a dispiriting message in a way, but it’s redeemed by a musical sensibility that’s a balm to all of us fellow pop lifers, that mixture of sweetness and sorrow I've talked about so often.  And, of course, the fuzz factor alone ensures that Bob Mould will always have a warm and welcome place in my heart…