flip your wig

Hüsker Dü went looking beyond the big disguise for answers in every everything to make sense of a game that anyone can play and set the soul free.   In less than three years they had put out five acclaimed releases (Land Speed Record in 1982;  Everything Falls Apart  and the Metal Circus EP in 1983;  the double disk concept album Zen Arcade  in 1984;  and  New Day Rising in the beginning of 1985) before going into the studio between March and June to record 'Flip Your Wig'.   The sessions  at Nicollet Studios in were produced Minneapolis by Bob Mould and Grant Hart  and featured  Greg Norton on bass;   Bob Mould on guitar, vocals, piano, bass, and percussion;   and  Grant Hart on drums, vocals, vibraphone, percussion, and slide whistle.    'Flip Your Wig' went to the top of the independent UK album chart.  


Mould would reveal:    "Some of it is less live-oriented and more studio-oriented, more listening-oriented.  There's also more emphasis on the vocals, they're a  little more out front.  The general sound overall is a lot cleaner, a lot more defined.  You can hear what's going on.  On 'New Day Rising' and 'Zen Arcade' I think we consciously buried the vocals.  This time we said, 'Let's put them out front so people can hear what's going on.'  I think it paid off.  Also, the songwriting's a lot better.  Everything has progressed.  The production is the main thing - clearer vocals and less emphasis on guitar, the crazy solos...I think we're a little out of that now.  Not that we're out of it live. "

Hart looks back:     "I was sure that I could compete with the twenty-something brats from the Western suburbs. I knew there was more to it than imitating the bigger city music scenes. I knew I knew more about the origins of rock & roll music, and art, etc… I have a great memory for things I can link with sounds or pictures, concepts come easy for me...The three of us were very astute. I was a visionary, Bob was special and Greg worked hard. At the beginning, we practised all of the time, we went to shows when we were not. Greg and I worked in record stores, we were determined."






http://bobmould.com/

http://granthart.com/

http://www.thirdav.com/hddb.shtml






"Makes No Sense at All / Love Is All Around"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXPPlWkNPoY







'Flip Your Wig'
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs5mUZfchNg





side one
Flip Your Wig (Bob Mould)  - 0:00 
Every Everything (Grant Hart) - 2:30 
Makes No Sense at All  (Mould) - 4:24 
Hate Paper Doll  (Mould) - 7:04 
Green Eyes  (Hart) - 8:56 
Divide & Conquer  (Mould) - 11:48 
Games  (Mould) - 15:35
side two
Find Me  (Mould) - 19:42 
The Baby Song  (Hart) - 28:01 
Flexible Flyer  (Hart) - 28:48 
Private Plane (Mould) - 31:51 
Keep Hanging On  (Hart) - 35:11 
The Wit and the Wisdom  (Mould)  - 38:30 
Don't Know Yet  (Mould) - 42:12




live Camden Palace 1985
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsGw8DyWkik

new day rising

Hüsker Dü approached a more melodic noise with the personal psychic pain of this perfect powerline purification.  With the completion of the dense and dark concept double album 'Zen Arcade', the trio went right back into the studio to begin work on their next album.  The sessions took place at Nicollet Studios in Minneapolis, MN with Hüsker Dü co-producing with engineer Spot (Glen Lockett).  'New Day Rising' showcases Bob Mould on guitar and vocals;  Greg Norton on bass;  and  Grant Hart on drums and vocals.  Steve Fjelstad also engineered on the album.  The album would be released only six months later and rise to number ten on the UK indie album chart. 


Norton considered:  "We are not making a conscious effort to sound more commercial, we are simply maturing as musicians and songwriters and are able to play our songs better, and people take that and say the music is more commercial because it is not as rough as the older material. If anything ever does make it as a top 40 hit, that's fine with us, but we're not purposely trying to achieve that goal...For lack of a better term, I guess we do play rock 'n' roll. The terms "punk" and "hardcore" have lost their meaning. When they were first coined, they stood for something, but are no longer representative of music. As far as today is concerned, they are reflections on style and fashion, and we are into music, not fashion...What is the definition of "hardcore?" If you are really involved with something, then you are "hardcore," and we are deeply involved with our band."

Hart would express:   "This is the roll we've been waiting for.  I don't want it to get out of hand.  We just want to keep it right where it is ... You look at the word 'hardcore' and what it really means is hard at the centre. I don't know what's happened to those people to make them feel so cold inside, but I think it's really a very sad thing...That frantic, over-the-edge rock'n'roll lifestyle is a myth that a lot of people out there are wasting a lot of energy trying to live up to,   We've never felt like we had to stop eating or take strange drugs to be creative. We don't feel like we have to die tragic, early deaths to be considered important. I'm a musician, not a fuckin' stock car racer."

Mould muses:   "You get to a point in your band where you stop wondering what people are gonna think when you do something. At a certain point you have to realize that it doesn't matter, and that's probably the reason they like you, because every record is different. Each record that we've put out successively has been a step in a different direction. We tend to change in midstream a lot. Our ideas and stuff. The texture is still the same but the patterns or the tempos are starting to change a lot. But the texture is still real irritating guitar, some real sharp guitar sounds...I don't think we need a producer. We could use a better engineer maybe. People have to realize that a producer is somebody who comes in with a clipboard and tells you how much money you're spending and you should do the chorus two more times on the end of the song. The engineer is the guy who turns the knobs and makes the sounds, balances the mix. We don't need a producer, A producer would be telling us how to write our songs, and that we don't need. We could use a good engineer...There's definitely a [hardcore] genre. There's definitely an attitude that a lot of bands carry. There's a certain way of playing that denotes that kind of music and we're not part of that. If they like us, fine, but I'm definitely not into any kind of movement  ...  I write about what I know and I'm not all that interested in politics. The things I talk about in my songs are probably the same things someone tells their best friend if they're lucky enough to have one. I think most people feel all the emotions we put on an album in a span of 48 hours. People have misconstrued the pessimism and anger in our songs. We're really the opposite of all that; we're not callous, insensitive people. But we're frustrated by the fact that most people seem to end up that way - hopeless, defeated. We're afraid of ending up that way ourselves, and that fear comes out in our songs  ...  To me, hardcore music, whether it was hardcore jazz, or hardcore industrial, or hardcore rock'n'roll, was no rules involved - you could do anything you wanted to, it was the intensity you put it across with that made it what it was. The hardcore punk thing got to have a lot of rules, and when we stopped being associated with those rules - or, as they would like to think, "following" those rules - we were immediately on the out  ...  We fell into this hardcore punk sound, and we quickly moved away from the dogma — the strict sort of anarchy-slash-destroy-the-government thing. By 1985 with New Day Rising, as a songwriter I was already trying to be a bit of an older soul. I started thinking about time, the temporal nature of relationships, opening myself up more personally  ...  It was just a reaction to 'Zen Arcade'.  'Zen Arcade' was longer, darker, moodier, it went through a lot of different changes - there were the little segues on piano and guitars, etc. With 'New Day Rising' we just said to hell with that, let's strip it back down and do what we were doing. It was like starting over again."    






http://www.thirdav.com/







'New Day Rising' 
full album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29TJbZmHUgo



All songs written and composed by Bob Mould, except where noted.

side one
0:00 New Day Rising  (Grant Hart / Bob Mould / Greg Norton)
02:34 The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill  (Grant Hart)
05:41 I Apologize
09:18 Folklore
10:55 If I Told You  (Grant Hart / Bob Mould)
13:04 Celebrated Summer
17:06 Perfect Example
side two
20:24 Terms of Psychic Warfare   (Grant Hart)
22:44 59 Times the Pain
26:00 Powerline
28:24 Books About UFOs   (Grant Hart)
31:14 I Don't Know What You're Talking About
33:37 How to Skin a Cat   (Grant Hart / Bob Mould / Greg Norton)
35:30 Watcha Drinkin'
37:04 Plans I Make   (Grant Hart / Bob Mould / Greg Norton)

zen arcade

Hüsker Dü took hardcore beyond the threshold with the experimental angst of this sprawling concept album.  The Minneapolis trio had proven themselves in the scene with their loud abrasive wall of noise on albums like the live (and messy) 'Land Speed Record', their full length studio debut 'Everything Falls Apart', ands the 'Metal Circus' EP.  Their cover of 'Eight Miles High' hinted at their expansive aspirations.  


Grant Hart would express:   "Well, this is where it starts being a little bit divisive, because I didn't enjoy playing hardcore. At the time, while I was drummer for Hüsker Dü even though I played other instruments, it was just such a damn boring job for a drummer. [Mimics fast, repetitive drum beat.] I saw it as part of a whole set of possibilities for expression, but I found the hardcore thing very limiting and very... dumb. It was just, you know,'Let's be super politically paranoid on the surface, and let's jump into a more stringent set of rules than what we're supposed to be rebelling against.' I've never really enjoyed that macho, 'Here are the rules, here's how you conform' stuff. That kind of attitude seems to have found full bloom in the character of the work of, say, Henry Rollins. There's this hard-ass stuff that didn't do anything for me. The compositions I had that could be classified as hardcore were already moving away, occupying a different topical ground. The first song that really comes to mind is from an early EP that we did: The song is called "What Do I Want?" and it was simply that. The questions, 'What do I want? What will make me happy?' repeated over and over ad nauseam. That's all I could really express with that genre of music. Starting off in '82, late '81, before we really worked our way into Metal Circus, my hair got long again. All of a sudden, all these great, liberated people were 'not digging it.' These people who were supposed to be about throwing away all the rules were suddenly getting caught up in their own hypocrisy. They're singing about how people 'don't like me because I've got short hair' or whatever, 'because I stand out in the crowd.' They ended up doing the same thing, so I was kind of delighted surfing on that iconoclasm. Originally, it became apparent to me that there was more rebellion in bringing the music back into... the first term that comes to mind is 'a thing of beauty.' Not that there's not a place for some of that ugliness, because a lot of it is a component of my work to this day. But a steady diet of nothing but that... [Mimics the drum beat again.] I don't know if you're familiar with the album Land Speed Record, but the next album we made after that was pretty much a studio version of the same damn thing. I just started interjecting more of my material into the balance of things. You'd have to ask Mould this, but I'd assume that writing hardcore was fairly easy for him. Maybe he hadn't written enough different kinds of things to really know where songwriting could challenge you. Around the time of Zen Arcade, he started really blooming as a songwriter, even though he'd been in the band for a while. Things like "Chartered Trips" and "Celebrated Summer," these songs are associated with him to this day as the finer points of his musical upbringing. I'm certainly not taking credit for anything he's written, but I really started the ball moving in the other direction, as far as within the band was concerned."


The band traveled to California to record 'Zen Arcade' at  Total Access Recording in Redondo Beach.  SST house producer Spot (Glen Lockett) produced and engineered alongside Hüsker Dü.  With Grant Hart on drums, lead and background vocals, percussion, and piano (on "Chartered Trips", "What's Going On", "Standing by the Sea" and "Monday Will Never Be The Same");   Bob Mould on lead and background vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, percussion, piano (on "Chartered Trips", "One Step at Time", "Newest Industry" and "Monday Will Never Be The Same"), and bass on "Turn on the News";   and Greg Norton on bass and background vocals,  the sessions took place over forty-five hours with all but two of twenty-five songs being recorded as first takes.  The mixing was done in another forty hours.   Dez Cadena did guest vocals on "What's Going On" and "other folks" sang on "Turn On".  

Mould mused:  "When we go into record, we always say ‘This is going to be a record, one way or the other’...We don’t go in and do demos. If we go into record, it’s a keeper, no matter what it comes out like. I always felt records should really be snapshots of what you did at the time, for better or worse...Because we don’t want to be part of that hardcore thing. Frankly, I don’t think we ever were. Our music may have been inspirational for some people that like that kind of stuff, but we weren’t doing it to placate them.    'Zen Arcade'  - it’s a hard thing to explain. We had that story together with all the characters. We knew it was going to be a double album, so it made sense to make the music a little more varied. It just hit us over the head one day that we were really growing and that 'Zen Arcade' was going to be something special. It broke a lot of rules people thought we were following...These albums are an admission of humanity. Many of the incidents in 'Zen Arcade'  were very personal. Those songs could well be all three of our autobiographies set to music. Some of us come from broken homes, some of us have had friends die, stuff like that.   But you still have to get up, get on with it. You can’t scream and holler all of your life. You have to step back and say ‘yeah, I am f****d. I’ve got to try and change it or everything else is going to stay that way’...We started out as a punk band, no two ways about it. We wanted our songs to be presented well, but we’d get so puffed up that a song that was generally mid-tempo would go on full-throttle and we wouldn’t have a whole lot of control over it. We had to learn to control that... ['Zen Arcade'  is] part of a movement where people have learned to elaborate on their emotions - besides screaming...It was a pretty important record - it was certainly important to me. I think people will look back in five or 10 years and say ‘Yeah, that was something different. That opened a lot of doors.’ Fine. I’m happy with that...But we haven’t reached out peak. In our minds, we’re just starting."


The storyline follows a young man as he becomes dissatisfied with his home life, joins the military, dabbles with religion, and finds love before losing it to drugs.  The despair over his life gives way to the realization that it has all been a dream.  SST only printed five thousand copies of 'Zen Arcade' and the album was out of print for months as the buzz built about the album.   By 1985, it had sold over twenty thousand copies.  






http://bobmould.com/

http://granthart.com/






Hüsker Dü database
http://www.thirdav.com/hddb.shtml






"Something I Learned Today"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnUaFCPo7zY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1fBMtaVd9s




"Never Talking to You Again" 




"Chartered Trips"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0emHpV2k0Jg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0puqNxNDVo




"What's Going On"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBQM6pYQy9c




"Pink Turns to Blue"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kwRNXLjPS0




 "Turn on the News" 









'Zen Arcade' full album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwOMXfkh1c8



Side one
1. "Something I Learned Today"   Bob Mould 1:58
2. "Broken Home, Broken Heart"   Mould 2:01
3. "Never Talking to You Again"   Grant Hart 1:39
4. "Chartered Trips"   Mould 3:33
5. "Dreams Reoccurring"   Hüsker Dü 1:40
6. "Indecision Time"   Mould 2:07
7. "Hare Krsna"   Hüsker Dü 3:33
Side two
8. "Beyond the Threshold"   Mould 1:35
9. "Pride"   Mould 1:45
10. "I'll Never Forget You"   Mould 2:06
11. "The Biggest Lie"   Mould 1:58
12. "What's Going On"   Hart 4:23
13. "Masochism World"   Hart/Mould 2:43
14. "Standing by the Sea"   Hart 3:12
Side three
15. "Somewhere"   Hart/Mould 2:30
16. "One Step at a Time"   Hart/Mould 0:45
17. "Pink Turns to Blue"   Hart 2:39
18. "Newest Industry"   Mould 3:02
19. "Monday Will Never Be the Same"   Mould 0:54
20. "Whatever"   Mould 3:50
21. "The Tooth Fairy and the Princess"   Mould 2:43
Side four
22. "Turn on the News"   Hart 4:21
23. "Reoccurring Dreams"   Hüsker Dü 13:47

warehouse: songs and stories

Hüsker Dü rented out a warehouse to rehearse for this powerpop punk swansong in the midst of internal strife. The rivalry between songwriters Bob Mould and Grant Hart were at odds over how much of their songs would be on the album. Guitarist Mould told drummer Hart he would never have more than half of an album. In the end the songs go back and forth with Mould writing eleven and Hart nine out of the twenty tracks on this double album. The band produced 'Warehouse: Songs and Stories' for Warner Brothers Records at Nicollet Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was engineered by Steven Fjelstad and mastered by Howie Weinberg. The sound is removed from their hardcore roots with multi-tracked studio effects that create a catchy punk that prefigures alternative rock. Mould took over as manager for the band after the suicide of David Savoy, which increased tensions between him an Hart, who was trying to kick heroin during the album tour. After his supply of methadone was spilled, Mould and bassist Greg Norton didn't think Hart could finish the tour and cancelled the rest of the dates. Hart quit the band days later. 'Warehouse: Songs and Stories' made it to number one hundred and seventeen in the US and number seventy-two in the UK.

Hüsker Dü Database
http://www.thirdav.com/hddb.shtml




http://officialhuskerdumerchandise.bigcartel.com/

"These Important Years"

"Expectations only mean you really think you know

What's coming next, and you don't

Yearbooks with their autographs

From friends you might have had

These are your important years

You'd better make them last

Falling in and out of love just like...

These are your important years, your life"

"Ice Cold Ice" 

"Never penetrating, always contemplating

We sit and count the blessings but we're blessed by icons

No one else could

Trust in ice cold ice cold ice cold ice"

"Could You Be the One?"

Could you be the one they talk about?

Hiding inside, behind another door?

Is it only happiness you want?

Does wanting a feeling matter any more?

It doesn't mean that much to me

Sometimes I don't mean that much to you

And I don't even know what I'm hiding for

And I don't even know what I'm crying for

"She Floated Away" 

"Well a man has two reasons for things that he does

The first one is pride and the second one is love

All understandings must come by this way

She lifted her arms and she floated away"

"She's a Woman (And Now He Is a Man)" 

"There's a vacancy between them everyday

And a sense of guilt that's not going away

When they get older perhaps they'll understand

She's a woman and now he is a man"

"You Can Live at Home" 

"Figured it out that I'd been wasting all my time

And time was eating at my soul

Now I find comfort only somewhere in my mind

Free to pursue another goal

Walk, walk away, keep on walking away"

Charity, Chastity, Prudence And Hope

Standing In The Rain

Back From Somewhere

Ice Cold Ice [fragment]

'Could You Be the One?' and 'She's a Woman (And Now He is a Man)' live on the Late Show with Joan Rivers on April 27, 1987

'Warehouse: Songs and Stories' 
full album:




Side one
1. "These Important Years"   Bob Mould 3:49
2. "Charity, Chastity, Prudence, and Hope"   Grant Hart 3:11
3. "Standing in the Rain"   Mould 3:41
4. "Back from Somewhere"   Hart 2:16
5. "Ice Cold Ice"   Mould 4:23
Side two
6. "You're a Soldier"   Hart 3:03
7. "Could You Be the One?"   Mould 2:32
8. "Too Much Spice"   Hart 2:57
9. "Friend, You've Got to Fall"   Mould 3:20
10. "Visionary"   Mould 2:30
11. "She Floated Away"   Hart 3:32
Side three
12. "Bed of Nails"   Mould 4:44
13. "Tell You Why Tomorrow"   Hart 2:42
14. "It's Not Peculiar"   Mould 4:06
15. "Actual Condition"   Hart 1:50
16. "No Reservations"   Mould 3:40
Side four
17. "Turn It Around"   Mould 4:32
18. "She's a Woman (And Now He Is a Man)"   Hart 3:19
19. "Up in the Air"   Mould 3:03
20. "You Can Live at Home"   Hart 5:25




rehersals:



01. These Important Years
02. Charity, Chastity, Prudence And Hope 3:57 
03. Standing In The Rain 7:07 
04. Tell You Why Tomorrow 10:39 
05. Ice Cold Ice 13:14 
06. You're A Soldier 17:40 
07. Could You Be The One? 20:49 
08. Actual Condition 23:21 
09. It's Not Peculiar 24:47 
10. Too Much Spice 28:57
11. Visionary 32:09 
12. She Floated Away 34:47 
13. Friend, You've Got To Fall 38:26 
14. Back From Somewhere 41:50 
15. Bed Of Nails 44:24 
16. You Can Live At Home 48:46
17. Turn It Around/Police Shut Down 56:23