I’ve been a bit busy dealing with a job loss, job search, and other stuff lately. So, The Feast has been a bit quiet. One thing I’m happy to report is that people actually read my shit. Who needs more validation than that? My recent post on Greg Norton got some comments and it’s nice my opinions matter somewhat. I was contacted by a very nice guy from the Netherlands who told me about his Husker cover band named, appropriately, Husker Dutch. Hope you all enjoy it!
Being in a band is all about politics. Oh, you thought it was about the music?
Sure, it starts out like that. It’s the organizing principle. To make music and make your statement with it. But the minute you get two or three people in a room together, relationships begin to grow and become more complex every day. People define themselves against each other as well as changing in other ways. This is both the mystery and curse of bands. They are never the sum of their parts.
In every band, you have a breakdown of labor. On top of learning and playing instrument some people write the songs, some people sing, and others provide booking and logistical report. In successful bands (and I use that term loosely), all folks are working towards the band being the best possible representation of itself. However, it’s not a democracy. At best, it’s a benign dictatorship.
Why is that? Well, the people that write the songs generally call the shots just a little bit more. You have to have original material to perform. When it gets better and you have people clamoring for your songs, your power increases. This external feedback alters a bands chemistry. What once was a all for one and one for all dynamic is subtly altered. If you’re in an intense band like Husker Du, that pressure can be extreme.
Now, I’ve done a bit of touring with Grant Hart and I’ve met Bob Mould and read his memoir. Neither one of those gentlemen lack for opinions and perspective. They are strong willed guys. I’d hate to be in the middle of that. And that’s exactly where Greg Norton was. But to assume he had no personality is a big misread. There’s no way someone between those two opposites was some weak willed person. Rather, Norton had to be the balance in that band. That requires a whole lot of skills, particularly discretion and diplomacy. I think probably more than Mould or Hart did at that point in their lives.
Being a drummer or a bass player can be a thankless task. You help keep the beat and provide the foundation for the songs. Typically your reward comes along the lines of, “That guitar player is awesome.” A rhythm section’s competence is expected and not rewarded. A lot of times, you’re only noticed when you fuck up. Greg Norton is no bass playing slouch.
I’m not sure if it’s some kind of sonic revisionism that has gone for the past 25 years or so; but his bass playing seems to not get much respect. Unfortunately, some of that is from his former band members. Mould mentions it in his memoir with an anecdote about he and Hart recording their own bass parts after Norton initially provided them. on Candy Apple Grey and Warehouse. That is a real disservice.
Part of it is band nitpicking. If it’s your song, you obviously have an opinion of the parts being played and you may want something different than the bass player has provided. But using that control issue as an aesthetic justification is a bit shady. Yes, change them if you must, but don’t blame your bandmate of the past 6 or more years. That’s a decision that’s on you.
The whole message of the seems to be that Norton’s playing is sub par. I’d argue against that any day of the week. To my ears as a bass player and a fan of the band, he’s an integral part of the sound. The lines he comes up with and the timing of the lines are interesting and come more from Charles Mingus more than Dee Dee Ramone. His playing and Hart’s drumming really elevate Husker Du about their more popcentric peers like the Descendents. If Mould wanted the rhythm section he got in Sugar, Husker Du would not have the musical sweep it had.
Additionally, people seem to hold the production of the band’s SST output against Husker. Sure, it’s easy to pick on. The high frequencies on those records sound like frying eggs and the bass and drums don’t have much bottom end or presence, but it’s punk rock for god’s sake. You don’t hear that shit about Black Flag so either go after all the SST bands or stop singling one band out. The complaining underscores the real point which is that Husker Du DESERVED better production due to the strengths of the songs and bands.
Some of the other things Mould mentions in his book strike me as the same kind of crap every band member levels against another. It’s the most trivial stuff blown out of proportion. So, Norton likes to golf. Bob likes to bowl and Grant collects cars. I mean, come on. I can go pro or con on all three of those. Band members are like family members; they can say the most disagreeable shit to each other. The fact that this stuff gets public is where bands start sliding downhill towards breaking up.
Yeah, Norton could have gotten in there and been just as stubborn, assertive, and intense as the Hart and Mould. Would that have broken up the band earlier tho? If that’s the case Norton’s attempt as being the more relaxed peacemaker probably enabled Husker Du to function as effectively as it did. Bands are a whole lot more than who gets the songwriting and publishing credit. Greg Norton deserves as much credit as Hart and Mould as creating and pushing Husker Du too the great heights that band achieved.
So yours truly got into Husker Du in a big way, but I would be remiss in not talking about The Bass Playing Thing.
Please take that image in because that, my friends, is what the first bass I owned looked like. The Kramer Striker bass is all its glory. Got it by washing dishes at a restaurant when I was 17. That was a shit gig, but I got the bass and it was really the first thing I had ever wanted enough to go through a completely degrading experience to get it.
Notwithstanding my total love of Husker Du, I was immediately more interested in the big kahuna of the South. In 1986, that was R.E.M. It’s pretty difficult to impress upon people why they were so important to folks who lived in the southeast region of the U.S.
To begin with, they were from Georgia. I mean, Georgia, for god’s sake. Prior to the 1980’s, that was Allman Brothers territory and the land of Jimmy Carter. You couldn’t expect anything relevant from there. But there they were. And for me, Mike Mills was one of the most profound current influences I had. They way he made R.E.M. sound, especially on those early records, cannot be overstated. They were tons of others who influenced me (and I’ll try and talk about them in later posts), but he was in a cool band that existed when I was 16 and I wanted to do more as a bass player than be Dee Dee Ramone.
Now, I never thought I would be in a band like R.E.M because they had impossible mystique in the 80’s. Once again, I felt like brown Hush Puppies on a black suit. They just seemed to have that certain je ne crois and I felt painfully awkward despite being inappropriately ambitious.
So, what did I do with that super cool Kramer bass? Practiced over and over again. That was the first thing I really loved that was completely mine to do with what I wanted.
What was is about Husker Du that made such an impression on me? One thing was simply their relatively normal appearance. People seem to forget before grunge came along that being in a rock band had a much more serious style component. The closest you came to normal wear was either in the hardcore punk scene (a scene Husker Du initially sprang from) or in the heavy metal scene. In both cases you had a jeans and t shirt uniform; however, the length of hair was the difference. Most of the time, to be an authentic hardcore punk guy, you had to have to rock the Kojack hair style a la DC straight edge. Not that there was a lot of straight edge in Roanoke. By the time I was cognizant of various subcultures; most punk rock folks had embraced various quasi forms of punk that bumped up against other musical styles. In 1984 and 85, you had a lot of skate punk in Roanoke. Mostly because of skating more than punk. That being said, I remember guys with Vans inking the words “JFA” on them and giving me shit for liking Hall & Oates. They just didn’t know how punk I was liking an uncool band…or something like that…shut up. To be honest, I preferred the guys who were into Metallica and Sabbath because they were less self righteous
But I digress. The point is that Husker Du wrote some kickass songs and were loud as god’s balls and look like guys I saw in the smoking block. They seemed indifferent to the whole look-at-me punk rock identity politics and kept their focus where it belonged. There was universality to their songs that surpassed most underground bands at the time. This is partly because being part of the underground in the 80’s really meant taking pride in your place because you certainly weren’t going to achieve Nirvana like success.
Husker’s Minneapolis competition, The Replacements, was a band I greatly admired, too. But while they had great songs about alienation and other great rock themes, they seemed impossibly cool in that New York Dolls, Stones, Heartbreakers vein. They didn’t have the avenging dork style of Husker, which seemed to be handed down from the Ramones.
Being a gangly lad, I didn’t have any obesity problems. But let me tell you, being a skinny guy in the south is a pain in the ass, especially in the early 80’s which was a far less tolerant time. If you weren’t tough guy, you were considered about unmanly and effeminate. And if you liked books, music, and art; let me tell you that could be grounds for an ass kicking. So, seeing two fat guys and another guy with a handlebar mustache blow out minds and ear drums was extremely rewarding. And the fact that the fat guys were gay and the guy everyone thought was gay was straight was a mind fuck I appreciated enormously. The Replacements seemed just way too traditional compared to that.
So, I spent an enormous time listening and practicing to my Husker Du records. And by “records”, I mean shitty Maxell 90 min cassettes because I didn’t have the money to buy all those records. And then I wrote my first song…which sounded exactly like Grant Hart’s Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely.
Clearly, I had a lot more work to do.
Your humble narrator grew up in the 1980’s. I don’t recommend that to anyone. We had Ronald Reagan, yuppies, and AIDS. About the only thing I remember positively about the 80’s was the great American underground music scene.
Of course, every teenager will grow up believing the bands they had growing up are/were the best. This is because teenagers don’t know shit. That and they have no experience yet. At that age, we’re primed to have a religious experience over a book, song, band, film, painting. Pete Townshend once compared the first moment to a person’s first fuck. There’s only one of those and you never forget it.
So, I’d love to say I was one of those super cool 10 year olds that listened to Minor Threat when they first came out, but I was living in Winchester, VA and I had no older siblings . My initial album purchases were Queen’s Greatest Hits and my mom bought me AC/DC’s Back in Black and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons, people. And we listed to that stuff along with Rush, Ozzy, and some Maiden.
My dad was an accountant in Wincherster and after a couple of years living there, we all hated it. So, we moved to Roanoke, VA and lived in the county. By that point, it was the extremely glamorous year of 1983. Yours truly had entered the swampy long march called puberty. I was wrestling and running track for a bit and flat out sucking academically. I would probably attribute that to all the Hall & Oates and Phil Collins’ era Genesis I listened to.
When you are significantly uncool as I was, and am, you lean on your friends to learn about new things. By about 1986, I was beginning to get interested in playing music. Mostly playing bass. Why? Well, all my friends wanted to play guitar and they all needed a bass player. Plus, I thought (and I was wrong) it would be much easier than guitar.
Mostly, I got my hands on a crappy Cort bass via my pal Carl. Carl and his pals Steve and David had a “band”. And by that I mean they would drink beer in the David’s parents’ basement and play Motley Crue’s version of “Smokin’ in the Boy’s Room”. This was augmented by the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove” and Metallica’s “Leper Messiah.” We’d all drink a beer and smoke cigarettes and feel pretty fucking cool.
So, my buds Pete and Lee and I had a “band” Which meant, I needed to learn to play the damn thing. So, I went and got lessons at Kelly’s Music on Brambleton Avenue. I learned a lot of classic rock stuff like the Beatles and Stones while Pete was a camp counselor in the summer of 1986.
One good thing about Pete being gone was I got to house sit which meant I raided his record stash. I had started getting into different music finally courtesy of my pal Todd who worked at Record Bar in Tanglewood Mall. I think the first purchases were Love & Rockets, Hoodoo Gurus, and Screaming Blue Messiahs. But it was all hit and miss.
Fortunately, Pete was one of those nuts that organized his lp’s and had them in alphabetical order rather than randomly jammed in a bookcase like I did. So, I started flipping through them and hit this record called New Day Rising. And that’s all she wrote.
Now, I had kinda heard of this Husker Du band before. We had a Record & Tape Exchange in Roanoke. They had Zen Arcade on cassette there and I don’t think it ever sold. I was fascinated and repelled by the album cover because of the crayola color scheme. “What in the fuck is this?” I’d also heard “Crystal” and that had really done nothing for me. But listening to Pete’s copy of New Day Rising (as well as Flip Your Wig) tore my head off. There’s never been a contest as far as my favorite band of all time. They were my Beatles.
And then I actually got to tour and play bass with one of my Beatles:
More coming to you Monday or so.
Phil
Phil Venable's Feast of Snakes 