“Missing all the people” – Hüsker whü?

“Looking down on everything it seems a total bore
Missing all the people that I’ve never met before
Trying to find an unknown something I consider best
I don’t know if I’ll find it, but until then I’ll be depressed” Hüsker Dü

Do you know who’s the enthusiast dj in this clip? None other than BOB MOULD. Beartastic.

I really enjoyed the PARTS & LABOR show on the 7th of February. At some point during the show I realised for the first time how much their vocals (maybe their guitar sound even adds to that impression somehow) remind me of HÜSKER DÜ and I remembered how much I liked that band for their hardcore punk intensity as well as for their melodic indiepunk and their wonderful lyrics. I suddenly missed them. I had a HÜSKER DÜ record with me for almost every SOPHISTICATED BOOM BOOM but think I’ve only once played them there. In my second band, DEAF DUMB & BLONDE our drummer, CAROLINE ACHAINTRE (I sadly lost touch with her, art drove her to Goldsmiths, London, and had a few exhibitions around europe. Hope she’s fine.), aye, … Caro picked a HÜSKER DÜ song we covered. Rather horribly. It was “She floated away”. We loved it. Aaah, memories….

One day before the PARTS & LABOR show we had gotten an email offering BOB MOULD solo shows for end of April and at that point I wasn’t really that much interested because his solo stuff never has touched me as much as HÜSKER DÜ. Hearing others praising SUGAR etc. again and again I guess I should give it another listen.

A couple of days ago I picked up ‘HOMOCORE – The Loud and Raucous Rise of Queer Rock‘ to take a break from my still unfinished Murakami-Windup-Bird-Chronicle-lecture (it’s not bad, I’m just too impatient) and once again that name popped up: The chapter about BOB MOULD made me google around a bit. I knew he was gay but I hadn’t known about his not-so-nice outing by DENNIS COOPER (whose stuff I actually like) in ’94. Sometimes I seem to live behind the moon as we germans say (which comes pretty close in describing the whereabouts of massacre mansion if I think about it.)… anyway… I googled a bit and was quite surprised to find BOB MOULD

… looking like this today:

… being a dj whose playlists include some really fresh stuff like Diplo, Fucked Up, Muscles, Yelle, Burial and even one of my bounce favourites: EPMD – run it (Sinden rmx)

… having a club night and house music project with Morel that is called BLOWOFF

… being a blogger who is well worth checking out. Anyone who writes about stuff as diverse as La Quiete, Marshall McLuhan and Phil Spector should be worth your attention: http://modulate.blogspot.com


Isn’t it weird that the BOB MOULD blog somehow sounds more openminded and diverse than the new DIMMAK COMMUNITY blogging that even has JUSTIN PEARSON writing whose work I usually appreciate but that DIMMAK blog just looks like some VICE MAG copy. You know what I mean, that constantly desperately nagging style of “i’m the hippest, i’m the loudest, i’m the crassest, I AM DIFFERENT!”. It always makes me want to pat the writer’s head and tell them: “Yesyesyes, you’re the raddest most unique bad-to-the-bone-st creature out there. Ever. Nothing compares 2U. Now sleep, PLZ.” Anyway…

Here‘s a good interview giving you a good BOB MOULD outline. What I really l.o.v.e. him for is how he rejects the possibility of a HÜSKER DÜ reunion:

“I can’t recreate what people think they saw. I’m not 23, drunk and cranked up and angry. I’m not that person any more. The intensity of those records, I just can’t do it. Heat with Grant and Greg [Norton, Hüsker bassist], yeah, that’s all there, but it would be like a joke. It would not be becoming. It would do more damage than good to what the band stands for.”

I wish more bands would see it like that and stick to it.

Sadly I don’t like the big-radio-rock-production of BOB MOULD‘s latest album, ‘District Line’ which I’m listening to again right now but he is going to release a new one, ‘The Life and Times’ on Anti Records in April and I hope for the best. He’s got a great voice and if he’s playing solo shows there won’t be no big radio rock band sound going on… just the man and his guitar… with the songs stripped to the core… doesn’t that sound tempting… great, now I wrote myself back into being a dedicated fand again…. aargh… wasn’t there an eve massacre that was totally bored of bearded old punkrock legends doing songwriter stuff today? Haha, I guess, I have to draw the homo-card and argue it’s different if it’s a queer punkrock legend. Sadly those are still pretty hard to find.

Of course I can’t leave you without posting a youtube clip of one of my favourite sad songs that has to make up for my Mould-centric HÜSKER DÜ writing. Here’s a GRANT HART HÜSKER DÜ song. God, I used to be in love with his voice.

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I have skipped the DESI Flohmarkt today because I still felt like a piece of shit unable to stand the presence of other human beings. At least I have instead finally managed to overhaul the ORCHID myspace site:
www.myspace.com/orchidclubbing