Well, I’m about off to go to a concert that I may or may not know enough of the music to really enjoy myself. It will be a great time, assuredly, but I have not been keeping up with Bob Mould as much as I probably should have over the years since his divorce from Hüsker Dü, a band that played a pivotal role in my youth. Hüsker Dü was one of two bands frequently cited by the next generation of “punk” music as having an outsized influence on their sounds. The other frequently-mentioned influencers were the Hüsker’s local “rivals”, The Replacements.
Nirvana, Green Day, and nearly every grunge band from the 90s will mention Hüsker Dü as an influence on why they wrote songs like they did.
This supposed local rivalry with The Replacements was more nose tweaking at the band level and seemed to be a bigger concern of the fanbase than the bands. Growing up in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro, the “Twin Cities”, at this time — I can tell you that it was largely a matter of Minneapolis (The Replacements) versus Saint Paul (Hüsker Dü). Where did I stand? Smack in the middle, with slight leanings towards the more “we don’t give fuck all” attitude of The Replacements. One of the first songs I knew by them was “Fuck School” after all, a sentiment that I could get behind as a rebellious teen. Hüsker Dü were more all-around intellectual, although not entirely. I dug their sound, but their music had a less visceral message for me.
Bob Mould, singer and oft-time songwriter for Hüsker Dü, was treated unfairly by the community when the band broke up, somewhat helped along by his decision to break away completely from the Hüsker’s buzzsaw guitar sound and, for his first album he largely played a 12-string acoustic guitar backed by strings and orchestral elements. “Sell out” was commonly used to describe him by disgruntled fans who wanted to keep thrashing to the Minnesota-flavored hardcore punk of the band’s first three albums. Such as it was, I saw him perform one of his first solo gigs at a music/food festival on the Minnesota State Capitol grounds on a platform you could step up onto to a modest crowd of maybe 100-150 people (my memory plays tricks with me some thirty-seven years afterward, so the crowd might have been bigger or smaller than I recall). It was a small gig either way. Bob was nervous as hell, on this low stage with low turnout with only him and a couple of guitars. I could have reached out at touched him while he performed.
Now, to be fair, in another part of that same day, I saw Alanis Morrisette play on a similar stage and “You Outta Know” was just beginning to get airplay. Her crowd was not much larger and she looked at me like she thought that I might go ahead and touch her — and she didn’t look like she cared for that idea. So I stepped back and out of the “danger zone”, which seemed to sooth her. [/side note]
While the larger critic reception of “Workbook” was supportive of Bob’s solo career, the followup, “Black Sheets of Rain”, was a commercial flop. He joined or formed the band Sugar shortly afterwards, who had a few minor college-radio hits. But that was about the time that Bob slipped out of my range of perception. I heard (and liked) other songs of his, and heard that he had finally “come out” which was of no surprise at all to any of us who followed him (or was outed by a magazine interviewing him, if you want the truth). Bob didn’t ever come off as gay, but he didn’t come off as someone who cared much about the matter through the years.
Again, there was the fan-based throwing out Hüsker Dü records because of this revelation but these were largely the same people who called him a sellout from what I had seen. No great loss there, if you ask me. I never understood those folks and their motivations — they seemed all too transactional in their fandom to suit me.
And, once it was out in the open… Bob just kept going on, writing awesome songs that sounded more simple than they are in reality. And he started going back to the basics of just being a solid power-pop guitarist and songwriter.
I recently saw him on Jimmy Fallon, performing a song from his 35-minute newest release (when was the last time you saw an album under 55 minutes?), When Your Heart is Broken and immediately decided that those concert tickets I saw on sale for tonight were going to be bought. I think what sold it was his “whew” look at the end, like he couldn’t believe he had survived a national television appearance.
I’m looking forward to tonight’s intimate gig (in a converted movie theater). Not because of the songs I won’t know, but because I greatly admire what Bob has done for 40+ years, the risks he’s taken and how he has overcome multitudes of difficulties and managed to keep on being a genuine, authentic musician and person.
It will be worth every penny I paid just to see him being just Bob Mould.
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