Go Gently

Too Old To Rock and Roll, and other myths busted

Life is long
Soldier on

- J. Robbins

There’s a concert filmed for British TV in 1985 where young Minneapolis punks Husker Du tear into a full set of crushing, chaotic, emotional power-trio catharsis, delivering nearly an hour of the boiling angst that set the next two generations on course to create what later got packaged as “alternative rock.”  It’s one of those lightning-in-a-bottle moments, with a stunning mix that gives bassist Greg Norton room to shine and captures the ragged glory of Bob Mould and Grant Hart’s harmonies better than their studio records.

It's even more impressive if the lore is true that the band more or less landed at Heathrow, hightailed it to the gig, played on rented gear, got back on a plane, and made a tour date in the States twenty-four hours later.  The coordination and stamina required of a bunch of young kids from Minneapolis to make that happen in the pay-phone era, while somehow tossing off a multi-camera live recording for the ages, boggles the mind.

It's a pretty safe bet that if social media had existed back then, Husker Du’s Instagram stories would be a little wild.  Hart’s heroin use and Mould’s alcohol consumption played a part in the band’s eventual downfall, and like any group of young twentysomethings handed a band van and some adulation, it’s likely that their adventures on the road were raucous.