The set will drop this fall
Numero Group is set to release 1985: The Miracle Year on November 7th with several tracks available digitally already.
The 4 LP edition includes Beau Sorenson’s restoration of an entire January 30, 1985 set, 20 extra live tracks from the year’s touring schedule, and a deluxe 36-page book detailing 12 months of history-making Hüsker Dü. What is the sound of a legend being written?
Looking at 1985 through the dynamic lens of independent DIY music, mid-decade, there was a year-long succession of leaps by Hüsker Dü, each building on the powerful and undeniable sprint from the scrappy punk institution SST to the artistic empathy of Warner Bros. As observers began to catch on, testimonials came from many quarters. Consistent with such praise, Hüsker Dü revealed a heightened creative pace rarely, if ever, seen in any musical era. Before or since. After blowing the doors off the burgeoning alt-rock movement with Zen Arcade the previous July, the band dropped New Day Rising six months later on January 14, 1985, and then never stopped chasing the Hidden Beach sunrise that adorned that album’s cover.
On January 30, 1985, Minneapolis reached -11 degrees at show time, marking 19 points of mercilessly dropped mercury from the day’s eight-degree apex. The 1500 attendees inside First Avenue, however, wouldn’t be needing so much as a T-shirt, let alone the nearest fiberfill parka: from the first blinding moments of “New Day Rising,” it was clear that Bob Mould, Grant Hart, and Greg Norton had arrived intent on setting every molecule in the room alight. Their setlist displayed a night-long cascade of fireballs chosen from Everything Falls Apart, Metal Circus, Zen Arcade, and New Day Rising, and five new songs that would reappear later on Flip Your Wig. They also made several nods to the band’s rock forbears, with a ballistic take on The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High,” a turbulent spin on The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” featuring Soul Asylum’s Dave Pirner, a pop-punk remake of “Ticket To Ride, ” and closing with their signature cover of Sonny Curtis’s Mary Tyler Moore theme “Love Is All Around.”
Considering the late-January 2011 house fire that consumed a precious portion of the Hüsker Dü archive, it has to be reckoned as a kind of subordinate miracle that the 1985 First Avenue tapes survived. They deliver peak Dü at full gallop through already beloved material, still years shy of fully cementing their status as a blueprint for the alternative rock skyscraper to come. This box set celebrates these tapes, strikingly perhaps the highest fidelity Hüsker Dü recordings ever produced during the band’s lauded SST years.
“When I think of that time,” Greg comments, “it was three guys doing what they loved, having fun, and basically showing other people that you can be true to yourself, true to your music, and not have to bow down to fashion or expectations to make something really great.”
A1. New Day Rising
A2. It’s Not Funny Anymore
A3. Everything Falls Apart
A4. The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
A5. I Apologize
A6. If I Told You
A7. Folklore
B1. Every Everything
B2. Makes No Sense At All
B3. Terms Of Psychic Warfare
B4. Powerline
B5. Books About UFOs
B6. Broken Home, Broken Heart
B7. Diane
C1. Hate Paper Doll
C2. Green Eyes
C3. Divide And Conquer
C4 .Pink Turns To Blue
C5. Eight Miles High
D1. Out On A Limb
D2. Helter Skelter
D3. Ticket To Ride
D4. Love Is All Around
E1. Don’t Want To Know If You’re Lonely (11-3 SLC)
E2. I Don’t Know For Sure (11-3 SLC)
E3. Hardly Getting Over It (11-3 SLC)
E4. Sorry Somehow (11-3 SLC)
E5. Eiffel Tower High (11-3 SLC)
F1. What’s Going On (11-4 Boulder)
F2. Private Plane (11-4 Boulder)
F3. Celebrated Summer (11-4 Boulder)
F4. All Work And No Play (10-31 Long Beach)
G1. Keep Hanging On (5-17 Newport, KY)
G2. Find Me (5-17 Newport, KY)
G3. Flexible Flyer (5-12 Washington DC)
G4. Sunshine Superman (5-9 Hoboken)
G5. In A Free Land (5-9 Hoboken)
G6. Somewhere (5-15 Cleveland)
H1. Flip Your Wig (9-17 Frankfurt)
H2. Never Talking To You Again (9-19 Lausanne)
H3. Chartered Trips (9-19 Lausanne)
H4. The Wit And The Wisdom (9-17 Frankfurt)
H5. Misty Modern Days (10-26 Seattle)
