FIVE-PART DOCUMENTARY SERIES FEATURES EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY FROM BOB MOULD, GREG NORTON AND THE LAST INTERVIEW WITH GRANT HART
The extraordinary career of Hüsker Dü is being explored in a remarkable new podcast that accompanies this week’s eagerly anticipated release of Numero Group’s Savage Young Dü, a new deluxe box set chronicling the band’s first recorded efforts. Presented by Minnesota Public Radio’s KCMP 89.3 The Current, Do You Remember? A Podcast About Hüsker Dü Is a five-part documentary podcast exploring the band’s formative years and ongoing legacy, highlighted by candid, funny, and insightful discussions with all three founding members, Bob Mould, Greg Norton and Grant Hart in what sadly proved to be his final interview. Also featured are a diverse array of artists and musicians attesting to Hüsker Dü’s influence on their own careers, including Jello Biafra, Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie, The Postal Service), Henry Rollins, The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy, Lori Barbero (Babes in Toyland) and others. Do You Remember? A Podcast About Hüsker Dü is available now via KCMP or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, and RSS. Savage Young Dü arrives via Number Group on Friday, November 10th.
Do You Remember? A Pdocast About Hüsker Dü begins with “Remembering Grant Hart,” a mini-episode commemorating the tragic loss of the gifted musician-songwriter, with tributes from Mould, Norton, and longtime friend Barbero. “Episode 1: New Day Rising” introduces the band before they became a band, following Hart and Norton’s youth in St. Paul and subsequent first encounter with Mould, a fellow student at St. Paul’s Macalester College with a Flying V guitar and passion for punk rock equal to their own.
“Episode 2: All Tensed Up” follows Mould, Hart and Norton as they first form a band and move from playing covers as Buddy and the Returnables to prolific songwriters and pillars of the Minneapolis-St. Paul punk community. “Episode 3: Chartered Trips” sees Hüsker Dü hitting the road and making a name as America’s fastest hardcore band on their classic first recordings, among them 1982’s Land Speed Record and 1983’s Everything Falls Apart. “Episode 4: Celebrated Summer” finds the tension building between the members of Hüsker Dü but the music they were creating proved too great to deny, notably on the string of masterpieces made for SST, including the epochal 1984 double album, Zen Arcade. The epic fifth and final episode of Do You Remember? A Podcast About Hüsker Dü – “Episode 5: Everything Falls Apart” – spans the band’s signing to Warner Bros, releasing a pair of milestone albums in 1986’s Candy Apple Grey and 1987’s Warehouse: Songs And Stories, breaking up in 1987, and then celebrated three decades later with Numero Group’s extraordinary Savage Young Dü compendium.
Available on four LPs or three CDs, Savage Young Dü compiles 69 tracks – 47 of them previously unreleased – spanning Hüsker Dü’s formative 1979 live shows to their milestone early releases via SST Records, including first singles “Statues” b/w “Amusement” (1981) and “In A Free Land” (1982), as well as 1983’s full-length debut album, Everything Falls Apart, and an alternate recording of 1982’s seminal live recording, Land Speed Record. Newly remastered from the original analog demos, board tapes, and session masters, the anthology is accompanied by a hardbound book highlighted by an epic history of Hüsker Dü, penned with full participation from founding members Grant Hart, Greg Norton and Bob Mould, as well as 40 never-before seen photos, a remarkable collection of rare flyers, and detailed sessionography.
The announcement of Savage Young Dü was greeted with wide-ranging media attention, including Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and NPR Music, which premiered the collection in its entirety via an extensive First Listen feature. “It sounds incredible,” writes NPR’s Michaelangelo Matos, “even the cruddiest source material rings through with maximal volume and clarity…The thrill of avage Young Dü is hearing three young men figuring out how to turn their dissatisfaction with the world into glorious noise in more-or-less real time.”
Hüsker Dü is of course among the most influential and iconic bands to rise up from the hardcore punk underground, marrying Mould and Hart’s glorious songwriting with punishing noise, breakneck tempos, and unstoppable invention to create what remains a truly original vision of American music.
“We created this blistering wall of sound,” says Bob Mould, “bright white radio static with occasional melody.”
“It was like rolling down a hill aware of the bumps,” Grant Hart says, “but focusing on blowing people’s minds and completely wearing out the audience.”
“We didn’t know what hardcore was,” says Greg Norton. “We just got up there and played real fast and loud.”
