There is a new rock'n'roll. The seed is sown. In the fertile topsoil of electro and hip-hop, with it's combination punch of rash enthusiasm and unbridled experimentation. There are trails back of course. But the link is tenuous.
And then there's the music of groups such as The Died Pretty and Screaming Tribesmen, with its ineffable pull on memory and emotion. Thoroughly modern, as an aeroplane is; it takes off fine but somebody else invented it.
And Husker Du. Someone had to do it, someone had to shed the skin, throw off the shackles of retrograde, self-congratulating delusion that the Eighties thrives on. Husker Du re-wrote history with 'Eight Miles High', taking a sacred cow and making something with it instead of just bleeding it dry. Then they freed the slaves with 'New Day Rising', the first intimation of pop genius; 'Zen Arcade' had the same ridiculous level of instant accessibility and jubilant melodic invention, but it was a trifle coarse. Now 'Flip Your Wig', and notably the single 'Makes No Sense At All', has shifted the paradigm of pop ruthlessly, rearranging the pieces. These are the ones I picked up in conversation with Bob Mould and Grant Hart.
B.O.B.: Let's start with the deal with WEA.
B.M.: What deal?? Everybody's talking about it but nothin's been signed. 'Flip Your Wig' is on S.S.T.; we're going to start recording in early October but no one has signed us. We've been approached by numerous labels and I think I know which one I want to sign us, I think it's WEA. They're the only ones that're pursuing it with any fervour.
B.O.B.: On a major label, given the opportunities that entails, what effect will there be on your approach to working?
B.M.: None. It would give us a little more flexibility as far as taking time to do it; as far as what the end result is, with the labels we're negotiating with part of the deal is that we produce the records ourselves where and when we want and for how long. It's funny, the ones who're really interested do not want the band to change; they like us for the reasons everyone else does.
B.O.B.: There is something about your music that makes everything else seem insubstantial. What is your secret ingredient?
B.M.: It's ' the foom-bah'!
G.H.: We know what it is but we can't tell you...... maybe it's extracting our own happiness first from the quality of the songs?
B.O.B.: The album 'Zen Arcade' made me think of, for a variety of reasons -- being a double, the lyrical content which was revolutionary for the time, the diversity and mastery of styles is 'Freak Out' by the Mothers Of Invention. It's a situation where development is inevitable, but until someone actualizes the thing it's intangible.
B.M.: And then everybody goes: 0h, we were going to do that!
B.O.B.: No one can say that about your records; no one else would have.
B.M.: I hope not or else this whole thing has been for nought!
B.O.B.: It's been called hardcore psychedelia. How apt is that?
B.M.: Is it psychedelic (laughs).... ask Three O'Clock what 'psychedelic' is!
G.H.: Yeh, purple microdot...!
B.O.B.: Don't go near the mirror, boys!
B.M.: Oh jeez.... you heard about them? (laughs) I'm not particularly fond of... I have all the Beatles and Monkees albums, y'know, I liked it the first time around. I'd rather not give those bands lip service, that's as bad as good press is good as bad press I can give.
G.H.: The Three O'Clock not the Beatles! But it's interesting how you can find new applications for already existing objects, it's like Marcel's [Duchamp] bicycle wheel.
B.M.: Who are your six favourite Beatles? Donovan, Pete Shelley, Frank Sinatra, Doug Fiegler, Eno, Julian Lennon.... Marshall Crenshaw! They've expanded their line-up.
B.O.B.: I recognise your new B-side as the Mary Tyler Moore show signature tune.Are you TV fans and watchers of American culture generally?
B.M.: It's a mirror. It's just nice to see what the status quo thinks is outrageous, because that's what you'll see on TV, not what outrageous people think is outrageous. It tells you a lot about what the national thought is, because it is such a big country the only real hook up his TV. Sort of pervasive on each coast.
B.O.B.: Are there literary influences on your worldview and song content?
B.M.: For a fictional writer, someone like Eugene Burdick who wrote 'The Ninth Wave',
'Failsafe' and 'The 480' where it's an exposure of how the media and events can shape faceless objects into icons. Then, Fran Leibowitz, which is completely dry city humour, just realising the absurdities of living in Megalopolis. A lot of post-war Japanese writing, Mishima and stuff, where it's "you think you're bombed, try this on for size, this'll make you feel good". I like finding humour in the absurd.
G.H.: I was never a real fan of fiction once I grew out of children's literature. I don't find too much time to read anymore but I read all of Steinbeck's books and a lot of non-fiction, like World War Two stuff which intrigues me 'cause it seems such a great big event.
B.O.B.: To a lot of people who fought in it it was certainly the major feature in their lives. But a lot of that is people seeking experiences that never satisfy them because they never make contact with truth, which isn't an 'experience'.
G.H.: Well, y'know, a lot of people go back up in the attic when they're forty years old and put on their high school football sweater and it's like, God, the Allies were the biggest team ever assembled for a championship sport.
B.M.: I don't think that sort of reliving the past is unhealthy for some people. I think in perspective it's alright.
G.H.: You have to think about your past happiness to put your present happiness in perspective.
B.O.B.: I wouldn't agree with that myself but... How much work and pre-production goes into your songs?
B.M.: It depends on the individual song. Some of the ones you think are classics that take weeks to work up are not that well-liked and some that you write in five minutes are the best.
G.H.: The best songs write themselves. They just use the author as someone to hold the pen, just a vehicle.....
B.O.B.: Are you alluding to a mystical process?
G.H.: No; just that the best songs I've written have poured out of me....
B.M.: But that's not music using you, that's you using music as a vehicle. If you're saying that it came out of nowhere and mystically forced your body to do it, I mean, yeah, it's to that extent but it's a learned experience, it's not an unconscious thing.
G.H.: It didn't happen before I played, yeah...
B.M.: Everyone has the greatest song in the world in their heads, it's a matter of using your tools.
B.O.B.: How do you feel about 'New Day Rising' now?
B.M.: I think the songs still stand up real well in retrospect. The production leaves a lot to be desired; it's just a matter of working with too many people with too many ideas on how it should sound, our's should have over-ridden everybody else's. Just a classic case of too many cooks in the same kitchen. Whereas 'Flip Your Wig', the new one, we did all ourselves and it's head and shoulders above 'New Day', as every record should be over the previous one. I tend to like 'Zen Arcade' a little more in retrospect than I do 'New Day'. 'New Day' was a step backward, but it was a good place to take it; 'Zen Arcade' was a little heavy for what we were up to. The new one goes back to the idea of the live thing, a straight ahead rock'n'roll album; every record should not be like 'Zen Arcade', it would get ridiculous, a bit.
INTERVIEW BY: CRAIG ANTLER.
