Keith Pille's Weekly Shuffle
October 3, 2005

Every week, I will fire up the Shuffle Songs option on my iPod; the first song to come up, no matter what it is, will get an instant, unvarnished review. We're at the mercy of random chance and the limits of my digital music collection. Let's see where this takes us.

Back from Somewhere (live)
Husker Du, The Living End

Wow, so many places to go with this one.  For starters, it's weird that my iPod was so in tune with the recent events in my life; Husker Du has been pretty heavily on my mind lately.

So let's talk about Husker Du.  I adore Husker Du.  Well, to be more accurate, I adore mid- to late Husker Du.  No matter how hard I try, I just can't get behind anything older than New Day Rising;  I know that Zen Arcade is held up as the big breakthrough album where it came together, but, for me, the triumphant moments of Zen are still largely buried in sludge.

But after that, hot damn!  I can't think of another band that combines melody and ass-kicking as well as Husker Du.  By the time Warehouse rolled around, they had the balance between the melody and ass-kicking pretty well perfectly worked out.  There's still a mile-high wall of sound, but there's some nuance to it.

"Back from Somewhere," one of my favorites from Warehouse, works just as well live as it does on the album; given the stripped nature of most Husker Du arrangements, how couldn't it (it's not much tougher to play three instruments on a stage than it is in a studio)?  If anything, Bob Mould's guitar sounds even more like it's about to explode here, and the live reverb makes Grant Hart's drums sound like something out of myth.

I think I'm unusual among Husker fans for not really having a preference between the Mould songs and the Hart songs.  They both bring different things to the table, and I like both of them.  Really, it's sort of like the eternal Stan Lee / Jack Kirby argument:  in the end, they both did good things apart (although I think it's safe to say that Mould's had the more interesting post-Husker career) and great things together, and liking one shouldn't mean that you have to hate the other.

Weekly Shuffle Scoreboard (Best to Worst):

1. "Rock N Roll Radio V2," Derailleur
2.  "Back from Somewhere (live)," Husker Du
3. "Powderfinger," Neil Young
4. "Gassed & Stoked," Lou Reed
5. "Nicotine & Gravy," Beck
6. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (live)," Wilco
7. "John, I'm Only Dancing," David Bowie
8. "Take It or Leave it," The Strokes
9. "Soldier's Joy," Mark O'Connor
10. "Masoko Tanga," The Police
11. "Climbing up the Walls," Radiohead
12. "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," Mission of Burma