And so on to 1987, the year where the UK was hit by a destructive storm that weatherman Michael Fish infamously declared wasn’t going to happen, hours before it did. I had a driving lesson that overlapped with the start of that, which was fun. That kind of weather is pretty much a monthly occurence these days.
Elsewhere in the world things rumble on the same as always, with problems in the Middle East (it’s getting really boring now, guys) and IRA bombings in the UK including the infamous Enniskillen attack on Remembrance Day. The shock from that, I think, did much to shake people out of their groupthink and start to consider that maybe it’s time to stop killing each other.
There were various transport disasters – the usual plane crashes of course, but also the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry failed to close its doors and capsized, and Kings Cross underground station suffered a terrible fire. At least both of these led to improvements in safety checks. You know, the things that some politicians claim are “needless red tape”.
It was a bad year for Nazis (yay!), with Klaus Barbie being sentenced to life imprisonment and Rudolf Hess found hanged in his cell in Hamburg, while Austrian President Kurt Waldheim suddenly couldn’t remember what he was doing 1939-1945. Talking of forgetful presidents, Reagan somehow emerged unscathed by the Iran-Contra affair and made his famous “tear down the wall” speech in Berlin.
Meanwhile, AZT was approved as a treatment for HIV/AIDS, the first Starbucks outside the USA opened in Vancouver (that’s only just over the border, relatively), and The Simpsons made their debut on The Tracey Ullman Show.
That felt like one of my lengthier summaries of a year, and comparatively little happened in it. Perhaps because it overlaps with my teenage years I’ve got stronger opinions on events that still hold over from that time.
But, back to the music:
I’d assumed that Hüsker Dü were more into hardcore punk / noise rock, which it sounds like they were on earlier albums. Here, however, they sound like they have one foot in REM and one foot in Green Day. And, indeed, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day cites Hüsker Dü as a big influence.
This is their final album, fraught with personality clashes between the songwriters Bob Mould (guitars) and Grant Hart (drums), with bassist Greg Norton caught in between (and edited out of some tracks). I can't help but think of Spinal Tap bassist Derek Smalls, caught between the "fire and ice" of Davd St Hubbins and Nigel Tufnell as "lukewarm water". Both Mould and Hart are also credited with bass, keyboards, and vocals. Nearest I could tell only Turn It Around has any kind of overt keyboard sounds in it, the rest, if there are any, tend to be lost in the wall of noise mix.
Broadly, the Mould compilations are the ones that sound more like REM, with the backing vocal harmonies recalling not only the REM of Green/Document/Out Of Time era (roughly contemporaneous and beyond), but also touches of The Rembrandts and other bands of that ilk that were popular at the start of the Nineties.
Hart’s compositions, meanwhile, are a bit more hardcore, more towards the punkier sound of Green Day, but he varies it up a bit. Actual Condition is a bit of a rockabilly track while She’s A Woman (And Now He Is A Man) has a real Byrds feel (particularly Feel A Whole Lot Better). While Hüsker Dü have a jangly guitar thing going on, it tends to be cranked up on the distortion so that it sounds more Nineties. As well as picking up touches of Psychedelic Furs from before, the music looks forward to minor Nineties indie groups like Milltown Brothers and Hurricane Number One. There’s not a lot of soloing, but the final track You Can Live At Home descends into a glorious chant under some grungy guitar – a great way to finish the album.
I noted both in the Sixties and Seventies that by the time we get to the last three years of the decade, the music begins to show elements that feel more like they define the next decade. Which makes sense. It’s not like everybody got out the Fairlight CMIs and the Lynn-M1s on midnight New Years Eve 1979 and put them away midnight New Years Even 1989; of course music is going to progress organically.
This is a double album and, although it’s a sound that I really like, twenty tracks of almost fundamentally the same song does get a bit repetitive. It could have been pared down to a single album, I think, but by the sounds of it that would have been the source of even more arguments.
Comments
Post a Comment