buzz@boulderweekly.com

Evolution man
Bob Mould takes fans
on a journey through the underground and emerges unscathed in his new album, District Line
by Ben Corbett

The phone is on speaker, and you can hear car tires cutting through a skim of road slush. Or maybe it’s only the proverbial cellular static. Either way, it sounds weird, a perfect soundtrack for a Bob Mould phoner. He’s making his way from Toronto down to Boston, just coming off a string of Canadian shows. There was a snag in our schedule. I was sitting there at 3 p.m. waiting for the call, but he got hung up at the border, probably getting his luggage scoured by dope-sniffing beagles imported from France. So we finally connect around five.

“I’m a lot happier than I used to be,” says the punk rock pioneer. “As I get older, I’m more interested in the writing side of things and recording, and possibly producing other bands and remixing. I do a lot of performing, but the distance between towns doesn’t get any shorter.”

Bob Mould happy? You can tell he’s a little beat from the road and probably would rather not even do another interview (his publicist said something about keeping it short to “preserve his voice”). I mention the book I’m ripping through, Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic. (“I never met Lester,” says Mould, “but he’s one of the originals.”)

A younger, unhappier Mould was playing around the New York scene with his hardcore punk band Hüsker Dü in the early 1980s, and Bangs certainly heard of them. But if he hadn’t died young, he’d have likely become their biggest cheerleader. And you almost have to wonder what he would have thought about the explosion of indie record labels these days, as well as the Internet. Now hailing from Washington D.C., and with his new February release, District Line (Anti), Mould’s Facebook and MySpace presence has done much to promote his music, falling right in with the word-of-mouth underground music tradition.

“I had some friends in D.C. who were doing blogs,” says Mould, who launched one a few years ago. “It seemed like a good way to make friends. It was actually a fun thing. I was having a little bit of writer’s block, and it was a nice way to kick out of that and get back to work. The Internet affects all of our lives, for better or worse. I think we’re figuring out how it’s all gonna add up, what it’s gonna do to us as a world, you know, whether it’s connecting us more or disconnecting us from actual human experience. In terms of music, you can use it as a platform to share ideas.”

The Internet today has taken over the music “zines” of the ’70s and ’80s that denizens of the underground lapped up furiously to stay on top of the action. Without them, bands like the Ramones, Iggy and the Stooges, and Hüsker Dü couldn’t have annihilated the margins. With zines, suddenly the Bay City Rollers weren’t the outer limits of rock ’n’ roll anymore just because Dick Clark and Casey Kasem said so. What did they know anyway? The underground rock movement flipped the industry upside-down with their “we did it, anyone can” attitude, and the door was kicked open for a swarm of inspired teens armed with cheap Fender knock-offs, hungry to learn the essential three-chord progressions necessary to hit the big time and get the chicks. Most of them sucked, but who cares? Meanwhile, disgusted with the big labels and slick brokers that signed artists on a criteria of marketability, Bangs (who is credited with coining the term “punk rock”), became the media’s dean of the garage band revolution of the mid-to-late 1970s.

“For performing rock ’n’ roll, or punk rock, or call it any damn thing you please,” wrote Bangs in Creem, “there’s only one thing you need: NERVE. Rock ’n’ roll is an attitude, and if you’ve got the attitude you can do it, no matter what anybody says. Because passion is what it’s all about — what all music is about.”

Living in Minneapolis and attending college, Mould brought that attitude as the frontman of Hüsker Dü. Along with their contemporaries, The Replacements, Hüsker Dü helped pioneer what became known as the “Midwest sound” that expanded with Soul Asylum and Cheap Trick. After having their first recording shunned by the indie Twin Tone Records label in 1979, Mould and Hüsker Dü formed their own label, Reflex Records, soon releasing the EP Statues/Amusement. By 1982, they released their first album, Land Speed Record, on (Minutemen bass player) Mike Watt’s label, New Alliance. But the big leap forward came the next year, when Hüsker Dü signed with SST Records (Black Flag, Minutemen, Meat Puppets), the biggest independent label enviously coveted by underground bands in the post-punk era.

In a digital review of Mould’s new disc, District Line, the BBC writes: “From the pioneering buzz-saw guitars of [Hüsker Dü] to the power pop of [Sugar], Mould’s late-’80s and early-’90s work paved the way for Nirvana, The Pixies and a whole vein of American college rock.”

“Who am I to disagree with the BBC?” quips Mould with a laugh. “I think there were a lot of people in the ’80s who did a lot of hard work to pave the way for Nirvana and all that. I don’t think it was any one person who made it possible.”

Mould plays it down, but he’s certainly guilty. While Hüsker Dü’s 1983 release, Everything Falls Apart, is regarded as the last official punk record by some critics, their final SST release, Zen Arcade (1984), is often considered to be the bridge for what became known as “alternative” or “college rock.” In fact, when The Pixies formed in 1985, the band’s founders, Frank Black and Joey Santiago, ran an ad looking for a female bass player who liked the music of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and Hüsker Dü.

Commercially, Mould and Hüsker Dü helped pave the way for alternative by becoming the first underground band of the time to sign with a major label, releasing Candy Apple Grey with Warner Brothers in 1985. The move was controversial, and punk snobs tagged it as a sellout to mainstream. Yet it brought the spotlight to the underground with scores of struggling musicians who might otherwise have been overlooked. Hüsker Dü’s transition from punk to post-punk was as short-lived as its flirt with the mainstream. Amid much turmoil, after releasing its last title on Warner (1987’s Warehouse Songs and Stories), the band broke up in 1988.

Undeterred, Mould embarked on a solo career, exploring power pop with ventures in acoustic and dance music, while evolving from gnashing angst power chords to darker, introspective melodies and lyrics. After releasing a couple of experimental albums, and much soul-searching, Mould segued into alt-rock trio Sugar in 1990 and a string of albums. The music was intensely personal, and hybrid compositions dominated by melancholic overtones became — and remain — Mould’s trademark sound. Since the demise of Sugar, and after three decades of performing, Mould has honed down the crème of his explorations, resulting in District Line, a record that took 18 months to write.

“I think it’s a little more focused than Body of Song (2005),” says Mould. “It’s a little less autobiographical and a little more observational. I think a song like ‘Shelter Me’ shows that I’ve gotten a much better handle on how to incorporate the electronic elements into my music. A song like ‘Old Highs, New Lows’ is pretty different than anything I’ve done before. ‘Walls In Time’ is an old song that I’ve been kicking around for a while that I finally put out. That’ll take care of a lot of the Workbook fans. It’s a neat group of songs. I’m eager to get to the next batch.”

The critics are calling District Line Mould’s return to his roots. (They were saying that about the last album, too). It’s wishful thinking, as if everyone is sitting around waiting for Mould to hammer out another pissed-off punk album inspired by his Hüsker Dü stuff. If anything, District Line is more like Mould’s roots returning to him. But new and improved.

“Except for one song,” says Mould, “these are all songs composed on the guitar, and I think when I write on the guitar there’s a sense of familiarity. And I don’t mean in the sense loud punk rock guitar, but in the way the songs are constructed. Maybe that’s why it feels familiar to people. It’s nice that there’s a younger generation that’s still learning the work. I’m blessed with a pretty good group of people that are accepting of all the work. They like the experience. They want to be in the room with other people who feel that way. That’s something you don’t get on the Internet.”

On the Bill
Bob Mould Band will play with Halou at 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 22, at the Fox Theatre, 1135 13th St., Boulder,
303-443-3399.

Respond: letters@boulderweekly.com
back to top