3/1/2012

Husker Du -- "Chartered Trips"

The first thing to note here, as in many Husker Du tracks, is the military precision of the drums.  Bob Mould's hoarse barbaric yawp may not have been the kind that Whitman had in mind, but it's certainly one hell of a yawp.  I don't know what kind of amp Mould used, but it sounds solid state to me: loud, flat-toned, with a lot of staticky electric distortion.  It works for what he was trying to do in Husker Du.

Like all good 80s music, this song kicks at the pricks of the decade.  The sound is wholly of the 80s but also apart from it, in that now-mythical territory inhabited by the outsiders: Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure, and The Smiths, but also The Minutemen and Husker Du -- basically anyone who declined the opportunity to pop the collar of their polo shirt. 

I once had a student who said she thought that she should have been alive in 80s because all of her favorite bands were from the 80s.  I should have made her listen to this song.  This song captures what it was like to be alive then, to be a misfit, to feel like nowhere was your home.  Most of the great music from this decade was made out of the misery of being alive in this decade.  I love the music.  I wouldn't repeat the decade, though, for all the millions of the Reagan Revolution.