Spent a couple of hours today listening to some of the live recordings of Hüsker Dü that can be found on the Internet Archive. It’s a mixed bag: some pretty good ones that sound as if recorded at the mixing desk, while others are just muffled noise with the occasionally recognisable vocal. I can understand why the recordings were hard to do. Hüsker Dü were pretty noisy in performance (reviewers frequently referred to their sound as a “sonic wall”.

Most interesting is a recording of the band’s final performance at The Blue Note on 11th December 1987. It’s noisy and uneven – but wonderfully wild. From my understanding, it was immediately following this gig that Bob Mould cancelled their remaining shows and the band was no more. So it’s a real piece of music history – even if the recording is pretty awful.

I’m not sure why I’m listening to Bob Mould and Hüsker Dü again so much. Perhaps my dominant mood at the moment is one of ferocious roaring.