RIP Grant Hart

Lucky to * have had*

otm

Greg Norton sort of a punk rock Michael Collins

Lately I’ve been thinking what a miracle it is that Hüsker Dü existed at all. We are lucky to have both of these amazing creative people working together creatively to such spectacular results.

OTM, and it reminds me a little of how Joe Strummer talked about the disintegration of the Clash in the Westway To The World film: if you have this incredible, but incredibly volatile, chemistry, you have to do whatever you can to nurture that chemistry. Joe has a pained expression when he says, “We learned that lesson bitterly.” You wish Hüsker Dü had taken a break or something, but then how can you deal with Mould insisting that Hart would never have as many songs on an album as Mould?

I think I posted a link on another thread, but this is a great oral history of the Minneapolis scene that was published in 2005, and given the animosity thrown back and forth, I was surprised Hüsker Dü lasted long enough to both tour and squeeze out one more double LP of original material - La Lechera is definitely right about being lucky, I can't even imagine lasting 20 minutes in a trio with that kind of dynamic going on.

The one Grant Hart solo show I saw was one of the greatest shows ever: on the middle of a snowstorm in New York, with an understandably thin crowd. Before the show, he stopped me and my brother who was with me to just chat with us. (He was a lot shorter than I imagined!). He quizzed the audience about old car makes and distributed a promo record of American Hot Wax by throwing it to into the small crowd, accidentally hitting a fan.

All of my favorite HD songs, barring "Makes No Sense At All", were written by Grant Hart. I greatly enjoy every part of his solo discography (including Nova Mob), while most of Mould's bounces off me. Mould was obviously more prolific and successful, and I don't begrudge him that, but I think Hart was the greater talent. Just a really superlative songwriter.

I'm glad they were apparently able to reconcile before Hart passed.

Morningstar is one of his best songs.

Also, he sounds uncannily like Bowie on «Awake, Arise!»

Saw Hüsker Dü just once in 1987, at the Fillmore in San Francisco (then known as 'The Old Fillmore').. a few years back (maybe 2011?) my band opened for him at the Hemlock in SF, and he borrowed my amp. I told him about the show I'd seen, his reply "No way man, we did NOT play the Fillmore... we never played the Fillmore, you're out of your mind." And I'm like, but I have the poster man, Christmas opened, I bought a shirt, of you course you did.

Then it occurred to me that maybe he was out of his mind in 1987 and has no memory of it...

BTW his solo set was brilliant but he did appear sort of semi-homeless

Starting a website: bearorhomeless?.com

Grant's house caught fire in January 2011, and partially burned down. Who knows, he may have been literally homeless!

Is the house shown in the documentary EVERY EVERYTHING what burned down?

Curious about his daughter, too, who I think is in her 30’s now.

At some point between '99 and '01 Grant came to the town I lived in to hang out and play a couple of shows with some mutual friends over a few days. And then I guess he just didn't want to leave? He was on the couch of one of the guys in that band for at least a week, apparently never really leaving the living room until night, and that guy's roommates were sick of it. So my friend had to ask one of his favorite musicians to please leave his house and find somewhere else to go. Pretty sure he just left town at that point.

I was too timid to say anything to Grant other than "hey, good show" but I did have to go to my friend's house for some reason that week and Grant was just laying on his couch in the other room the whole time I was there.

Picked up a copy of the remix of Nova Mob's Last Days of Pompeii, one, they did an incredible job with the remix, a very tasteful improvement over the original

Also, it's such a great record, definitely should be considered one of the major post Husker Du works

;_;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4xKJm292DQ