One night back in the 1985, I missed seeing Soul Asylum’s
set at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco because I went to see the Butthole
Surfers at a different venue. The Butthole Surfers played in front of video footage of bloody car crashes, shouted frightening slogans through a
bullhorn, set the drums on actual fire, and just generally left the audience
shattered, but by the very next morning, I knew I’d made the wrong choice: the
sibilant hiss of the words Soul Asylum
were ricocheting down city streets the moment they left the stage.
What does it say about a band, that 30 years later, I
remember a gig I missed better than the one I saw? We may not have had the internet
or social media back then, but somehow word was out: miss Soul Asylum at your peril.
By going to the Buttholes, I had imperiled myself, but was able to make it up a week later when they
returned to play the I Beam and knocked me flat.
Even forewarned, it was something of a surprise, because in
those days records really didn’t do much to tell you what a band was going to
be like, live. Soul Asylum’s recorded output was a case in point. At the time I
first saw them, I had probably heard one track from their debut (Say What You Will) on my local college radio
station, and not really taken it in, so being blown away by them so thoroughly was
unexpected. And in early 1986, soon after the afore-mentioned gig, they
released Made To Be Broken, their 2nd
LP, again produced by Bob Mould of Husker Du. As on the first one, Mould attempted
to recreate their live sound in a recorded setting, and the result was
radically different from the echo-y, click-track-ish, groomed vocal records we
were used to hearing on major labels (and on records made by bands from England).
To the unaccustomed, this sounded loud and fast and slightly unintelligible. It
took a while to get used to. But when one did, one realized: Soul Asylum
rocked. They howled. They crashed through the beat with the kind of passionate
intensity that infers that, yes, anarchy has been loosed upon the world.
Soul Asylum’s work differed from punk rock in that a, their
lyrics were vastly more clever and b, they were just so much better at playing
it. The music was an astute mix of hard rock chords bashed out
beneath a high, keening vocal style that both mimicked and mocked the status
quo. Experiencing
their live performance was an exercise in hearing; in slamming, banging, and absorbing
guitars the way car springs absorb shock and then, because every action has an
equal and opposite reaction, spewing it back out as fandom.
In short, going to
see them created the kind of bodily pleasure that was integral to 1970s and
1980s and 1990s punk rock experience. But one wonders if it can translate to
future generations. Soul Asylum themselves posed this question on the song
“Ain’t That Tough,” when they wondered aloud why it is that bands “just get
passive,” before they get old. (Note: I always thought the line was "just get passe" but I now stand corrected by the songwriter. I like my version better though.) It’s a question well worth asking, but thanks to
the magic of postmodernism, surely the records that document it – records like Say What You Will and Made To Be Broken and the extra tracks
included here in, some of which were live staples -- won’t sound as dated to
young people as, say, melodians do to me. Indeed, I challenge a kid from 2060
to listen to “Ain’t That Tough” or “Ship of Fools” or “Tied to the Tracks” or
“Whoa” and not, well, rock the fuck out.
For those kids, Made
To Be Broken may well be the finder’s key that opens the box in Special
Collections – the box labeled ‘origins of grunge.’ Because although it has been argued that the
sound of grunge wafted west from Detroit, like a sonic mushroom cloud exploded
off the MC5’s detritus, another theory is that well before it got to Seattle,
it settled first on Minneapolis. It was there, in the late 1970s, that bands
like the Suicide Commandos and the Suburbs helped transform a sleepy Midwestern
city into a truly spectacular incubator of post-punk bands and fans, one whose
legend lives on today. Husker Du, The Replacements, Prince, Jimmy Jam and Terry
Lewis…the list of massive talents who were living and working there in that era
is truly eerie.
Looking back, it’s hard to say why Minneapolis’s music scene
was so much richer and nicer and deeper than that of other similar sized cities
at the time, but to an outsider, there are two unique aspects about the
location: the State’s unusual liberal
bent during the otherwise reactionary Reagan 80s, and the horrible weather. Maybe places
like Minneapolis kind of lend themselves to a more socialist approach. In
Minneapolis, if a person accidentally lost their mittens in the scrum by the
club door, they’d literally freeze their hands off if someone didn’t lend them
others.
Perhaps it was that harshness that bred a prairie-form of
hospitality, a ‘we’re all in this together when we go’ mentality that permeated
the music and the mindset there. In New York City, and Los Angeles, and Boston,
bands competed in a cutthroat manner for the very small amounts of cache and
cash that were available; they affected a snooty viciousness that rock ‘n’ roll
has always cultivated. Not so in the
Twin Cities, where the watchword was Ubuntu (if they’d known it). Indeed, there
is a video in existence on YouTube of the Minneapolis Music Awards of 1986, in
which Soul Asylum tie for best garage band in Minneapolis with their friends Husker
Du. In it, Dave Pirner grabs the mic. “I’d like to remind you that we’re here
tonight to celebrate music,” he says. “…and music is not something that can be
judged.”
That naïve statement, so out of touch with the tenets of not
just music, and business, and the vile soul of corporate America itself, is
truly emblematic of the remarkable charm of both the band and the city. But
then, the stakes were so low back then. Music wasn’t a competition because there
wasn’t really even a pie to divide up. That lack of pie was exactly why, in those
days, bands like this toured constantly. They’d get in the van, as Henry
Rollins puts it, and head up and down the country, east coast, west coast, up
Hwy 70 and back on 80 or 90, playing town after town after town. The audiences
were invariably tiny and the bars were indubitably dank; the bands would sleep
on the floors of fans houses in order to save on hotel bills, eat only fast
food and throw out their dirty socks rather than wash them so the van wouldn’t
smell too bad. It was a brutal endeavor but the result was tangible: these
bands smoked live. Also, it was the only way to circumvent the death grip
commercial radio and MTV had on the playlists of America, since this was pre-streaming,
pre-MP3, pre-iPod, pre-shuffle.
And it was also beautiful. It was beautiful, first and
foremost, because the bands were beautiful in themselves, in the way that all boys
that age are. Second, it was beautiful to witness, because they had the work
ethic of an American farmer circa 1845, if their seed was songs, and the soil
was sonic, and the music they played had been tilled to perfection. You think that
playing super-fast guitar runs and keening in a high pitched voice is special,
that practitioners of that art deserve giant amounts of money and fame and
debauchery? Nope. It turns out any kid with a cheap Fender and garage and a lot
of time to practice can do it too. And, at least in the case of Soul Asylum,
they can write the shit out of a couplet as well.
That’s what you’ll hear on Made To Be Broken —a record that takes a
bunch of middle American white bread influences and then puts them in a dumpster,
willing us to dive for its treasures. It is a sound that is neither as impenetrable
and dark as Slayer, nor as just plain dumb as Dokken, and it is as good an
explanation of the Bill & Ted’s
Excellent Adventure/Wayne’s World/Spinal Tap aesthetic as anything out
there.
 |
| A young John Wick and friend |
Like Bill, and Ted, and Wayne, and Nigel, Soul Asylum were
just kids back then, really, just some little boys in ripped jeans and high top
Converse All Stars. But their ability to harmonize, play their guitars in
unison, and ultimately, withstand a decibel level that could have harmed even a
snake, had been honed into a sharp, pointy, sonic stick of a weapon. Why were
they weaponized, you may ask? Honestly, just because. Nowadays, when people
look back at the late 20th century, they will note that it was a
time when there were no wars for boys to go fight. Instead, for forty or fifty years,
between Viet Nam and 9-11, there were only hobbies: sports, robotics, taking
drugs, and, for the lucky or crazy few who had wanderlust, courage, and deep if
suspect poetic instincts, forming a band and taking it on the road.
That must be why when I think of these bands playing live, I
think of them like commandos; as if they were some kind of crack team of
sharpshooters or Special Forces, a perfectly coordinated team of ninja
assassins sneaking in to some citadel on a rescue mission and absolutely
killing it. The citadel was The Mainstream, of course – the 1980s Reagan world
where everyone wore polo shirts and voted Republican — and the rescued were the
rest of us.
No, there weren’t any wars back then, so the boys in the bands
had to create their own battlefields, and Soul Asylum were the masters at it.
Like their friends in the Replacements and in other bands all over the country,
they plotted sorties behind enemy lines. They crept up on the battlements. And then they took the whole thing over the
top. Of course, it was all pretend, but then, that is how it
should be. What a glorious time in our history, when those kinds of actions
were only metaphorical.
Today, what’s made to be broken are actual things -- toys,
iPhones, printers -- planned obsolescence is, alas, a viable business strategy.
But in 1986, objects were more robust, and Soul Asylum’s dictum really referred
to the way they approached both making music and living life. As they sang on
“Never Really Been,” “Ain’t it strange how some things never change, Ain’t it
strange how nothing stays the same?”
Yep. It surely is.
* * * * * * *
--A reissue of Made To Be Broken is out now on Omnivore Records. It includes extra tracks, and you can purchase it online at the link or at your finer record stores. The previous words are the liner notes.
--Soul Asylum's original bassist Karl Mueller died in 2005 of throat cancer. His wife, Mary Beth, has created a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about the eight preventable cancers that are
avoidable through lifestyle changes or early detection and treatment. You can donate here: https://killkancer.org/
