3 weeks and I have only this to report: Soul Asylum is a better band than they were ever given credit for, mainly because when they were good Husker Du and The Replacements were also good and in the same vicinity and there just wasn't enough credit in the 80s punk rock economy to spare any for poor little Soul Asylum. And Dave Pirner had funny hair. And that's a really dumb name for a punk rock band.
If you hear "Soul Asylum" and think "that missing kids video" then you've been sold a phony bill of goods.
I don't even have that CD anymore. I think I listened to it daily for 6 months or so. I learned to play just about every song on the record and hunted down everything else they ever released (except for their elusive EP, "Clam Dip and Other Delights") while the rest of the world grew sick of "Runaway Train." Anyway, it's gone and I haven't heard that song in years.
Actually I've got their videos streaming from allmusic and that song is on now. It's actually really good. This guy could really turn a phrase. And that voice: like a drunk elf with a headcold, which is weird because that's what Dave Pirner looked like back then.
I thought I'd hardly listened to their early CDs at all. Listening to each of them over the past week has proven that I was either hypnotized the one or two times I listened to "Made to be Broken" thereby allowing the record to burrow into the deepest recesses of my psyche, or I actually listened to it and all of their other salad days records at least 20 times each.
The first concert I went to was a triple bill: Screaming Trees, Soul Asylum, and Spin Doctors. I was 13, maybe 14. I was the one of my friends who was "into music." They had no idea what was going on but I was in a state of bliss as soon as the opening arpeggio of "Somebody to Shove" icepicked my ears. (Spin Doctors were the headliners; we left 3 songs into their set.) I saw them again a few years later on the day they released "Let Your Dim Light Shine," the follow-up album to the multi-platinum impossible-to-follow handshake-with-the-devil "Grave Dancers Union."
My Soul Asylum collection looks mighty weird since it went missing. It's the one record everyone knows them for, and I've got 5 others nobody heard of and 1 they sort of remember coming out after they were already sick of the band.
I'm pretty sure this isn't nostalgia for a simpler time, when I played guitar for hours every day and didn't get a lick better, which is different from these days, when I rarely play and don't seem to get any worse. I really liked this band. Even when they broke big--no, that's not right--I was an unhip kid who didn't know who they were until they signed to Columbia and became temporary superstars--so exactly when they broke big and everyone knew who they were, nobody loved them as ardently as I did. No, not nostalgia. More like whatever the feeling is of running into an ex you were sure you'd settle down with but didn't for good reasons you can't remember now. I think there might be a song about that sort of thing on "And the Horse They Rode In On."
If you hear "Soul Asylum" and think "that missing kids video" then you've been sold a phony bill of goods.
I don't even have that CD anymore. I think I listened to it daily for 6 months or so. I learned to play just about every song on the record and hunted down everything else they ever released (except for their elusive EP, "Clam Dip and Other Delights") while the rest of the world grew sick of "Runaway Train." Anyway, it's gone and I haven't heard that song in years.
Actually I've got their videos streaming from allmusic and that song is on now. It's actually really good. This guy could really turn a phrase. And that voice: like a drunk elf with a headcold, which is weird because that's what Dave Pirner looked like back then.
I thought I'd hardly listened to their early CDs at all. Listening to each of them over the past week has proven that I was either hypnotized the one or two times I listened to "Made to be Broken" thereby allowing the record to burrow into the deepest recesses of my psyche, or I actually listened to it and all of their other salad days records at least 20 times each.
The first concert I went to was a triple bill: Screaming Trees, Soul Asylum, and Spin Doctors. I was 13, maybe 14. I was the one of my friends who was "into music." They had no idea what was going on but I was in a state of bliss as soon as the opening arpeggio of "Somebody to Shove" icepicked my ears. (Spin Doctors were the headliners; we left 3 songs into their set.) I saw them again a few years later on the day they released "Let Your Dim Light Shine," the follow-up album to the multi-platinum impossible-to-follow handshake-with-the-devil "Grave Dancers Union."
My Soul Asylum collection looks mighty weird since it went missing. It's the one record everyone knows them for, and I've got 5 others nobody heard of and 1 they sort of remember coming out after they were already sick of the band.
I'm pretty sure this isn't nostalgia for a simpler time, when I played guitar for hours every day and didn't get a lick better, which is different from these days, when I rarely play and don't seem to get any worse. I really liked this band. Even when they broke big--no, that's not right--I was an unhip kid who didn't know who they were until they signed to Columbia and became temporary superstars--so exactly when they broke big and everyone knew who they were, nobody loved them as ardently as I did. No, not nostalgia. More like whatever the feeling is of running into an ex you were sure you'd settle down with but didn't for good reasons you can't remember now. I think there might be a song about that sort of thing on "And the Horse They Rode In On."
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
oryx:
say, do you feel like having some extra furry companionship this sunday?
dholokov:
I am also impressed with your being able to learn all of that record. My ear really sucks and I can only pick up the simplest of riffs n stuff.