Andrew Earles

Just dove into the 1980/81 period again for some home-stretch work. The last time I was embedded in this time period (summer of 2008), I had to go sort of light on ’80 due to source challenges, which have since cleared up. Though this is not my favorite Husker era musically, I do find it to be the most fascinating. HERE is some footage from the evening they recorded Land Speed Record, August 15th, 1981 (which just so happens to be my birthday). In a sense, this show sort of closed one chapter for the band (yes, they would still make hardcore…just a different type of hardcore).

I particularly enjoyed this sentiment in the comments section…

“WoW!!!! why wasnt shit like this in American Hardcore instead of tons of footage of fucking meatheads? this is great!”

After almost two and a half years of work on this book, I still get the urge to hear the music, and I still break out in an ear-to-ear grin when I watch THIS UNBELIEVABLE PERFORMANCE.

From the same show…I’ve posted this one before, but you need to see it again.

Another great performance of “Eight Miles Hight”….

Posted this one a few weeks back…it still knocks me out.  ”Something I Learned Today” had been the set-opener since August of 1983, four months prior to this show. Still, it would be 7 months before the release of Zen Arcade, the album that it opened. This band was so good that they could cram their set list full of songs from the album AFTER the upcoming, unreleased album. For instance, when still touring in ”support” of  Metal Circus, they were actually supporting Zen Arcade AND New Day Rising….as this individual points out, 13 of that evening’s 19 songs were unreleased. It didn’t matter…audiences grew in size because this band was handing everyone their respective asses and word was spreading, not due to any call-and-response audience gratification.

…and this is pretty funny. No, I did not make it.