Between the age of 15 and 18 I saw the rock band Husker Du at least 12 times. They were
Bob Mould's first band. He played guitar. Grant Hart was the drummer. Both of them wrote and sang. Greg
Norton was the bass player. They formed in St. Paul in the late 70s and had three releases before their double album "Zen Arcade" made them college/punk rock darlings. But there was nothing darling about them. Grant and Bob were fat,
sloppy slobs and Greg was a skinny dude with a handlebar moustache who nodded his head so violently to the music that I can't believe his head is still
attached. They were against punk rock's orthodoxy, whatever that was, but they didn't really
fit in despite the fact that the mohawks attended their shows. I recently re-bought their record "Everything Falls Apart" on CD and remember how
much I loved that as a 14-year-old babysitter of a three-year-old in suburban Twin Cities. I'd put it on in my Walkman after the kid fell asleep and make
myself deaf to songs like "From the Gut," "Blah, Blah, Blah," and "Everything Falls Apart," not to mention their fairly straight
up, piss off the punks cover of Donovan's "Sunshine Superman."
They later played on the Joan Rivers' Show and the Today show (live from outside the Hennepin County Government Center) and they influenced a lot of later bands (such as Nirvana) if not with their sound, then with their do-it-yourself ethic of booking their own shows, printing up their own t-shirts for sale, and actually making money on tour. Their live shows were 25 songs stuffed into 80 minutes with no break between songs. I loved that band so much. Songs like "Celebrated Summer," "Flip Your Wig," "Makes No Sense At All" (with "Love Is All Around" tacked onto the end!), "Chartered Trips," and even songs on their last double album "These Important Years" and "Ice Cold Ice" are still great to my ears.
The band splintered over fights over who got more songs on the record and Grant's alleged heroin addiction, well maybe not so alleged since Grant talks about it. Grant and Bob, twenty years after the band busted up in 1988, still snipe at each other in the press. Bob made money in Sugar, started working out, DJs, and still puts out good records. He lives in DC and is a somewhat outspoken member of the local gay community (he was apparently outed by a magazine in the early 90s). Grant still lives in the Twin Cities and has only put out a few albums in the last 20 years. His last one was really good. I saw him play acoustically at the Vox bar in Milwaukee's east side in 2000 and he was really great. The sniping between the two main songwriters has resulted in zero career retrospectives or unreleased Husker Du stuff so far.
This brings me to last night. After Husker Du ended, the bass player, Greg Norton, ran restaurants in Red Wing, Minnesota with his eventual wife Sara. About five years ago, across the bridge in Wisconsin in rural Bay City, Wisconsin, Greg opened up "The Norton's". After a few drinks in Prescott, Wisconsin overlooking the Mississippi, we drove south on highway 35, a beautiful drive on the bluffs overlooking the river on a gorgeous day. About thirty minutes later, we saw a sign "The Norton's Restaurant." We pulled off and checked out the menu. Looked good.
We walked in and then the guy, who, along with Paul McCartney and Tommy Stinson is probably my all-time favorite bass player, asked me if we wanted to eat inside or outside in the screen-in porch. Greg Norton looked not much older at all and still has the same handlebar moustache. He sat us at a nice table and we had the greatest meal I have had all year. Organic, locally grown produce, and really fresh stuff. We had Mexican pumpkin seeds and Vietnamese meatballs with peanut sauce for an appetizer and sea scallops and halibut (why? just for the halibut?) that were damn tasty. Washed it down with a Rush River amber tap (brewed in River Falls).
On the way out, we saw a notice that Norton's is moving to the old JCPenney's building in late June in Red Wing but is maintaining the space in Bay City as an event center.
Got in the car and turned up "Blah, Blah, Blah" and drove away through the countryside.
They later played on the Joan Rivers' Show and the Today show (live from outside the Hennepin County Government Center) and they influenced a lot of later bands (such as Nirvana) if not with their sound, then with their do-it-yourself ethic of booking their own shows, printing up their own t-shirts for sale, and actually making money on tour. Their live shows were 25 songs stuffed into 80 minutes with no break between songs. I loved that band so much. Songs like "Celebrated Summer," "Flip Your Wig," "Makes No Sense At All" (with "Love Is All Around" tacked onto the end!), "Chartered Trips," and even songs on their last double album "These Important Years" and "Ice Cold Ice" are still great to my ears.
The band splintered over fights over who got more songs on the record and Grant's alleged heroin addiction, well maybe not so alleged since Grant talks about it. Grant and Bob, twenty years after the band busted up in 1988, still snipe at each other in the press. Bob made money in Sugar, started working out, DJs, and still puts out good records. He lives in DC and is a somewhat outspoken member of the local gay community (he was apparently outed by a magazine in the early 90s). Grant still lives in the Twin Cities and has only put out a few albums in the last 20 years. His last one was really good. I saw him play acoustically at the Vox bar in Milwaukee's east side in 2000 and he was really great. The sniping between the two main songwriters has resulted in zero career retrospectives or unreleased Husker Du stuff so far.
This brings me to last night. After Husker Du ended, the bass player, Greg Norton, ran restaurants in Red Wing, Minnesota with his eventual wife Sara. About five years ago, across the bridge in Wisconsin in rural Bay City, Wisconsin, Greg opened up "The Norton's". After a few drinks in Prescott, Wisconsin overlooking the Mississippi, we drove south on highway 35, a beautiful drive on the bluffs overlooking the river on a gorgeous day. About thirty minutes later, we saw a sign "The Norton's Restaurant." We pulled off and checked out the menu. Looked good.
We walked in and then the guy, who, along with Paul McCartney and Tommy Stinson is probably my all-time favorite bass player, asked me if we wanted to eat inside or outside in the screen-in porch. Greg Norton looked not much older at all and still has the same handlebar moustache. He sat us at a nice table and we had the greatest meal I have had all year. Organic, locally grown produce, and really fresh stuff. We had Mexican pumpkin seeds and Vietnamese meatballs with peanut sauce for an appetizer and sea scallops and halibut (why? just for the halibut?) that were damn tasty. Washed it down with a Rush River amber tap (brewed in River Falls).
On the way out, we saw a notice that Norton's is moving to the old JCPenney's building in late June in Red Wing but is maintaining the space in Bay City as an event center.
Got in the car and turned up "Blah, Blah, Blah" and drove away through the countryside.
I AM 
