A 2xLP set of rare, early Hüsker Dü live recordings, featuring original flyers and artwork Drawn from the historical Hüsker Dü recording archives compiled by Terry Katzman, this double disc live set is an essential companion piece to the band’s “Savage Young Du” Box Set. Recorded more than a year before Grant Hart, Bob Mould and Greg Norton released their first Hüsker Dü single .While the SYD release principally featured studio demos, the 28 tracks presented on “Tonite Longhorn” are the time machine that vividly thrusts the listener straight back to Hüsker Dü’s embryonic unsheathing on stage.
Side A dates to July 1979. Side B gives us a full year’s evolution to July 1980, while Sides C and D land the listener in September 1980. Perhaps 120 people in total saw these three Longhorn performances; until now, a handful at most have heard the playbacks. So, rare and fresh, it’s all here: the songs, the driven performances, the small club intimacy of being in front of select friends, fans, and peers, with one fair shot at getting it right. These four sides compellingly document that you can’t doubt that they did.
“Tonite Longhorn” features recordings taken from across four different shows that took place between July 1979 and September 1980 at Jay’s Longhorn Bar in Minneapolis. The collection will be officially released in August on their own Reflex Records, though a limited-edition 2xLP vinyl release will be available much sooner: on this year’s Record Store Day, which takes place on April 22. “Tonite Longhorn” features 28 live recordings in all, and the 2xLP edition has original artwork by Grant Hart and liner notes from Thurston Moore.
“Most artists begin their careers by looking to their heroes for inspiration. “Tonite Longhorn” is a comprehensive overview of three teenagers paying homage, experimenting with different genres, and — most importantly — building a foundation for things to come,” Bob Mould shared in a statement. “We knew what we had: good chemistry, great melodies and harmonies, and an overabundance of young (and sometimes dumb) enthusiasm. We knew we were different, and we knew we were on to something different.”
Norton added: The audition. Bob was done with his freshman year and we didn’t have any gigs lined up,” says Grant Hart. “He was considering going home to Malone for the summer. Grant shows up all frantic and tells us we need to load the gear and get to the Longhorn, we had an audition. We arrived during their lunch service, load in and start playing. The manager comes storming out of his office and stops us. What the hell do you guys want? He asks. Grant says, we want to play here. He replies, fine, you can play the opening set Friday night, just stop playing and get out of here.
The set features new liner notes from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, who writes: “Hüsker Dü could play hardcore to death but they were not hardcore through and through – they were something else. And that’s what I fully related to and what I’m hearing in these live recordings unearthed from those days which made such magnanimous impressions it’s as if they are the batteries of our lives as we continue to tick off the years.”
The set also includes reproductions of original flyers and artwork, That set is here, July 13th, 1979. We passed the “audition” and the rest is history.
Tracks: Insects Rule The World / I’m Not Interested / Sex Dolls / Can’t See You Anymore / Sexual Economics / Do You Remember? / Nuclear Nightmare / All Tensed Up / Strange Week / Don’t Try To Call / Industrial Grocery Store / Do The Bee / Do You Remember? / Ode To Bode / Don’t Have A Life / All I’ve Got To Lose / Don’t Try It / Writer’s Cramp / Gilligan’s Island / What Went Wrong? / Uncle Ron / MTC / Drug Party / Chinese Rock / Termination / Call On Me / Gravity / Statues
The Fat Angel Sings 