Bob Mould – The Powerstation: November 23, 2024
Bob Mould went solo electric at Auckland’s Powerstation last night. The 13th Floor’s Lawrence Mikkelsen reports back and Chris Zwaagdyk supplies the photos.
I’m probably a bit too young for Hüsker Dü. But I remember, back in 1991, going on a one-week camp down in Masterson. One guy had bought a boombox and an extremely small selection of cassettes. Actually, it may have been only one cassette – Queen’s Greatest Hits II, and it got played over and over and over again. There was this one guy on the camp that I ended up bonding with, mostly over our burgeoning hatred of Queen. At some point he pulled out a dubbed cassette and suggested I might want to try listening to that instead. Hand-scrawled on the j-card was “Hüsker Dü / Candy Apple Grey”. Over the next few days I played that murky, poorly dubbed tape over and over, mostly as a palate cleanse from too much Queen, but also because there was something about those songs that kinda dug in and stuck around. The camp ended, I went back to Auckland, discovered The Smiths and the Pixies soon after, and didn’t think too much about that Hüsker Dü tape any more, but would occasionally find myself humming Hardly Getting Over it.
Fast forward a couple of years. It’s 1993, and I’m in my first year at University. I have a little desk in the architecture school studio, and there’s a boombox with the dial seemingly glued to bFM. It’s a golden era of post-Nirvana alternative rock and one of the songs on high rotation is Sugar’s Hoover Dam. My friends and I all really dig this song, and one of us buys a copy of Copper Blue so we can all dub it. It’s only after I’ve played the album a few times that I work out that Sugar is “Bob Mould, one of the Hüsker Dü guys”.
Which brings me to the Powerstation tonight to see Bob Mould, “solo electric”. I am by no means a lifer for Mould, but his music has come in and out of my life at various points, and I’m definitely a fan.
BUB
Support tonight comes from the always excellent BUB, the current musical outlet for Priya Sami. They’re usually a band, but tonight, like the headline act, she’s “solo electric”, with a handful of tuneful songs which hark back to some of the female fronted Britpop bands of the mid 90s. They’re good songs, and I look forward to the long promised debut album getting released.
Bob Mould
The clock strikes 9:30pm and Mould bounds out onto the stage like an excited teenager, guitar already strapped on. It’s one of the many times over the course of the next 80 minutes that I have to remind myself the man is 64 years old. “How’s it going?” he shouts, before strumming a few cords, and then we’re immediately plunged into The War, followed by Hüsker Dü staple Flip Your Wig. The transitions between the songs, and the frenetic strumming, means that the songs feel like a medley, and it’s only after six or so songs that Mould will take a quick break and a swing of water, before launching into another salvo of songs. Whilst mostly drawing from his extensive catalogue of solo albums, fans are treated to Sugar’s Hoover Dam (minus the keyboards that feature so prominently on the version on Copper Blue) and If I Can’t Change Your Mind (minus the reverb-y jangle that made the album version sound so much like The Byrds) as well as a generous handful of songs from the Hüsker Dü back catalogue.
The sheer pace of the gig remains relentless throughout – there’s no real banter to speak of, no “this song is about …” carry-on, and it’s not until almost an hour into the set, when he plays Hüsker Dü’s Hardly Getting Over It, that the pace slows down just a little bi,t and we get something that feels like it might almost be a ballad. If it was played just a little bit slower. The respite is brief – Mould is back into supercharged mode again, and powers through the rest of the set, ending with two more Hüsker Dü classics, Something I Learned Today and Makes No Sense at All.
In his book The Ten Rules of Rock n Roll, ex–Go-Betweens’ frontman Robert Forster asserts “… the guitarist who changes guitars on stage after every third number is showing you his guitar collection.” There’s none of that kind of carry on tonight. In fact, there’s no pretension at all. Just the one guy, strumming the hell out of his sole guitar like his life depends on it. Again, I have to keep reminding myself that Mould is 64 years old. Burning through 23 songs in around 80 minutes with the intensity of a man a third his age, Mould is a bona fide punk icon, and remains an inspiration.
Lawrence Mikkelsen
Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Chris Zwaagdyk
Bob Mould:
BUB:
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