WHEREHOUSE: SONGS AND STORIES

In an area where locally distributed, D.I.Y. publications have become as rare as a $20,000 Dylan record, the sight of Portsmouth, VA-based You And What Army? (YAWA?) had me singing the subterranean homesick blues.

OK, maybe I'm lying just a little bit. Because, as a kindergarten-thru-9th-grade school boy who'd lived in that urban-blighted town, the times I'd celebrated summer there have been out of mind for a long time. Just when I was ready to stay inside, it was summertime. I summered where I wintered at, and no one was allowed there...

As a youngster, I always used to say that the Portsmouth heat was much hotter than Virginia Beach's. My reasoning: P-Town was closer to the Equator.

Well, YAWA? is the snowball's chance in that hell. For the second issue, Terry (the zine's Frosty The Snowman) posed a survey question that nearly popped my two eyes made out of coal. "Who is your favorite band of all-time and why?" As a "High Fidelity"/VH-1 list-boy, my slushy outer-covering started to melt, while formulating a 98.6-degree response. Here's my under-the-tongue reading:

Husker Du -- Without question, my favorite band for the past decade or so.

First heard them on the best radio station Tidewater has ever had (92.1 WOFM). The initial song that caught my ear was "It's Not Peculiar" (from Warehouse: Songs And Stories). Purchased said album the very next day at Track's (or was it Mother's...now Wherehouse Music) in Lynnhaven Mall. Surprised to learn that Bob Mould was the guitarist and primary vocalist, because I had picked up his solo album Workbook earlier that year (1989).

Connection established, I acquired the remaining pieces of the Du catalog in reverse order: Candy Apple Grey, Flip Your Wig, New Day Rising, Zen Arcade, Metal Circus, etc. Each album was just as amazing (if not more so) as the one before it, chronologically speaking. This three-piece had all the power of the top-flight "punk" bands of their era (Black Flag, Mission Of Burma), tempered with the melody and song craft of flagship acts from another time (The Beatles, The Who). Over the years, I've often described Du's 1984 double LP Zen Arcade (the one piece of music I could never live without) as "Quadrophenia for the hardcore (when that term didn't have the implications it has today) set."

Today, I own nearly every Bob Mould-related project (Du, Sugar [best band of the '90s!], solo works, and several "bootlegs"). But the finest example of "abrasive-pop" I had ever taken to heart all began with Husker Du.

Bob Mould, Grant Hart, and Greg Norton -- take a bow!