Hüsker Dü Mabuhay Gardens San Francisco, CA 1981-07-25 (Saturday) THTP Release 91 Two tracks from this (8,14) were commercially released on "Savage Young": https://www.discogs.com/H%C3%BCsker-D%C3%BC-Savage-Young-D%C3%BC/release/11125660 Those tracks have been replaced by placeholder tracks. Recording chain: House soundboard > Bob Mould supplied tape > Cassette Deck > (unknown tape generations) > cassette Archival Process: 1999: Sony TC-KA3ES > cassette playback (NO Dolby) > BBE 462 Sonic Maximizer (to clean up tapes) > Tascam DA-30 DAT > HHb DAT-125 DAT tape 2002: HHb CDR-850 Professional CD Recorder (In real time) > HHb CDR74 Gold 100 year archival grade CDRs 2005: Transfered to HDD in AIFF file format Dime release processing: AIFF Master Files > FFMPEG > 16 bit FLAC 8 > tagging, cover artwork, checksums. Recorded, preserved, and AIFF files provided by: Terry Hammer Setlist: 01. Dirk intro > 02. All Tensed Up 03. Don't Try To Call 04. I'm Not Interested 05. Sore Eyes 06. Wheels 07. Private Hell 08. Travel In Opposite Car (placeholder) 09. Don't Have A Life > 10. Don't Have A Life (Cont'd) 11. Bricklayer 12. I'm Tired Of Doing Things 13. Sexual Economics 14. Do You Remember? (placeholder) 15. Ultracore 16. Let's Go Die 17. Data Control// Length (full): 28:55 Length (wo/8,14): 25:47 Band: Bob Mould - guitars,vocals Greg Norton - bass, vocals Grant Hart - drums, vocals Notes: * This is not a master recording, unusually for THTP. The source is a tape of uncertain lineage (not as clear as most of the other THTP releases). Still sounds great though! * This show has been bootlegged (at least twice) as "the Children's Crusade" and "Do You Remember Radio?". Those bootlegs may be closer to the master tape than this recording according to what Terry says below. * This was Hüsker Dü's first performance on the West Coast. This was still their 'punk' stage. * Tape ran out at end of track 17. * Terry Hammer was not doing the KALX show at this point (they had been handed over to KUSF, which did them for a while), so this would be a regular soundboard. * For the non scandinavian speakers among you, Hüsker Dü means "Do You Remember". Minnesota was heavily settled by Swedes and Norwegians. In this case, the 'ü' would be Swedish, the Norwegian form would be 'Husker Du'. That was also the name of a memory game made in the 1950s in the US. It was also the name of a Norwegian TV program "Husker Du" made between 1971 and 1985. * Terry: "I've been told that it is the definitive documentation of them in their early years and the best thing out there to document them ...and Bob even told me himself that night when I gave him the tape he gave me to record them with that he loved how I got the guitar to sound so good in the mix.... I gave the tapes directly to Bob after the show, so I assume he gave it to someone down the line who bootlegged it as the Children's Crusade in the first place. He gave me a 60 minute tape with something already on it and since they were the opening band that night (their first performance on the west coast) they had a very short set, but the tape still ran out in the middle of data control (too bad)." * About band: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCsker_D%C3%BC "The members of Hüsker Dü first performed together when Grant Hart, Bob Mould, Greg Norton, and keyboardist Charlie Pine began playing in 1979 in a band called Buddy and the Returnables. At the time, Mould was a freshman at Macalester College and frequented Cheapo Records, a Saint Paul record store where Hart was a sales clerk. Hart and Norton had originally met while applying for the same job, which Norton eventually got. Hart and Mould bonded over a shared love of the Ramones, and soon after they enlisted Norton and Pine to form a band. They began gigging, playing mostly cover songs, some classic rock, and frequent Ramones tunes. Unbeknownst to Pine, the remaining band members disliked the sound of the band with Pine's keyboards and began practicing without him, writing a few originals. The new name originated during a rehearsal of the Talking Heads's "Psycho Killer.” Unable to recall the French portions sung in the original (e.g., Qu'est-ce que c'est?), they instead started shouting any foreign-language words they could remember, including the title of the popular 1970s memory board game Hūsker Dū? (the phrase meaning "do you remember?" in Danish and Norwegian). The name stuck, and they added heavy metal umlauts to it. Mould said that they liked the somewhat mysterious qualities of the name and that it set them apart from other hardcore punk groups with names like "Social Red Youth Dynasty Brigade Distortion.” Mould also said that, while Hüsker Dü enjoyed much hardcore punk in general, they never thought of themselves as exclusively a hardcore group and that their name was an attempt to avoid being pigeonholed as such. Hart, Mould, and Norton fired Pine during their first official performance on March 30, 1979, and continued as a trio under the new name. Mould has written that he considers the band's first "real gig" to have been May 17, 1980, at the renowned punk club Jay's Longhorn Bar. By 1980, the band was performing regularly in Minneapolis, and their music evolved into a fast, ferocious, primal sound, making them one of the original hardcore punk bands of the Midwest. Through heavy touring, they soon caught the attention of punk trailblazers including Black Flag and Dead Kennedys' Jello Biafra, who helped introduce Hüsker Dü to new fans. Black Flag guitarist/songwriter Greg Ginn later signed the band to his label, SST Records. " * Dirk: "Jello Biafra, while touring in the Northwest ran across these people and asked me to book them.. so here they are, an addition to the program" * Includes photos. =========================================================== No distribution in lossy formats!! No selling!! No bootlegging!! No remastering!! Yes sharing. Definitely share. Support the artists when or if they play, and buy their records/merchandise. Please correct any errors or oversights in this information in the comments section so the information can be as accurate as possible. If you can find related materials like flyers, posters, ticket stubs, even photos, etc, please add them in a comment and I will add them to the main release folder, so that can be included on the next re-seeding. Every bit is welcome, and as I am time constrained on this project due to the amount of material, I cannot spend as much time on each release doing research as I would like, so if we can add to and improve the information and release contents during this series, that would be great. Please make an effort to pick at least one of these THTP releases and keep it seeded for as long as you can, particularly the lesser known groups. That will really help out long term. =========================================================== About Terry Hammer and the THTP: Someone put my feelings very well about these recordings in the following quote. I can't really improve on their words beyond noting that these recordings sound absolutely and utterly stunning, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to present these to you here in their original, first generation, lossless hi-fidelity versions, for the first time ever. "[These recordings were] recorded and preserved by collector/engineer Terry Hammer, for broadcast over the UC Berkeley station KALX and several others from the 1979 -1981 period. Anyone who spent a night at one of these clubs knows how chaotic the atmosphere was. That he was able to, not only get a decent feed from the sound mixing board, but was also able to get clean recordings was something of a miracle. And the fact this guy did it over and over again is pure dedication to the cause of preserving history for decades to come. Fortunately for everyone, he’s been making these gems of history available and their value as historic documents is inestimable. This is really exciting stuff and I am grateful for Terry’s foresight and deft skill." src: https://pastdaily.com/2014/06/25/gang-four-live-american-indian-center-san-francisco-1980-nights-roundtable-concert-edition/ The First Taping of what was then to be called"The Fab Mab Live", was the Readymades on December 8 ,1979. The Fab Mab Live broadcasts would go on until June of 1981 [but KUSF took the broadcasts over from KALX and Terry January 1981]. Some of these performances were given to the Maximum Rock'N'Roll magazine run by Tim Yohannan, and were distributed to the PBS network for broadcast across the country on various PBS stations that carried the Maximum Rock'N'Roll radio program of interviews and some of [Terry's] live songs of the artists being featured. As Terry notes about the process of recording these shows: "Like all of my live recordings this was mixed direct to 2-Track Reel To Reel (and Cassette deck for backup and personal use) using headphones. Sitting in the club with the loud P.A. sound trying to drive the amp in my mixing board loud enough to hear what I was mixing.If you've ever been to a live concert,then,you know how loud it can be." If you've ever been looking for an excuse to upgrade your sound system, these recordings certainly should provide you with some motivation, because they have incredible sound. And if you already have a quality sound system, you are in for a treat!! The audio goes straight to 20k hz, no losses I can detect. Due to the reality of tapes, even high end as used here, the low end starts at 47 hz. And if you want to learn more about this incredible musical era, listen to the stuff you haven't heard, there are amazing gems in there. The sound boards and recording devices vary from location to location, and are not that critical in terms of the lineage of these soundboard recordings. But each recording is interesting and relevant today, some 40 years later. =========================================================== About Dirk Dirksen and the Mabuhay Gardens/On Broadway: Dirk Dirksen (RIP 2006), aka 'The Pope of Punk', was the music promotor and MC (but really more accurately, the impresario) of the Mabuhay Gardens/On Broadway punk clubs. Dirk was an incredibly interesting, sharp-witted, biting, cutting element of the original San Francisco punk scene. His legendary introductions and post set commentaries are preserved in many of these recordings. Dirk was a nephew of United States Senator Everett Dirksen. Shows at the Mabuhay started probably in 1977. The On Broadway was an upstairs night club right next to the Mabuhay that opened in summer 1981 and closed 1984. Terry recorded / broadcast Mabuhay gardens shows weekly. He was also the first soundman at the On Broadway when it opened in 1981 (they initially only did Friday/Saturday night shows). The Mabuhay Gardens was originally a Filipino night club/restaurant run by Ness Aquino (RIP). One fateful day he was approached by Jerry Paulsen, who offered to try to fill the club on slow nights (Monday/Tuesday) with punk shows. Dirk took the booking and MC duties over from Jerry, and the rest, as they say, is history. "...deliberately baiting and trading insults with audience and band members, which had the effect of raising the energy of audience and performers alike. In order to maintain the show's fast pace, he would move past an encore to get to the next band and tell the audience, "Eat it." Dirksen's abrasive persona (which was largely a performance) was a central part of the atmosphere of the Mabuhay. ... Dirksen was the sole person responsible for connecting the English punk rockers with those in the United States. By creating an exchange program, punk bands for England and NY came to the Mabuhay and vice versa, staying in each city performing a few nights at a time." Terry remembers him like this: "He believed in theatre and group participation that's why he was sarcastic. He wanted to get a rise in people and get them to participate. He was a really nice person if you got to know him." Dirk was also active with the organization H.E.A.R. (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers), the organization started by Kathy Peck of the Contractions (also part of this THTP series). It was hard to really know how diverse his interests were until I went to his memorial service in San Francisco, where his punk friends and connections were only a fraction of the people who spoke in his memory. He was involved in various charities, the Mission Recreation Center, the list was quite large. Apparently a book about Dirk Dirksen will be coming out Summer 2020. Wikepedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabuhay_Gardens Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Dirksen SF Gate obituary: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Dirk-Dirksen-pope-of-punk-amused-insulted-2466523.php =========================================================== - teetering