Dear Bob Mould,
I’m sorry for ruining your solo acoustic concert.
It was fall, 1991. You were playing the Fast Lane in Asbury Park, New Jersey, near where I grew up. And near where I was living then-having failed out of college the previous semester and moved back in with my mom.
I was (and still am) a huge fan of your music-that which you made with Hüsker Dü in the ’80s, and the solo albums you’d released more recently. At school, before I left, my friends and I listened to you all the time. It was pained, angry music, and we were a pained and angry bunch. Though I doubt we would have copped to that description at the time. We wore baseball caps and drank too much and issued the kind of unrelenting stream of obnoxious banter that tries a bit too hard to prove it doesn’t care about anything.
We’d seen you play the year before, at Toad’s Place in New Haven-a blaring, stomping, glorious performance with the new band you’d assembled that left our ears ringing and our minds blown. So when I heard you were coming to the Fast Lane, I called Will and Carter to see if they’d want to take the train down. They did. I got tickets.
The day of the show, I picked them up at the station with beers in the car. I was psyched for a big night. I was realizing around that time how much more I liked being at college with my friends than at home with my mom. We drank through dinner like we were catching up for lost time.
The club was crowded when we got there. We went straight to the bar and bought as many Long Island iced teas as we could carry before pushing our way to a spot at the front of the stage, which was the perfect height to rest our drinks on. We’d each smuggled in a couple airplane bottles for refills, and we lined them up there, too. I remember cackling with laughter as we waited for you to come on. We were surely the loudest people there, getting rowdy, throwing each other elbows. We were ready to rock.
Needless to say, we were taken aback when you walked onto the stage alone, holding an acoustic guitar, and sat down on a stool. We were far too drunk to stand still and watch anything quiet and intimate. We wanted to slam dance.
“Fuck that!” Carter yelled, while the rest of the audience clapped and cheered. “What is this, Jim Croce? Plug that thing in, Bob! We wanna fuckin’ rock!”
Of course, you aren’t Jim Croce. You started with “Wishing Well,” a favorite of ours, and you strummed hard. So we got into it, and proceeded to have a great time. Unfortunately for you and everyone else in attendance that night, we did this by basically pretending we were at the full-band, full-throttle electric rock show we’d come hoping to see. We whooped and hollered and screamed along with the lyrics. We continued to demand more and louder rocking. We jostled each other back and forth, knocking our glasses and bottles over, and eventually started something to the effect of a three-man mosh pit. This while you were sitting down. This much to the dismay of those audience members in our vicinity who were, in fact, trying to stand still and watch something quiet and intimate.
People were clearly, and expressively, unhappy with our behavior. We ignored them. At one point, you flicked a still-lit cigarette butt at us, hitting me in the shoulder. (A nice shot. Must have been fifteen feet.) Carter took off my baseball cap and threw it up onto the stage. But throughout the evening, despite the cigarette butt, despite the frown on your face, I remember thinking that you were somehow approving of our shenanigans. (The cigarette butt could’ve just been joining in on our fun. And back then, you always had a frown on your face.) I thought that you perhaps appreciated our enthusiasm. (We were clearly huge fans.) I though that you were maybe even proud of us, for flying the loud-fast punk-rock flag, even at a solo acoustic show. (Or at least, I thought, you ought to be.)
I was mistaken. You glared at us after finishing your last song (“Whichever Way the Wind Blows,” I think) and violently unstrapped your guitar. When you bent down to pick up my hat, I thought you were going to toss it back to me. I held out my hands and got ready to thank you. You held it up for a moment, so I could get a good look at it, then threw it as far as you could out into the crowd at the back of the room. Then you flipped me the bird and stomped your combat boots right off stage. (Now that’s punk rock!)
Of course, as I’ve grown older, I feel less and less like there was anything to be proud of in the way I acted at that concert. The music, from what I remember of it, was awesome. Quiet and intimate, but still powerfully pained and angry. And I don’t like the thought that, even for one stupid night during a troubled time of my life, you were pained by me, angry at me.
I’m different than that now.
Dave
Previously: Dear Black Sabbath
