Today is Bob Mould’s birthday. I know this because my twitter feed is filled with Mould/Husker Dü/Sugar trivia. I’m not complaining because I love Bob Mould much like I do my Uncle Wayne. It’s a kind of love that’s not flashy or always at the forefront of my mind, but it’s comfy and reassuring when I need it.

Sugar’s “Copper Blue” like Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville” is difficult for me to talk about. This album is such an essential part of my being it’s like trying to discuss the importance of my kneecaps or my collarbones to my life. “I don’t know why, they’re just important.”

“Copper Blue” is a perfect album. I cannot think of another record I can or would say that about. There is not a clunker to be found here. The slide from “A Good Idea” into “Changes” is something I feel in the pit of my stomach. “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” is a All-time Top 10 song for me. It is pop perfection. Yes, two forms of perfect in one paragraph. It’s not an accident.

I was having a cruddy day until I put on “Copper Blue.” Now, I’m a tiny bit better.

The post Day 84 of 200: Ode to Copper Blue appeared first on I Will Dare.

I’m pondering changing the name of this website to “Cranky Lady Leaves the House and is Cranky.” Now Part II of yesterday’s rant.

So after Low’s horrific 27-minute long assault on my ears, Bob Mould took the stage. Uncle Bob can rock like nobody’s business. Seriously. He tore through a bunch of Sugar songs, a few Huskers, some solo stuff, and then capped it all off with “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” which is probably on my Top 20 Favorite Songs of All Time List. Maybe even Top 10. I fucking love that song. I love that song so much that whenever I hear him play it live tears leak from my eyes because my body doesn’t know what else to do with all the joy.

However all the joy Uncle Bob brought to the cranky old lady was short lived, because in the middle of his set I was besieged by the a band of Faux Hippie Hipsters Who Ruin Everything.

You may not be able to tell from the picture, but the FHHWRE were a band of five college-aged kids. In my snapshot, only one of the three women is wearing the offensive headdress, however when they arrived two of them were adorned in offensiveness. You know that wearing hipster faux Native American headdresses is incredibly offensive, right?. Okay, good.

The third woman was wearing neon pink, knee-length leggings, a lavender tutu, a grey tank top, and red John-Lennonesque sunglasses. Oh, and thank you universe, she was also wearing full-on brief underpants. I thank the universe for this because she took the tutu off at some point and that left her leggings-covered ass to hover disconcertingly close to my face whenever she had to bend over to dig her American Spirit cigarettes out of her embroidered bag.

Speaking of tutu leggings, her boyfriend wore a matching pair of sunglasses that went well with his rainbow-tie, peace-necklace and vest. The other dude was wearing a silver, ruffly satin jacket that was probably part of some bridesmaid dress from the 80s. He also had a Lorax tattoo that featured a Truffla tree and the quote ‘I speak for the trees.’

From the moment they took up residence near me I was annoyed. It was like insta-annoyance and I could not hide my disdain. Every ounce of my cosmic energy was screaming “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” at them.

Was it the very obvious patchouli stink? The offensive head gear? The motherfucking hoola hoops? All of the above?

I wasn’t sure, and I’ve spent the past forty-eight hours trying to discern why I was so annoyed. I think it’s obvious that my reaction is more about me than it is about them. So what the hell is my problem?

Well, to begin with the hoola-hoops. Rock the Garden is not a hippie-type, hoola-hoopy event. At least not this one that I attended. The hill was crammed with people, the grass was wet, slick, and muddy. You need a lot of space to hoola-hoop, and frankly the space wasn’t there. That did not stop the Faux Hippies. If I had $1 for each person who was hit by a hoola hoop, I could get us all tickets to next year’s rock the garden.

Now that’s not to say my offensive Faux Hippie friends were not great hoola hoopers. One of them was really good, and when I could let go of my hate enough to just go with her flow, I sort of enjoyed watching. I might have enjoyed it more if any of the music at Rock the Garden was hoola-hoopesque, but the rhythm was off. So there was always a weird sort of discord or dissonance. Also, people trying to hoola-hoop to Bob Mould and Metric look ridiculous. It’s just not right.

So are their crimes against fashion, rhythm, and taste enough to merit such a reaction? Probably not, but damn I was just so fucking annoyed.

Their obvious and annoying ploy for attention drove me bonkers. They reeked of patchouli & look at me. And I’m not kidding about the patchouli, I had two friends stop by to chat and both commented it. And I wasn’t the only one annoyed by their schtick. All the people within a five-foot radius of me complained. At one point a hoola-hoop broke and a small cheer went up from the six or seven people directly behind me. This was followed, not 20-minutes later, by a groan of despair from the party next to me when she fixed the busted hoop with a sticker.

At one point I was so happy not to be alone in my disdain that I wanted to go all hippie and hug the people around me. We were united as one in our annoyance and that made me feel moderately better for hating on the Faux Hippie Hipsters.

I’ve chalked up my reaction as intolerance to a way of life I cannot understand. I don’t get look-at-me-ism.

As a large, freakishly-tall woman I have spent most of my life hoping people wouldn’t notice me. The points, stares, questions, bug-eyed-reaction to my appearance embarrases me and makes me uncomfortable. When I am out in the world I want nothing more than for people not to notice me. It rarely happens. Half the reason I got tattoos was to give people something to talk about other than my size (the other half was that I wanted them).

So, I don’t understand why someone would want to call such attention to themselves. I don’t know what they get out of it, and frankly, at an event where the attention is supposed to be elsewhere it seems rude to start a sideshow, and that’s what this was, a sideshow.

The post Faux Hippie Hipsters & The Cranky Middle-Aged Lady Who Doesn’t Like Them appeared first on I Will Dare.

1. I spent a lot of this morning moaning to Christa about the ‘Februaryness’ of August and how it’s that time of the season where I hate everything I like (books, music, food) and am generally bored and cranky with everything. This video and the picture I made of it reminds me that there are some things I like that I still love.
2. In case you don’t know, that’s Bob Mould he’s in the AV Club’s Undercover room, and he’s just about to start covering Sugar’s “If I Can’t Change Your Mind.” I have a great deal of pent up affection for Mr. Mould even though I thought his autobio was a bit of a snooze. His music, in many of its incarnations (Husker Du, Sugar, solo) reminds me of the people I love most in the world and times that make me smile. I loved the album “Copper Blue” so much that I named one of my very favorite cars (the 1979 Chrysler Newport) Sugar in homage.
3. “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” is my favorite song that Bob Mould has written and seeing him ‘cover’ it is pretty rad.
4. If you look carefully you can see the words “I Will Dare” scrawled above his left shoulder. It was from when Mates of State covered The Replacements’ “I Will Dare.” I would not recommend listening to that cover, it is not good. In fact, it is really bad. No, it’s an abomination. But I still like seeing those words written above Bob’s shoulder because, well, Duh. Of course I like seeing I Will Dare out in the wild.

Bob Mould “covers” Sugar

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Reading Bob Mould’s autobiography, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, is a little like indulging someone you adore as they tell you about a dream they had about you last night. You listen patiently as they meander through the purple unicorns and how Michael Cera was Bruce from accounting until they get to the good stuff about you.

Of course, you would not put up with such bullshit unless it was someone you really, really adored. Because seriously? Life is too short for such meandering. The same could be said for Mould’s book. There’s a lot of meandering to get the good stuff. But when you get to the good stuff, it’s so good you forgive him for the exhausting and endless paragraphs about playing some place somewhere with some people whose names you will not remember.

But the good stuff? Holy shit! If you were ever a fan of any of Mould’s music, you know the acrimony between Mould and Grant Hart is legendary. Reading the book and watching as the tension builds until the band bursts is pretty thrilling. If you’re a fan of Minnesota music from the 80s or that early indie-punk rock scene the first third of the book is delicious, delicious insider-y bits of trivia and insight. I gobbled it up.

However, things get a little skim-able from there. Mould leaves no depth unplunged, no recording session undocumented. This is an exhaustive account of his life from dysfunctional family time in New York where he grew up to coming to terms with being openly gay — it’s all there and Mould is unflinching in chronicling it.

I expected a lot more rage and vitriol, but Mould is surprisingly controlled. Which, you discover as you turn pages, is the way he operates. When things anger him he shuts down, turns quiet, and walks away without explanation. It’s a routine he’s perfected, and recognizes as unhealthy. At one point in the book he said he had a hard time expressing emotion to the people in his life because he took all the turmoil and rage and sadness and funneled it all into his music, leaving him empty. It’s bits like this that make trudging through the boring stuff worth the effort.

But if you do make it through the slow parts you’ll be handsomely rewarded with little digs at The Replacements (which is my all-time favorite band), an inside peak at how Professional Wrestling works (Mould worked as a writer for a time), the shift in emotion and self-confidence as Mould fully-embraces his homosexuality, and a lot more.

It’s a little weird. When I sat down to type out my thoughts on the book I thought it would be much more negative (I really, really hated those boring bits and found myself skimming quite a bit of the touring crap and recording mumbo jumbo). However, before I typed a single word I cued up “Copper Blue” on iTunes, plugged in the cans, and turned the volume up to eardrum shattering. Roughly 30 seconds into “The Act We Act” my heart was doing that shaky love thing that happens when you hear music that seems to filter into your bones and becomes a part of who you are, how you define yourself. Listening to Mould’s music has softened all the hardness I had toward his autobiography and shined up the parts that I enjoyed.

So I suggest that to you. Read the book with one of your favorite Mould songs in your head (“See a Little Light” instantly comes to mind), it will help you get through the rough parts, which is exactly what the music did for him and the millions of people who fell in love with it.

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First, who am I? I don’t even like non-fiction and always claim to dislike memoirs (or autobiographies, more about this in a minute) and here I am smack dab in the middle of two of them.

FFJ asked me what the difference was between autobiography and memoir.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I just googled it a few days ago and there doesn’t seem to be a real consensus on it.”
“I think an autobiography is about your entire life from the time you’re born up to the writing,” she said. “Memoir would be about your life at a certain point in time or an event.”
“That’s exactly what one of the articles I read said.”

I think I went on to (incorrectly) wax on and on about how Rob’s (yes, first name basis) was a memoir and Bob’s was an autobiography. If you read the actual title of Rob’s book it tells you right there what it is, and it follows the definition that FFJ laid out (and that I am agreeing with). Rob is telling his entire life story. Bob’s is also an autobiography — again with the entire life story.

Why did I call Rob’s a memoir? Rob’s is funny and feels somehow lighter not as grave or serious as Bob’s. Rob talks about people I’ve heard of. Bob’s is exhausting and mentions people who sometimes sound vaguely familiar but who are, more often than not, people I’ve never heard of. And the real reason? I’m enjoying Rob’s book more. However, if you were to ask me I’d say I’m much more interested in Bob’s life than Rob’s. I mean come on, he’s Bob fucking Mould.

The books are both interesting and my brain keeps comparing and contrasting them as if I have an essay paper due in English class next week. It’s kind of weird how each of their career’s follow a similar timeline. However, their experiences of the 80s are vastly different.

So because my brain has decided that its writing this compare and contrast essay, it’s been looking for ways to link Rob and Bob. Tonight, it had its Eureka! moment.

While making coffee for tomorrow, it hit me.

Matt Dillon. Hell, yeah!

Rob Lowe was in “The Outsiders” with Matt Dillon who wore Husker Du t-shirt in “Beautiful Girls” and Bob Mould was in Husker Du. Somehow it made me feel really smart to figure out this connection and I had to share it with someone. You’re welcome.

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