Soul Patrol
Soul Asylum reminds me of high school. A time, at the height of grunge, when a scuzzy guy in in a torn SpaghettiOs t-shirt could land Winona Ryder, the cover of Rolling Stone, and a gig at Clinton's inauguration. Of course, it was an overplayed, unrepresentative ballad that put them on top, and did them in. Music fans know SA was a fairly cool college radio act for ten years before "Runaway Train" made 'em perpetually uncool, despite the fact that you can't really argue with the effectiveness of turning that video into a PSA for missing children. I wonder if Dave Pirner regrets the Grammy-winning Top Ten hit. Probably not, as the royalty checks allow him to buy t-shirts without holes in them.
I'm not actually a big Soul Asylum fan. The only songs I have in iTunes are "Can't Even Tell" (Clerks!) and "Just Like Anyone" (Claire Danes!). But it's with a mix of '90s nostalgia and sadness over the passing of bassist Karl Mueller that I wouldn't mind seeing The Silver Lining (out 7/11) have some impact with Generation MySpace. Unfortunately, I don't think this song is gonna do it.
Soul Asylum - "Stand Up And Be Strong" (MP3 Link Expired)
The upside is it's bland enough to land on Hilary's iPod.
Wanna give 'em another shot? You can stream "Bus Named Desire" here.
Posted at 4:01 PM in MP3
Tags: Soul Asylum
never did anything for me, but their cover of sexual healing is one of, in my silly opinion, the best songs ever. Damn straight!
Plus they had an old ad that said, "Don't do drugs, be drugs." that I kinda liked
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"Spinning" is a great song.
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Sorry I meant "Spinnin'." Didn't mean to over-formalize it there.
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I listened to, air-guitared to, and lip-synched to "Sometime to Return" hundreds of times as a lad. If only that were the song they were remembered for.
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that song is one of the weakest songs on the record, but the record itself is a scorcher. check out Oxygen on their myspace.
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I have a few fond SA memories. They opened for the Huskers on the Flip Your Wig tour -- played "Pink Turns to Blue" during their set, later joined the Huskers for an encore of the MC5's "Ramblin' Rose," "Helter Skelter," and "Love Is All Around" (the theme from the Mary Tyler Moore show and unoffical song of Mpls.). Their "Sexual Healing" was wacky, but their covers of Mellencamp's "I Need A Lover" and Sammy Johns' "Chevy Van" were pretty boss.
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what indie kid hasn't landed winona ryder?
i still can't believe shaun ryder's her dad.....
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Oh.. I thought he was her ex-husband...
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Oh, man. Get Hang Time if you want classic SA.
"Cartoon" rocks. Yes. Rocks. There's a good way to put it.
Very descriptive.
Wordish, if you will.
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They need to put "Hang Time" back in print -- that was a great, great album.
Dave Pirner's sountrack work with Kevin Smith is good, too -- the piano bit at the end of "Chasing Amy" never fails to bring tears to my eyes.
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thanx for the soul asylum... i also saw that flip your wig tour at old 9:30 in DC and they blew those fat guys in husker du off the stage in my opinion... all the proper passion w/ none of the fussin & needles...had heard they were still doing stuff... but this is proof indeed... rip karl...welcome tommy who must need a respite from axl's b.s by now...
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frustrated incorporated.
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Hang Time, wow! greatness of the rock variety seldom seen these days. Fluid was up there. Us old folks remember when your album didn't mean squat unless you had a live black-and-white photo of sweaty hyjinks on your sleeve. Ultra Mega OK?
I'm starting a band called "Pell Grant Heart Attack".
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oh yeah, I once shot pool with Dave Pirner and Evan Dando at Wizards in Richardson, TX. '88? Pirner cleaned up.
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may i add to the choruses of devotion to Hang Time
dude.
cartoon is killer but every song on that shit is the shit.
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I always thought SA would make the world's best wedding band - their covers were always far superior to their originals. But i did secretly love that their big hit Runaway train actually was a song about heroin that got coopted by the actual runaways camp.
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The idiot Fred.
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Elton John's Lestat leaves Broadway a month after opening
Broadway's vampire curse has now struck Sir Elton John and Anne Rice. The elaborate and often homoerotic musical Lestat, based on Rice's novels, including Interview With the Vampire, will close on May 28, just a month after it officially opened at the Palace Theatre, Playbill.com reported Tuesday.
With music by John, lyrics by his longtime collaborator, Bernie Taupin, and a libretto by Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast), the show had a tryout in San Francisco in late 2005 and early 2006. That initial U.S. production included most of the Broadway cast, including Hugh Panaro in the flamboyant title role.
A scheduled early April Broadway opening was pushed back to April 25 after the show took a critical drubbing on the West Coast. A new choreographer, Jonathan Butterell (The Light in the Piazza, Fiddler on the Roof) was hired after the San Francisco run.
When it closes, Lestat will have racked up just 33 preview performances (before opening night) and 39 regular performances. The first preview performance of the show was March 25—John's 59th birthday.
Playbill.com reported that the "musical about the soul-searching vampire Lestat opened to some of the most blistering reviews of the season. It collected only two Tony award nominations, for actress Carolee Carmello and costume designer Susan Hilferty."
A typical review, by the Associated Press, began, "To bite or not to bite? What's a conflicted vampire with severe identity issues to do? That seems to be the question haunting the troubled title character in Lestat, the morose new musical that opened Tuesday at Broadway's Palace Theatre."
Lestat is the third vampire Broadway musical flop of the decade. Dance of the Vampires, constructed around the over-the-top songs of Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman, flopped quickly in 2002. Two years later, Broadway horror musical stalwart Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde) brought his Bram Stoker adaptation, Dracula, to the Great White Way, to equally disastrous results.
John is now two for three on Broadway, having had hits with previous shows The Lion King and Aida. Lestat was his first Broadway show to include prominent gay themes, but it's not his last: His next stage show, the London smash Billy Elliot, based on the gay-inclusive movie of the same title, is expected in New York during the next season, but no dates have yet been announced.
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'without a trace' is a kickass SA song.
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Just wanted to reiterate something expressed upthread -- "Cartoon" is the premier Soul Asylum jam.
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Hang Time's great, but ...And the Horse They Rode In On is even better. "Spinnin'," "Easy Street," "All the King's Men." Even "We Three" has its appeal.
I liked them through Let Your Dim Light Shine, but the one after that was just awful (which surprised me, since I'd seen them about a year before it came out, and their new stuff sounded great live).
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yeah... word up on the Claire Danes
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Hang Time gets my vote as their best album. Made to Be Broken probably takes the silver medal.
"Sometime To Return" is best song. I really like "Chains," too, from the Clap Dip EP.
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Great band. "Cartoon" awesome tune. And The Horse They Rode In On... great album. And how about that the Herb Alpert parody album cover Clam Dip and Other Delights, genius.
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I must say it does me good to hear all this love for Soul Asylum. Made to Be Broken and Hang Time were two great lost American Alternative Rock albums--loose, funny, irreverent, passionate--and I predicted they would do what the Replacements hadn't. Then they did it: they had the great fortune/cursed fate to have a genuine hit--and suddenly after 10-12 years they were a one-hit wonder to be discarded by hipsters and popsters alike?! It wasn't fair! I mean, sure, Pirner's Pirner, and once you're huge that "image" doesn't seem so "organic" anymore, but come on, people. Must you ALWAYS kill yr idols?
I recently played Broken for a guy younger than me and he couldn't believe Soul Asylum had ever been that good. He was revelated! (Mind you, Grave Dancer's Union was actually pretty good, too, but he was young and snobby then. We've all been there.)
1. "Made to be Broken"
2. "Sometime to Return"
3. "Never Really Been"
4. "Cartoon"
Come back, Soul Asylum, all is forgiven. And with Tommy Stinson, you say?!
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The first time i saw Soul Asylum(opening for Husker Du in Boston)they did an incredible version of Aerosmith's Seasons Of Wither.It was the only song i recognized at the time.Another memorable moment(a few years later)was when Evan Dando joined them for some bad dancing and background vocals on a cover of Rhiannon.At the end of the song Dave Pirner said"sorry 'bout that".Highly Recommend Made To Be Broken and Hang Time.Look for the 12" of Standing In The Doorway with it's "James At 16" covers medley and the cassette only Time's Incinerator.It was kind of dissapointing when they dropped most of the old/good songs from their live show after they made it big.
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yeah word up on the claire danes. for some real 90s grunge nostalgia you can download all of mysocalledlife on torrent and check out the buffalo tom cameo. ruler. and those flannelly pannelly threadwares. dig!
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You guys all kill me. Of course "Hang Time" RAWKS...
I got two names for ya:
Lenny Kaye and Ed Staysium
Look 'em up.
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RIYL: Soul Asylum - Grand Champeen
if you like the vintage SA sound this Texas band is the next best thing - http://www.myspace.com/grandchampeen
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This is from the current issue of HARP:
Soul Asylum:
Soul Collective
By Mark Guarino
Dave Pirner is fighting his way home. “Traffic here ever since the hurricane has been horrific,” he reports, navigating the streets to get to Bywater, the New Orleans neighborhood where he lives. “We almost got hit again and we got into a car accident not so long ago.”
The Mississippi River has long figured into Pirner’s life, but until seven years ago, he lived on its other end, up north in Minneapolis. It would be easy to interpret Pirner’s choice to leave Minneapolis as an indirect exit strategy from Soul Asylum, the band he co-founded in 1981 with guitarist Dan Murphy and bassist Karl Mueller. When Pirner pointed his car south and didn’t stop, he had already lived the rock-star life: Ten years slugging it out in a celebrated punk scene, commercial success on a major label and the grind of touring that comes with instant musical celebrity. Seventeen years later, Soul Asylum reaped its reward: burnout and backlash. “You’re not sitting around saying, ‘Whoopee, look at me, I’m successful’,” he said. I suppose it should be that way, but you’re working your ass off. It’s good to make music but it definitely had come to a point that to go play ‘Runaway Train’ on a TV show was not what I set out to do.”
Murphy is more succinct: “Lots of fucking work, lots of repetition, same fucking thing every day.”
New Orleans opened the door to traditional roots music and Pirner stepped inside. He became an obsessive fan of funk legends the Meters, a Thursday night regular at Vaughan’s Lounge to hear showman Kermit Ruffins blow his trumpet, he produced a record by barrelhouse piano maestro Henry Butler, he prodded the elderly jazz men at Preservation Hall for secrets to their enlightened playing and Art Neville volunteered to teach him what musicians in the other 49 states tend to forget: Music is meant to be, first and foremost, a pleasure.
“I started seeing bands that were smiling when they were playing,” Pirner said. “I started hearing this black gospel music that was so affirming and uplifting. I really wanted to have some of that. I wanted to highlight the faith and the hope that you have to have to persevere and can make you believe you can come out the other side.”
The kids in Fallout Boy don’t talk like this. Why? Because when you’re a teenager you never think a day will come when the music might stop, not because someone slept with someone’s girlfriend or a manager booked town with the cash, but because someone in the band—someone you shared dreams of playing music with while passing joints and listening to the Ramones—dies when you weren’t looking.
Last June, months after recording The Silver Lining, the first Soul Asylum album in eight years, Karl Mueller suddenly suffered a fatal aneurysm in his home. He was 41. Up to that moment, he was receiving treatment for esophageal cancer and waiting for surgery. “We were very, very optimistic,” his widow Mary Beth Mueller says. “No one said, ‘You’re going to die’.”
Making music amid life’s wreckage was beginning to become relevant for a rock band that had lost its way. Before his death, Mueller’s sickness became the catalyst to jumpstart all three band members—friends since high school—to stop licking their wounds and turn out their strongest album in years. “Karl was just heroic. I couldn’t believe how much he had been through and how badly he wanted to make this record,” Pirner says. “It becomes even more bizarre when I think Karl was in the band until the day he died. He never, ever really talked about breaking up.”
“Nothing can take away from you…what you’ve been through / Stand up and be strong,” Pirner sings on the opening song of the new album, a rallying cry against inertia that the band recorded after Mueller’s death. It can be said that Mueller was the lynchpin that not only brought Murphy and Pirner together to form a band back in 1981, but he was one of the first kids to drag the first wave of punk to the Twin Cities by its nose ring.
His first stage was the Uptown Lunds market, where he became the most famous bag boy in town. After visiting a friend in England in 1978 where he attended shows by the Damned and the Cure, Mueller returned with his freak on, sporting bondage trousers, leathers, earrings and spiked hair. “All of the sudden Karl became this icon,” Murphy says.
Girls swooned. “I remember the absolute minute I fell in love with my husband,” Mary Beth says. “He was the coolest damn thing I think I had ever seen.”
Mueller was riding the right wave. Minneapolis was on its way to becoming the new capitol of pop music. In the early 1980s, Prince was starting to gain momentum, as was the producing team Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. But it was the underground punk scene that later became legendary, with bands like the Suburbs, Hüsker Dü, Things Fall Down, the Replacements and the Magnolias boxing it out at the clubs in South Minneapolis, a small pocket of the city that became ground zero for bands that were creating their sounds from scratch. “Everyone joked that if anyone dropped a bomb on the corner of 26th and Lyndale, it would have wiped out 95 percent of the Minneapolis music community,” says Peter Jesperson, who managed Oarfolkjokeopus, the neighborhood’s only record store, located across from its only music room, the CC Club.
Pirner, who would skip school to comb through music magazines and the week’s new releases at Jesperson’s store said the activity at the time “was almost too good to be true.”
“There was competition that was fun,” Pirner Says. “Everybody tried to be different and that was the competition. Whoever was the kookiest won. It was about having a blast and a good time. There was a lot of making fun of everything.”
Mueller had two things that ensured him a career in rock: a fake ID and a mother who encouraged him to use the family garage as a practice space. He schooled Murphy, his high-school classmate, in punk essentials like the Vibrators, Generation X, the Buzzcocks and the Clash (“Karl was my ears to that stuff. I was into Tom Petty and Aerosmith,” Murphy says), and Murphy returned the favor by teaching Mueller how to play bass. Together they went to see the Shits, Pirner’s band, and witnessed the group tear apart the Simon and Garfunkel weeper “The Sounds of Silence.” Mueller befriended Pirner, who went to a separate high school, in his effort to make something, anything, happen. And like most people in the neighborhood, Pirner already knew of Mueller as the standout bag boy with the punk-rock hair.
“I could tell [Mueller] desperately wanted to be in a band,” Pirner says. “He just reeked of rock. I thought he was so cool. We didn’t have any guys like that in my high school.”
Eventually Pirner played drums behind Mueller and Murphy and they called themselves Loud Fast Rules. Jesperson, cofounder of Twin/Tone Records and manager of the Replacements, solicited them on Midwest tours with the Replacements and Husker Du. It was in 1982 at Merlin’s, a Madison, Wis., club, where he realized the up-and-comers had arrived.
“I remember walking into the room and there was a small crowd, maybe 15 or 20 people, and Loud Fast Rules were onstage playing their asses off,” Pirner says. “And it was like these guys were playing in an arena full of screaming fans. It was awesome. And I just stood there and it just completely overwhelmed me and I thought, ‘Oh my god.’ I didn’t realize how much power they had. And then I remember them finishing their set and [Replacements bassist] Tommy [Stinson] and I walked into the dressing room. I just said, ‘God, we have to talk about making a record.’”
Stinson was in Paris when he heard the news Mueller died. He flew straight home. After the Replacements imploded in 1991, he spent years making solo records and working as a hired gun, most notably for Axl Rose in Guns n’ Roses. But despite his obligations, over dinner with Mueller’s widow he agreed to step in for his former high-school friend.
Since Mueller already recorded his bass parts, the new gig required learning them, plus the back catalog, for shows. “He’s really a remarkable man,” Mary Beth says. “He’s that punk-rock guy that fits in really well.” Stinson declined to be interviewed for this article.
The Silver Lining is a record the band had to make. Back in 2004, Pirner and Murphy were so primed to record again, they cosigned a $60,000 bank loan to fund everything themselves with no label involved. “I’m pretty proud of that,” Murphy says.
After debuting the results for Sony Legacy, new drummer and Prince protégé Michael Bland (“a key player in the situation,” Pirner says) stepped in and said the album didn’t hold up enough for him. After a week with Stinson recording four more songs, the album felt finished.
The new songs are primed for the stage, always Soul Asylum’s greatest playing field. Pirner’s maudlin tendencies slinks just below the surface (“All is well in hell / I wish you were here,” he sings), rising up on the ragged rock energy that dominates this record and hooking into melodies that make the songs large in scope. While that’s been the band’s calling card since their Twin/Tone years, there’s also a bittersweet quality running from top to bottom, balancing out the heavy rock flashes.
It was a long road to get there. After four albums with Twin/Tone and major-label inertia with A&M, the band turned Top 40 and signed to Columbia in 1992. They soon unveiled Grave Dancers Union, a commercial smash that sold over a million copies. That was the crossroads where Soul Asylum became a band that could set off punk tremors in their live show, but could also write well-crafted pop songs with a bracing rock soul.
“I was just happy for them,” Jesperson says. “They were considered ‘Replacements Junior’ in the early days a little bit. But the fact is, they surpassed the Replacements in terms of record sales and popularity.”
Two albums followed, a time when Murphy said the band was caught in a stranglehold. Fans from the Twin/Tone years had left the band, which he attributed to never touring clubs after circling the globe for two years straight. With each new album, the road stretched longer ahead of them and, after a while, the rearview fogged up and the band members panicked that they wouldn’t find their way back.
“I spent my young-adult life completely on the road. I don’t really have regrets. But sometimes I wish I stopped to smell the roses a little bit more,” Murphy says.
After Columbia made overtures that they collaborate with professional hitmakers like Glen Ballard, Murphy said they waited for their contract option to run out and didn’t re-sign.
After Katrina, swamp water from Lake Pontchartrain traveled through the streets and up to the door of Dave Pirner’s house, but didn’t enter. On walks through his neighborhood, he was struck by the random rules of disaster: You saw ruins depending on if you turned your head left or right.
Pirner said he made New Orleans his home because he wanted to start over. But what he absorbed listening to music in those tiny, tin-roofed clubs was what he first came across in 1981 at the corner of 26th and Lyndale: “What a local scene can be all about.” After a solo album where he incorporated traditional sounds and a muted tone, he started again to look upriver.
“I guess I was just feeling sort of thankful for what I have left,” he said. “Part of coming back to Soul Asylum was putting the loud, loud, loud guitars back in. I really missed them.”
First printed in June 2006
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Thanks a lot for that article, Tim. Could you give us a URL for it?
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sure thing:
http://harpmagazine.com/articles/detail.cfm?article_id=4281
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Soul Asylum = Great Band!
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