Garage Rock: Bob Mould's Workbook

I bought my first Hüsker Dü album (Warehouse) from Columbia House (12 tapes for 1¢) after Hüsker had already broken up. While I am from Minneapolis, I was too young, too timid, and too much in the wrong group of friends to have ever experienced what was happening in the Minneapolis music scene: Hüsker Dü, the Replacements, and Soul Asylum, putting the Twin Cities on the independent music map.

I tried to just jump on the wave as it was already breaking and crashing into uncharted shores. I saw the Replacements play to support Don’t Tell a Soul. I saw Soul Asylum play in the middle of a line up for a St. Paul music festival—but I was really there for the Smithereens and mainly was awed by Dave Pirner leaving the stage with his guitar laid up next to the amp, leaving us with feedback. I saw this big wave, knew I had missed some of its best, early moments, but now I was ready to ride the curler, to see where this music would lead.

Hüsker Dü was gone, but then in 1989, Bob Mould’s solo album, Workbook, appeared. I was immediately struck by how Mould used the acoustic guitar to lead this album’s sound. With the same ferocity of a Hüsker album, Mould crafted these new songs around a rich acoustic sound.

In my Spectrum, I place Bob Mould in the Garage Rock section right after Hüsker Dü. Now, the Spectrum does not mandate that solo artists must be placed next to their former (or current) bands. And you could argue that Mould’s solo work (and with Sugar) is much less garage rock than Hüsker. However, what I heard on Workbook was Mould taking his acoustic guitar out to the warehouse, the same warehouse that produced the Hüsker sound, and with that acoustic, Mould produced punk-flying force.

This wasn’t expected, of course. We expected the electric guitar, the wall of sound, the epic-in-180 seconds. Instead, Workbook has acoustic guitars, mandolin, cellos, ballads, longer songs. This wasn’t expected, and it struck me as being something new, different to my ears, opening up new dimensions in rock.

Of course, Mould isn’t the first one to wield an acoustic guitar like a flaming electric. Certainly, the Who and Pete Townshend used hollow body guitars for tremendous power (“Pinball Wizard,” “I Can See for Miles). This had been done before, and you could say that Mould’s approach only seemed unique because I didn’t realize the origins of the derivation. But scanning my music collection, was there anything else that I was listening to in 1989 that produced that same force with an acoustic? U2’s “Seconds” from War is acoustic laden. Midnight Oil’s “U.S. Forces” from 10,9,8… gets all of its power from the acoustic. Yet, neither of these albums sustain this approach or build the entire album’s sound on the acoustic.

So it was that Bob Mould’s Workbook took its rightful place in the Garage Rock category of my Spectrum. The acoustic approach couldn’t hide the intense, raw emotion that comes from screaming into a microphone out back in the garage. This isn’t MTV Unplugged, where the band goes acoustic just for the show, just for effect. This is full contact, plugged-in acoustic rock. Sure the chords and strumming sound like something for around the campfire, but when everyone joins into sing, they’re screaming, sweating, punching the air with their fists. The bloody fights of the Hüsker shows are not that far away.

Workbook opens with a beautiful instrumental, “Sundown,” that finds the acoustic in a much more recognizable setting—a wistful, melodic turning of a musical phrase. This seems to bridge the gap as Mould then uses the acoustic to his own power chord, power strumming needs throughout the album. Then as the antithesis to “Sundown,” the album closes with “Whichever Way the Wind Blows”—the acoustic is gone in favor of Mould’s more typical electric. It is on this track that you again realize the ferocity in all of these songs. While the other tracks aren’t built on the same electric foundation of the last track, the other tracks still have the same structure, the same desire to break open sound and emotional barriers. The album concludes only to be begged to be played again: this time louder, this time not allowing it to fool you, this time hearing the scream of the acoustic guitar.