Bob Mould

Curt Kirkwood

Troubadour - February 10, 2006

Live Review by Daniel Brody

“When I was a DJ on college radio, I played Hüsker Dü and the Meat Puppets all the time,” bellowed the husky balding dude in a leather jacket.  I wonder if, while smoking a bong in his dorm room as an undergrad, blasting Zen Arcade, he ever thought it would come to this: a mid-life underground indie rock double bill of nostalgia?  Is this what it’s gonna be like when I see Arcade Fire in 2020?  Curt and Bob neatly illustrated two paths that elder statesmen of eighties college rock can take when they face irrelevancy: burn out or soldier on regardless.  Either way it’s not very glamorous, but when rock and roll is the only thing that makes sense to you, those might be the only paths available.

Curt Kirkwood of Meat Puppets took the stage looking worn—and as if he’d been punched in the stomach.  It was just him slouched over an acoustic guitar, his hoarse voice sounding dry as a desert.  His renditions of old Puppets classics like “Backwater” and “Up on the Sun” sounded like pale shadows; his whistling on “Mother’s Milk” was off-key.  A creaky version of “Plateau” only served to remind everyone how definitive Kurt Cobain’s unplugged version has become.  Curt looked haggard up there; there was no fire in him anymore.

Bob, on the other hand, looked rested and ready to rock.  He looked diesel, muscles bulging beneath his tight T-shirt.  He talked of his daily workout and the record sales of Sugar’s Copper Blue, since the bland lite-rock band Train wrecked “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” on their latest emission.  The performance started off slow, as Bob played newer and unknown songs that didn’t engage the audience—save for one superfan that headbanged throughout.  But once Bob switched to an electric, the crowd brightened, and out came Sugar classics like “Your Favorite Thing,” and even some Hüsker Dü like “I Apologize.”  The whole experience is sobering for a snobbish music hipster; no matter how cool and arcane the music you listen to is, someday you will go to a concert to listen to some oldies and remember them playing when you used to get wasted and make out, and you will notice the black cloud of mortality that hangs over us all.