I hadn't really ever seriously listened to "Go All the Way" until you mentioned it in a list of your favorite songs here some years ago. You are right--it's pretty close to flawless.

"Stacy's Mom" and "Just What I Needed" are great choices, too.

Some of my other favorites include:

"Renee Remains the Same", Material Issue
"Surrender", Cheap Trick
"Letter from an Occupant", New Pornographers
"What You Do to Me," Teenage Fanclub
"Let's Go", The Cars
"Bright Future in Sales", Fountains of Wayne
"Mexican Wine", Fountains of Wayne

That whole "Welcome, Interstate Managers album by Fountains of Wayne is really good. I love the way they blend the power pop musical aesthetic with their interest in white collar proletarianization.

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I'm embarrassed to admit...I hadn't heard that before...or at least don't remember hearing it.

Robbie Fulks is awesome.

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Letter from an Occupant is a great song, but Twin Cinema is superior to Mass Romantic.

Here's a funny little story about how Girlfriend might have never come to be if A&M were good at their job.
https://superiorshit.blogspot.com/2020/01/matthew-sweet-and-peter-frampton-fucked.html

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

Highly misleading URL.

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Camper Van Beethoven sounds like one of my German cousins.

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I see the family resemblance.

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I'll give you that.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

That's a good blog, I've been enjoying the archives. Can't agree with his shots at Loveless and Being There, though.

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That Vixen song is bad, really bad.

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I know, holy shit. It's like a parody.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

A friend of mine works at that studio, only reason I know of it.

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I don't remember half the time if I'm hiding or I'm lost

Exactly. Technically Sugar is a much bigger band than Husker Du, oddly because Nirvana stole a lot of Husker did so that Bob Mould could breakout with Sugar.

CH go see the show I think you think you hate Cracker more than you actually do hate them.

Based on what?

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Don't take it personally.

Based on the gloriousness that is the BEASTER EP.
Man, that shit still holds up today.

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I don't know, man. I've never been a big Hüsker fan, but they made some important records.

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Don't take it personally.

I used to be pretty good friends with the brother of CVB's fiddle player. they were kids of professors. when he mentioned it I had no clue what he was talking about. Camper Van Beethoven? WTF is that? some sort of Mannheim Steamroller thing?

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Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

Sugar put on a good show.

I'm being completely biased. I know who / what Husker Du was....couldn't tell you a single song.
Sugar's Beaster and Copper Blue were staples of my college years. Those are masterpieces. Likely sold more in terms of records, but I can see where Husker Du was more influential to a lot of other bands.

One thing for sure....Bob Mould is in my underrated hall of fame.

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I could never get past the thin sounding drums of Husker. It's like the aural equivalent of standing water.

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

I have to say I liked Grant Hart's Intolerance record better than any of Bob Mould's post Hüsker stuff. My ex-wife's baby daddy did the cover art. The version of "Twenty-Five Forty-One" on there is the best.

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Don't take it personally.

I liked Mould's tunes for the Hedwig movie. I think he might've played on the entire soundtrack? It all sounds of a piece. Not the cast recording thing from the play, but the OST for the film.

I think a lot depends on when you were exposed to Mould's work. I came in during the 90's and think Copper Blue is an absolute masterpiece. I then branched out and bought Zen Arcade during the mid aughts and listened to it about three times. It seemed almost completely tuneless, and just sounded like noise. However, if I was 16 in 1984 and heard it then, it might have sheared the top of my head off.

Nice Dickinson reference.

If there was a soundtrack to my long college career, Mould/Sugar would be half of it.

Like I said, I was never a big fan of Hüsker and I wasn't really sure why. They were a band you were supposed to like. I don't care for Mould's voice. It's obvious that he has some strong melodies in mind but he's physically incapable of executing them. And I guess their earnestness vis-a-vis the clownishness of the Replacements was off-putting. I was a clown myself. So it was hard to dig Serious Bob. But I didn't realize how weak the drum sound was until you posted this and then I heard one of their songs on Sirius yesterday.

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Don't take it personally.

He's always been an xrt darling. I never liked him much. Not my thing.

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The best thing he ever did was produce the Articles of Faith record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fchnL56kzU

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Don't take it personally.

I saw Mould do a one man acoustic show at Illinois Wesleyan...it was somewhere in between Copper Blue / Beaster and File Under Easy Listening.

He was nothing short of amazing.

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Glad to hear this. He's playing the Castle in Bloomington and I was thinking about going.

I think the Replacements are my biggest hurdle to Husker Du. There's no law that says I can only love one or the other, but something about the extent to which I love the Replacements seems to preclude feeling much of anything for Husker Du. And then one of their best songs was improved upon as "1979," the background noise to every bus ride and car trip I took in 5th grade.

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