Album: Zen Arcade
Year: 1984
(Hart)
Zen Arcade was famously poorly produced, of course — nearly all first takes and the whole thing done in two 40-hour marathon sessions of recording and mixing — by SST’s house producer, Spot.
Over the years, the relatively poor sound has become part of the mythos surrounding Zen Arcade, and it’s exacerbated by shoddy digital reissues. Which is one of the reasons that I’ve been linking to that some random dude’s excellent homemade remasters. Which sound way better than my official SST CD.
I’ve long since given up any kind of hope of having proper CD reissues of their SST/WB days, and can only assume that young people who never heard the original vinyl probably don’t get what all of the fuss is about when guys like me rave about the mindblowing sonic impact Hüsker Dü had in the mid-1980s.
That said, one of things I noticed while going through the album this time around was that the Grant Hart songs tended to sound better than the Bob Mould songs, and I wonder if that’s because he was writing more of the “pop” songs like “Never Talking To You Again” or “Pink Turns to Blue” as opposed to the anthemic barn burners like “Chartered Trips” or “Whatever.”
If there’s one thing that I can’t explain
Is why the world has to have so much pain
With all the ways of communicating
We can’t get in touch with who we’re hating
No we can’t get in touch with who we’re hey-ay-ating
With Hart’s kick drum pummeling on every beat of every measure, Mould’s guitar set to maximum crunchy blastitude, “Turn On The News” announces itself as an anthem from the start, but when it barrels into its chorus, it transforms into both punk rock call-to-arms and a classic single-that-never-was.
So turn on (turn on)
Turn on (turn on)
Turn on (turn on)
The news
Turn on (turn on)
Turn on (turn on)
Turn on (turn on)
The news
Or “get woke!” as the kids today would say.
With the backing vocals approximating a punk rock house party, random shouts of “turn on!” hooting and hollering, and even handclaps, “Turn On The News” sounds like the thing that the rest of Zen Arcade doesn’t: a tremendous amount of fun.
And so “Turn On The News” feels loose and sloppy in a way that the rest of the album — including the 14-minute punk-jazz odyssey that follows it — just isn’t.
In the end, Mould unleashes a merciless solo while everybody else is screaming and shouting, “Turn On The News” eventually screeches to to a halt, everybody spent and happy, looking at each other, and wondering when they can do that again.
As it turned out, soon enough. Near the end of the liner notes for Zen Arcade was this: “Carducci wants another album already, but not another double LP.”. And because once upon a time, giants walked the earth, Hüsker Dü would oblige, and it would be a new day.
“Turn on the News”
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