HUSKER DU on Good Company April 1986
If you look up Husker Du on YouTube these days, you'll notice a plethora of goodies: live in 1980/'81, lots of SST-era footage and interviews, and most of all, a whole bunch of stuff from their Warner period when they were obviously being pushed by the label onto every possible avenue of exposure for the band, and that included cheezy daytime chat shows designed for valium-popping housewives. It's the latter footage which remains the most curious for me, and certainly the most depressing, too. It's so unusual to watch this stuff 20 years later and to witness the strange cultural vaccuum the band was attempting to operate in. Hell, if a band like Husker Du played on Letterman or Jay Leno these days, you wouldn't even blink (I remember seeing the Sex Pistols on Letterman a few years back, and even that didn't strike me as too odd), though back then they were an absolute anomaly, the square music biz not having a clue what to do w/ them. The band, by the looks of this footage (and check out the Joan Rivers Show(!!) appearance, too), struggled to comprehend their new surroundings - and vice-versa - but the two worlds didn't meet. The lines have since been blurred - Candy Apple Grey would probably sell a million if it was released today - but 1986 was a different lifetime and planet.