Friday, July 31, 2009

Husker Du's Zen Arcade Turns 25.


If you look at the center of one disc of the Minutemen's 1984 clasic 2XLP which also turns 25 this month beating the Huskers' own SST double album release Zen Arcade by a couple of weeks, you'll notice the line "Take that Huskers" etched between the grooves. Nice touch. I actually remember this week at age 16 picking both records up from Northern Lights in the Old E-Block (RIP) of Minneapolis. That was a great day. Although both are desert island records for me, Zen Arcade is my favorite of the two. Take that Minutemen.

From Wikipedia:

The lyrics of Zen Arcade are usually interpreted as telling the story, in the first person, of an adolescent who runs away to escape an unfulfilling home life, as typified in the lyrics of "Broken Home, Broken Heart," "Indecision Time," and "Somewhere." The unnamed character tries drugs ("Pink Turns to Blue"), and religion ("Hare Krsna"), but concludes that he is unable to change his circumstances ("Newest Industry").[6] He shortly discovers that the world outside is even worse. At the very end of the album, after he "turns on the news," it is revealed that this was all a symptom of his insanity, with disorienting 14-minute instrumental "Recurring Dreams." Indicative of the band's desire for the album to be taken as a whole, no singles were released from it.