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FOUR FLEW OUT OF THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Sounds, April 23, 1988 (U.K)

Reprinted Without Permission

FOUR FLEW OUT OF THE CUCKOO'S NEST

ANDY HURT gets serious about Soul Asylum, the Minneapolis marauders who are kicking the wild into rock and the raw through country.

LAST YEAR might not have been a bad year for Soul Asylum, but 1987 was one hell of a year for their hometown.

Never mind Prince, because as far as the US of A was concerned, it was the achievement of the Minnesota Twins in winning baseball's World Series that really put Minneapolis St Paul on the map.

The whole town was drunk for a week, and it seems Soul Asylum were too -mind you, there's nothing strange about that.

These boys like their beer, their brewskis. See them live or play their records and you'll know they sweat the stuff.

Pirner, Murphy, Mueller and Young are shot full of pan-global rock and roll attitude, the kind of heads down, bulldozing non-philosophy which sets its sights no further than the beckoning horizon of the next hangover.

How can any sober (well, fairly) soul fail to fall for this band's most unsubtle of charms?

THE TIME is midday, the beer is Red Stripe, the furniture is sofas and carpets, the place a handy little pied a terre in chic Holland park (Richard Jobson lives there, so it must be bloody chic). John Cleese resides next door and he dumps his vino empties outside in Harrods' bags.

The time, place and furniture appears at odds with the Soul Asylum collective constitution; the Red Stripe does not.

So, Soul Asylum are something of a new name to these hallowed pages but, as is occasionally the case with American imports, they come with a ready-made history and one of those discography things.

Conventional origins. Early in the decade, just out of high school, they were a snotty trash kind of affair called Loud Fast Rules. A few contributions to samplers, a change of name, EPs, singles, a 20 track compilation cassette and two albums in '86.

The first of these, 'Made To Be Broken', seeped out through Rough Trade in the middle of last year, and ears dully pricked up.

This is the place to commence your education, the record clearly maps out Soul Asylum's extensive musical boundaries, stretching from the outrageous psycho-metal scream, 'Whoa!', to the near-folky country rock epic of 'Never Really Been'.

By the band's own admission, the second album, 'While You Were Out', came a little too hot on the heels of 'Made To Be Broken', and its quality suffered as a result. It is merely very good ("I don't know why we put it out so soon, maybe Twin Tone needed money or something" is the official band appraisal).

They are about to issue a third album, 'Hang Time', recorded around yuletide with familiar names Lenny Kaye and Ed Stasium supervising affairs.

But, man (to use an extremely popular Soul Asylum expression), let's get contemporaneous awhile -there is a brand new, limited edition (5,000) UK-exclusive mini-album battering its way into all good retail outlets right this instant.

A What Goes On release, the item is 'Clam Dip And Other Delights', and that just about wraps up the story so far.

BACK TO the basement. These men are looking more than a mite fragile and somewhat dishevelled.

Mind you, they look no worse than they did the previous night, their first British gig, at London's Finsbury Park Sir George Robey.

Karl Mueller, bassist, is wearing the new red (eech!) basketball sneakers he picked up in Holland. Fashion victim, huh?

"There was an article about us in one British paper that said something about, And they don't even change clothes before they go onstage. Well of course we don't. If you're comfortable with what you wear at work, or on the street, or go to the store, why put on some spandex to go onstage?"

As with the majority of their compatriots, Soul Asylum are pretty good at looking ordinary, the visual focus of the band being singer and guitar-basher Dave Pirner -I mean, you've got that state-of-the-art long hair.

"It originated, here, right?" growls the skinny-shinned bag of debris sprawled sideways over the comfy chair.

Pirner has an unfeasibly low vocal register for such a lean machine, for anyone, come to that, sort of Baloo on Valium at 16 rpm.

Motormouth onstage, the token sex symbol rations his interview utterances to the occasional laconic grunt, and usually with direct reference to beer or unorthodox sexual practices.

More loquacious is 'lead' guitarist Dan Murphy. About last night -

"Dan (the roadie) had to slug a guy yesterday, in the second song (and in the face no doubt). This guy kept trying to grab the mikestand and hit me on the head with it".

"He was just being an asshole", comments Karl.

"And there were these two English guys in T-shirts that said Speak English Or Die on them", continues Murphy. "They were actually being nice, but everyone else thought they were causing trouble, so everybody started pounding on them. I was pretty nervous".

"A lot of punching, man", interjects Baloo The Wise.

"There was glass everywhere" adds Murphy. "I was sure someone was going to get seriously hurt. The only other city I've seen that happen in is Philadelphia".

"Yeah, they like to fight there, too" pipes up the fourth and final Asylum inmate, drummer Grant Young. "We played at some Elks' (like the Freemasons) lodge there, and they stuffed a thousand people into this 200 capacity room, and the floor was like vibrating.

"And those f***ing biker security people were just pummelling anyone", recalls Dan.

"And they were dancing to the weirdest songs", noted Dan Dan The Kung Fu roadie, making a valiant bid for the most irrelevant comment of the feature award.

BUT THEN Soul Asylum are not without a sense of humour (something of a mythical concept to many UK journos) and take a macabre delight in inflicting dire cover versions upon their audience. 'Walk Like An Egyptian' has been a regular in their set of late, while other favorites include Foreigner's 'Juke Box Hero', Van McCoy's 'The Hustle' and -most famously - the Manilow boy's immortal 'Mandy'.

"Sometimes people deserve it", rationalises Murphy. "We did it in Holland and all these people ran to the stage, because it was something they could identify with, and they knew it, unlike all our shit.

"You can't take things too seriously. It seems right now, in Britain in particularm that everybody's really serious about their music, like the political message, the fashion statement and stuff".

But Soul Asylum are most certainly serious about their drinking.

"OK, look at it this way", calculates Karl. "When I was living with Grant, we had 93 cases of empty beer cans on the back porch within a year".

"93 times 24 is roughly - 22 hundred beers", estimates Grant, the human abacus. "The liquor store loved us. We got 17 free cases for returning the empties".

This is essential to the Soul Asylum lifestyle, as they will all attest. When not on the road you -

"Go to the liquor store and get a case of beer".

"Turn on the TV"

"Talk on the phone".

"Beat your girlfriend".

"Make child pornography movies".

"Put masking tape on your cat".

"So it doesn't explode when (censored) -"

"Oh God, this is probably going to get printed".

AS YOU may have guessed by now, Soul Asylum do not subscribe to the intellectual school of pop.

In terms of their music, the obvious comparisons have been drawn with fellow Minneapolis bands The Replacements and (more directly) Husker Du; they have toured a fair bit with the Huskers, and Bob Mould actually produced 'Made To be Broken'.

While there is an unquestionable degree of validity in such parallels, Soul Asylum deserve to be assessed in their own right, and the band don't have much to say about it, save that, yes, they're still all friends.

And I guess Prince is a personal acquaintance, too. Well, not exactly -

"He said, Excuse me to me once", boasts Karl.

Grant takes up the anecdote. "He sent his driver into the club where Karl worked".

Karl: "It was at this bar. Prince called in and asked for the manager and said (adopts high-pitched Prince voice), I like that bartender, what's her name. And they went out for a date after she got off work. I don't know what went on".

She probably made an album for Paisley Park, if previous form is anything to go by. Soul Asylum aren't quite as famous as Prince yet, but after the other night, they've got quite a name for themselves in Finsbury Park.

They have signed to A&M in the States, and even if that company's British representatives were suitably unimpressed enough to pass on distribution over here, their medium term recording prospects are assured.

If you like your rock wild and your country raw, you should investigate these guys' records.

Crack open that beer, switch on that TV, make that phone call and work out for yourself why your girlfriend and your cat are nowhere to be seen.

That's living, alright?

Special Thanks to Rafs and Ron!

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