Hüsker Dü book interesting, but terribly edited

book-cover-husker-duAndrew Earles is a fine writer. His new book, Hüsker Dü: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock, is a well-written history of the Minneapolis legends. However, it is also a book that succeeds in spite of myriad issues, not the least of which is a terrible editing job. The most egregious error is really errors, plural. For whatever reason, whomever was in charge of Hüsker Dü managed to allows Earles to repeatedly use quotes.

To explain, the following quote appears on both page 145 and 173:

“Guys would show up at gigs, or they would call, but it didn’t make sense because SST had been doing a good job.”

It’s used in conjunction was other quotes, but despite the context of each appearance, that line is instantly recognizable, even with thirty pages separating each instance.

And, really, it happens repeatedly. There are other occasions when Earles uses some variation of “people might not have known them when they showed up, but they had jaws dropping during the show, and people knew who they were when they left,” or, when listing the litany of Chicago punk bands, ending with “and for a short time, Strike Under.”

Hüsker Dü starts to become a drinking game, where you start to go, “Hey! He used ‘jaws dropping’! Do a shot!” The whole book has so many moments that are distracting, it’s a damned shame, because otherwise, it’s a very in-depth history that succeeds in spite of quite a few odds against it. The fact that Bob Mould is working on his own book right now certainly made him unwilling to be interviewed, meaning the story is skewed towards Grant Hart and Greg Norton, with the majority of Mould material being drawn from Michael Azzerad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Hopefully, Voyageur Press will take whomever edited this book out back and give them a talking-to. Were this a galley proof or something, I wouldn’t harp on it near as much, and frankly, I’d probably be fairly understanding. As it is, however, this is the legitimate “you can buy this book” version, and the best thing I can say about it is that it manages to not suck in spite of the editing errors, and that it comes with a “What Would Hüsker Dü?” sticker.