Today, Fiona got tickets for us to see Bob Mould perform Copper Blue in its entirety in the early fall and I am really excited.  Of course, this may date me more perfectly than even the most advanced carbon dating tools known to science.

Sure, everyone talks about the influence of Hüsker Dü on music, but the fall 1992 release of Sugar’s Copper Blue was so much more important to me.  Right around the same time I was hearing Nirvana and Matthew Sweet for the first time, there was this other band who was straddling the punk “punch you in the face” of Nevermind and the guitar rocking but also somewhat whiny Girlfriend.  It was this amazingly melodic mix of hard guitar and meaningful lyrics.  Copper Blue is a lot like Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville or Soul Coughing’s Ruby Vroom (Sorry Mike Doughty, I love your stuff today so much, but SC was a genre buster) or Rancid’s …And Out Come the Wolves, in that they show what’s possible when trying to expand the boundaries of a genre, while still providing something that’s easily relatable and consumable (be it “slacker jazz,” “chick rock,” “ska punk” or whatever). There’s something powerful to be said about “pop rock” that is radio airplay worthy without being written for the radio.  That’s usually where the best songs of any style of music reside.

So why am I so excited? Despite my attendance at the They Might Be Giants Flood show and the Pixies Doolittle extravaganza, I don’t mean to be collecting tickets to album anniversary tours.  Instead, when I was in England in 1995, and I left for Amsterdam the day before they played at the Corn Exchange in Cambridge (less than 2 miles from my home) and a couple of years ago Mould played here at a Pride festival and we had to leave because of unfortunate circumstances.  So I never got to see Sugar/Bob Mould. Basically, this is one of about 10 artists I’ve always wanted to see but haven’t been able to.  A Musical Bucket List in other words.