We’re a little short on details, but on Saturday afternoon the Chicago-based archival record label known as Numero Group—you’ve seen their box sets at the record store, you know you have—put up a cryptic tweet that seems to suggest that a Hüsker Dü reissue product is on the way. The tweet consisted entirely of the words “Seven years in the making. It begins.” along with a photo of a demo tape with an early, soon-to-be-abandoned Hüsker Dü logo on it.
For Record Store Day 2013, Numero Group put out four early songs by Hüsker Dü—actually a reworking of the band’s first single, “Amusement/Statues.” That first 7-inch had been conceived as a four-song 10-inch release but the eventual product had only the two songs; “Writer’s Cramp” and “Let’s Go Die” had to be left off. The Numero Group package combined all four songs as originally imagined, albeit on two 7-inches. Here’s an AV Club writeup of that release announcement.
Seven years in the making. It begins. pic.twitter.com/N7XhZ9ZXUY
— Numero Group (@numerogroup) September 17, 2016
The photo in Numero Group’s message is of a cassette, on the cover of which handwritten text “MAC-BRUCE DEMO TAPE” can be discerned. It seems likely that the cassette contains the Bill Bruce demos, which Hüsker Dü recorded in May 1979. The demos consist of six songs, including “Do the Bee” and “MTC.” That session appeared on the 2010 Personal Choice release The Truth Hurts along with the Northern Lights demos from Winter 1979 and sessions with Colin Mansfield.
Numero Group isn’t divulging what’s going on, but that phrasing (“Seven years in the making. It begins.”) sure seems to point to something big.
Below, the Huskers play “Diane” in Minneapolis 1981:
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Can we talk? Do you remember Hüsker Dü‘s 1987 appearance on ‘The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers’
Hüsker Dü crank out ferocious ‘Pink Turns to Blue’ and ‘Eight Miles High’ on French TV, 1985