This Wednesday night marks the return to SF of longtime local club concert fave Soul Asylum. Their stunning early live shows at now defunct venues like The Vis ( now The Independent), I-Beam, Mabuhay Gardens, New Method Wherehouse in Emeryville and the old Berkeley Square were highpoints of the 80′s indie rock scene.
Long since gone the route of platinum plus corporate rockers, the once scrappy Minneapolis band eventually signed to Sony, played the White House and sold millions of records via voluminous MTV exposure.

That was then, this is now…

Does the Runaway Train still run on time? If they run flannel up the flagpole, will the folks still salute ?

Those are the questions your trusty correspondant seeks an answer to at The Great American Music Hall on Weds night, presumably with hundreds of others…

Read on and weep dear readers, and dare I say, download a decade spanning sampler of some superior Soul Asylum tuneage of a variety of vintages…

They are out & about flogging a new middle of the roadish album, while touring with just two original members, and I guess are kinda like the Who or many other rock dinosaurs moving into the fair circuit I suppose…

Heck a recent gig they played in Iowa with fellow faded 90′s band The Gin Blossoms was billed as The Mid America Rib Fest, not exactly a presidential inauguration, but that’s not saying much.

I suppose they are at least honest, and that’s what drove me to them in the first place, a low key, easy on the ego, sort of midwestern sensibility backed by some punky passion & classic rock chops.

I appreciate that they are back , rock & rolling on down the line our way of course, even if I ain’t feeling the this new “comeback” album much…

here’s the lead single…

Soul Asylum – Stand Up & Be Strong

It’s not exactly the sound that drew me in 20 years back, but then again I’m not the same anymore either…at least that’s what gravity tries to tell me.

I first saw ‘em open for Husker Du in D.C at the old 9:30 on F St in Feb of 85 and they just tore the roof off the sucker and made Mould & Hart look like lazy fat guys. I was a teenage runaway, and after trying to sneak in twice , I reluctantly droppped my last 10 bucks at the door and got my money’s worth in the first 15 minutes.

I went and saw em again a month or so later at some weird gay disco called The Eastside Club, and there were like 5 people there besides them. But man, they played that show just as fiercely as the packed one a few months prior and had a great time despite the dismal turnout. I was hooked, I bought the 7″ single, the Times Incinerator cassette outtakes with Mueller gleefully singing James Brown’s Hot Pants, the EPs , the new albums, and even the old albums like “Say What You Will Clarence, Karl Sold The Truck” etc.

Soul Asylum – Long Day (First track from their first LP on Twin Tone circa 1984, recorded shortly after changing their name from Loud Fast Rules. Hosted courtesy the always cool blog PostPunkJunk.com)

I caught a Greyhound & moved here to San Francisco where I’d just show up early at various venues and bug ‘em, especially if I was broke. To get in free I’d load their gear (and laugh at their jokes while I drank their beer). I’d loiter and wait at the Mab, Berkeley Square or wherever they were playing cuz there’d be lotsa stories and good humor, & more beers. I began noticing as they came around, they had upgraded to rental vans, and seemed things must be looking up. Some local kids had even screen printed up their own t-shirts, with just the enigmatic words “Dave” below a black & white live shot of Pirner in one of his classic headbanging moments…

I tried to get the band some press once, but Twin Tone sold their contract to A&M and Maximum Rock & Roll wouldn’t publish my interview piece. Instead, Kerrang, the British metal mag sent a photographer and took pictures of them on the stairs of the old I-Beam on Haight Street. I played pinball with Pirner, while the photographer set his dramatic colored lights up, and Dave he told me his band was his only option in lfe left, since he was to old to join the army.

From the melted Eagles tape on their dashboard to Dave Pirner’s ripped t-shirts & jeans and Dan Murphy’s baseball jerseys, to their voices just passionately wailing at the top of their lungs above the guitar drenched din. It was an amazing band to see circa 1985-1989 and something I’ll never forget. I am posting a track called Closer to The Stars from one of those last indie hurrah’s, an LP called While You Were Out.

This track represents the band nearing a creative and energetic apex, it was included on the album While You Were Out, released in 1986, their last full length LP for Twin Tone. After this album, they left indie rock behind, and began an ambituous period of working with Herb Alpert’s label A&M records.

Soul Asylum – Closer To The Stars

At some point someone at A&M decided to pump up the band with a 12″ radio airplay single of their Hang Time record, but to this day no one can barely remember the A side, it was the B side recorded at The Roxy in LA That put the band on the college radio map for good…

The James at 16 Medley which incorporates everything from The Godfathers “Birth School Work Death” to Buffalo Springfield, Ted Nugent, Prince & Wild Cherry cribs. Long before we had Mash Up DJs & Me First & The Gimme Gimmes , we had Soul Asylum… kickin down thirteen covers in just over eleven minutes and that was all we needed man…

Here it is culled of some old creakly vinyl, featuring the amazing late Karl Mueller, here’s a live cover medley recorded at The Roxy in LA in 1987… It was used as b-side of a 12 inch promo single of he track Standing In The Doorway, which was part of the push for their first major label record Hang Time.

Soul Asylum – James at 16 Medley

Hear the late bass player Karl Mueller’s rarely heard singing voice belting out the Prince cover tune “The Cross”.

Next up is a heart wrenching lil’ track from the Hang Time album that Dan Murphy ( now also of Golden Smog) sang & wrote that got a wee little MTV play on 120 minutes, and has long been a live set favorite. Apparently the band are playing it in their sets this year, and I really look forward to hearing it.

Soul Asylum – Cartoon

The Village Voice & Spin magazine called them the best live act in the US in the late 80′s, and things could only get brighter. They passed through town a couple more times during this era, once opening for The Pixies at The Warfield, and I recall a memorable impromptu acoustic set upstairs at The Paradise Lounge where Billy Joel obliviously ignored the band & drunkenly hit on some bimbo nearby…who wasn’t his supermodel wife Christie Brinkley.

poster i made circa 1988

Rumor had it that A&M brass weren’t sure what to do with the band, and got pissed off when their recording sessions were too loud at the old soundstage studios lot in Hollywood.

When the two A&M records they released into a hazy hair metal sea failed to generate sales growth in the platinum range, Soul Asylum were unsummarily dropped, and their bassist Karl went back to washing dishes in the same huge Minneapolis club they were used to headlining. Ironically it was at this time that a resurgence in rock’s gritty alternative underbelly was starting to shake up the industry, and as the “grunge” sound swept up the charts, a certain band from Minneapolis was woodshedding.

By the time Sony picked up the band ayear or so later, the demos circulating showed a further refining and outright mellowing of the tunes. Pirner was leaning towards an even folksier style, with less feedback & fuzztone, and even some vaguely romantically charged balladeering. During the hiatus, while Dan Murphy restored antiques, it seemed the vagabond Pirner got all extra sensitive, and let his inner hippy shine through more…

Despite my mixed feelings about the lack of barnburners on their breakthrough disc, one cannot doubt the creative & commercial merits of the record. Released on Sony in 1992, at the height of Nirvana-mania, Grave Dancers Union, largely pulled the band out of the grunge ghetto and made them radio friendly stars. The first single, Somebody To Shove didn’t really catch on, but the followups , Black Gold & especially Runaway Train became MTV faves, and cemented the band in the public memory.

Gone were most of the pranks and cheesy covers eating up half a set, and in was the cover of Rolling Stone, a Hammond B-3 player and the singer’s movie star girlfriend with tix to the Oscars.

Instead of flying the flannel Pirner complained of hearing loss, and switched drummers & made the new one sit in a plexi glass box. They put out a video that featured those runaway kids, and the next thing ya know they are double platinum and the first rock band to play on the White House lawn!

I myself began to lose interest, as the world discovered my teenage faves, I felt somewhat left out of the parade, and watched as the group began drifting away from the things I truly held dear. There were always good tunes on the records, but the live shows were no longer at intimate venues, and chances to haul their gear, drink beer, play pinball and shoot the shit with them as regular guys were over.

The madding crowds, and even papparazzzi were there, what with Pirner dumping his longtime gal back home for pill poppng movie starlet Winona Ryder. They toured relentlessly still, just the venues cost closer to $30 and up to get in, instead of $5 or $10, and the bills were no longer with cool indie icon bands like Blake Babies, Mojo Nixon or Flipper, but detestable schlock like Matchbox 20 and the Spin Doctors. For a time Pirner shared housekeeping with Winona Ryder in Pac Heights, but he’d drift aimlessly into dives like the Boomerang on Haight St and play half empty open mic nights to stunned local musicians and friends.

The band ground through their glory years, and still could entertain a crowd, but the hits were getting more predictable, the crowd more pedestrian. It seemed Dave “chief raincloud” Pirner had deliberately led the mighty Soul Asylum into a brick wall of public disinterest and they basically petered out on the charts in ’98. Their last Sony album Candy From A Stranger barely registered on the radio radar and dropped off the Sound Scan just days after release. Most suspicious was the weak wheezing and yelping from the former fireball Pirner that sounded suspiciously like an Eddie Money/James Taylor outtake collection.

The final insult occured one day when I heard from a friend that they had snuck into SF and played an invite only club show sponsored by a well known cigarette company.

Ironically within a few years, bassist and chain smoker Karl Mueller would be dead of throat cancer dead at age 41.

When I heard that Soul Asylum’s bassist passed away in 2005 , I was a bit stunned. I actually saw it on some blog called “Pimps of Gore” (well, sheeeeeeeeet, Karl woulda found some irony in that I’m sure…)

But ultimately, damn, it was a real bummer, a reminder to enjoy all of life’s fleeting moments. I had no idea how seriously ill he was…

In the fall of 2004, apparently Soul Asylum had a reunion to raise money for Mueller’s health care bills in Minneapolis and I didn’t hear about it til Karl was already way past the point of helping.

Oh well, aside from buyin’ a ticket, there’s not much I coulda done I s’pose, so I don’t resent not being contacted personally…although they were a band that made everything seem personal.

From their friendly midwestern banter that made onstage just like backstage, to their deeply touching music that could border on incredible on the right nights.I missed the jubilance and goofiness, such as this cover of a Wyclef Jean song about life on the road, actually this version featuring Wyclef, but generally overtime I felt the flava was leaving the train station if ya know what I mean…

Soul Asylum – Gone Til November ( w/ Wyclef)

Pirner eventually moved to New Orleans, and put out a solo album that almost no one heard a couple years back. Passing through town , he played a respectable but fairly sparsely attended gig at The Great American Music Hall, and quickly headed afterwards over to The Hemlock to rekindle old friendships in the darkend bar. He seemed content, but one could tell he longed for something more…

Perhaps Pirner & Murphy have tasted Black Gold, but now it’s time for the Silver Lining…

Now, they return, sans the punk rock inspiration of their groups cornerstone Karl Mueller. I will welcome them to the stage, as they certainly belong there, but won’t hold my breath that they can be what they once were. After all , none of us can, we are all just human, and the time we have is what we make of it. I think they’ll still make a good time of it, for us, for Karl, for Rock n Roll in general…

It’s all good.. if it has soul…