July 10, 2025
THERE’S NOSTALGIA, and then there’s time travel.
The latter is impossible, but every once in a while, in the right circumstances, you can nudge up against it.
For me it happened a few nights ago, at a small concert venue in Malden, Massachusetts. Up on stage was an outfit called Greg Norton & Büddies. The buddies, or Büddies, were guitarist Jon Snodgrass and drummer David Jarnstrom. And Greg Norton was Greg Norton, bassist from the legendery Minnesota threesome Hüsker Dü.
I hadn’t seen Greg since October of 1987, when Hüsker Dü performed at a club called Toad’s in New Haven, Connecticut. This was shortly before the band’s demise; the thirteenth, and last, time I would watch them play.
Even before the death of drummer/vocalist Grant Hart in 2017, the possibility of a reunion was never taken seriously. It wasn’t gonna happen, and we superfans knew it. We had our memories, our albums, our bootlegs. That would be it. The closest we could come was going to see Hart or Bob Mould on their solo tours, enjoying the newer stuff but always waiting impatiently for whatever Hüsker classics they might sprinkle in.
Then one day, all these years later, Greg Norton says fuck it. He teams up a pair of outstanding musicians and hits the road playing nothing but Hüsker songs. “Celebrating 40-plus years of Hüsker Dü!” boasts the promos. No ambiguity here; you don’t have to wait for an encore to hear “Books About UFOs” or “Celebrated Summer.”
I’d skipped out on the last several Bob Mould shows, but this was something different. Barring the outlandish possibility of Mould teaming up with Norton, this would be as close to seeing Hüsker Dü again as will ever be possible. I couldn’t not go.
Call it a cover band if you have to. But then, is it a cover band, exactly, when one of the guys is, well, one of the guys? How to even describe this? Imagine Beatlemania, except way cooler and starring an actual Beatle.
Which is probably an insulting way to put it, because there was nothing superficial or gimmicky about the hour-long set Norton and his mates blasted through. I knew ahead of time that a number of songs would be sung by audience members ambitious enough, and sentimentally motivated enough, to give it a try, and so I expected it to be fun. And it was. What I didn’t expect was how passionate it would be.
That’s probably due, in part, to the energy that longtime devotees like me brought with us into the room. This was, for us, more than a novelty act. (And yeah, it was a distinctly older, Gen X crowd.) But it’s also true that the band kicked ass.
One third of Hüsker Dü can never be Hüsker Dü, but damn if the songs weren’t nailed. Greg might hate me for saying this, but their set was tighter than some of the Hüsker sets I stood through back in the 80s. I missed the sight of Mould’s iconic Ibanez flying-V, but Jon Snodgrass knew the songs backwards and forwards. As did Jarnstrom on drums (who unlike Grant Hart wears shoes while he plays).
The set list was just about perfect, though I wish they’d done “Terms of Psychic Warfare.” I loved the choice of “It’s Not Funny Anymore” as the kickoff, and kudos too for bringing out Hart’s, “Back From Somewhere.” There aren’t a lot of memorable cuts on the Warehouse album, but that’s one of them them — one of Grant’s mini-masterpiece sleepers.
At one point Snodgrass took the mic and and talked for a moment about the song “Divide and Conquer,” comparing it to a Bob Dylan song. He wasn’t kidding around, and this leaped out at me. What it made clear is that these guys weren’t just doing an imitation of Hüsker Dü. They were doing their best to replicate, and to wholeheartedly respect, the band’s energy and spirit. They know and understand why people like me take their music so seriously. Led along, of course, by Greg, who was there for the real thing.
And who, by the way, at 67, can still get some air with those signature jumps.
Close your eyes for a second, and let that time machine kick in. This was as close to 1985 as you’ll ever get again. A tribute in the best possible way.
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Photo courtesy of Joshua Pickering.
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