Sugar - Classic Or Dud

http://onlineathens.com/stories/080310/uga_689844920.shtml

Barbe to lead UGA's music business program

By Ryan Blackburn - r✧✧✧.blackb✧✧✧@onlineath✧✧✧.c✧✧

Musician David Barbe has been chosen as interim director of the Music Business Program at the University of Georgia. He will start work immediately.

Barbe will replace Bruce Burch, the program’s founding co-director who last month took his top assistant and a fundraiser to start a similar program at Kennesaw State University.

Barbe will teach the two basic courses of the certificate program, called Music Business I and II, and he will administer the program, including hiring an assistant director, UGA administrators said Monday.

The responsibility for overseeing fundraising for the program will be absorbed through the college’s existing staff.

Barbe came to Athens in 1981 to attend UGA as a journalism student and on the side joined several bands, including Mercyland and Buzz Hungry. In the early 1990s, he co-founded the band Sugar, which recorded four albums.

In 1997, he teamed up with Andy LeMaster and Andy Baker to open Chase Park Transduction and currently serves as co-owner, president and chief engineer of the full-service recording studio.

Since opening Chase Park, Barbe has worked as a producer, engineer, writer and musician on hundreds of recording projects with artists like Drive-By Truckers, The Glands, Amy Ray, k.d. lang and R.E.M.

Jointly sponsored by the Terry College of Business and the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, the program prepares students for jobs in the music business — sometimes by giving music students a background in business, and other times by providing business students some basic music knowledge.

Nearly 90 students are enrolled in the 21-credit certificate program.

Barbe came highly recommended from past UGA faculty members and alumni and already had some knowledge of the program as a guest lecturer, said business school Dean Robert T. Sumichrast.

“Pretty quickly, we were able to determine that David Barbe was the best choice because of his existing association with our program,” Sumichrast said. “He had been a guest lecturer for us in the past, so we already knew some of the reaction from the students about his teaching style, and we already knew about his connection to the Athens music scene.”

The business college will conduct a national search for a permanent director, and Barbe will be among the candidates, Sumichrast said.

“I expect we will have a search in the spring semester, and we will name someone permanent director, and I think that David is certainly a very strong candidate for that,” he said.

Leaving for Kennesaw State with Burch are Keith Perissi, program director; and Heather Malcom, a development officer at UGA.

Burch’s resignation with UGA takes effect Aug. 9, but Barbe will begin work immediately, Sumichrast said.

Who wants to enroll for a semester or two?

Good for him. As long as it keeps him from singing shit like "Company Book", it's a great hire.

this band still rules! jamming copper blue for the first time in years. epic shit.

great record. I have a signed copy, my retirement nest egg!

Copper Blue is one of my favorite albums ever.

Beaster!!!!

hey bill magill, 'company book' was a clunker but i loved 'where diamonds are halos'

Copper Blue is one of my favorite albums ever.

― NYCNative, Friday, March 4, 2011 2:39 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

Seconded.

"Copper Blue" and "Beaster" remain in many ways the apotheosis of what Mould was always after, even if his Husker stuff remains my sentimental favorite. But boy did Sugar burn bright and fast. Admittedly, I haven't listened to "File Under: Easy Listening" in eons but the time I saw them touring behind that album was less than inspiring.

Last time I interviewed him he noted that not only was "FU:EL" his commercial peak, that overwhelmingly he's now known as the guy that used to be in Sugar, with the legacy of HD fading away. Tragically, AFAIC, but Mould I believe has long made peace with his past and moved on, for better or for worse.

Besides might be the "b-sides, live and outtakes" album of the 90s (at least nothing comes to mind immediately) and I'll take it over FU:EL. Also having a hard time thinking of a better band started by a guy from a great band who had already become a full-time solo artist. Certainly beats Tin Machine.

Is FU:EL really his commercial peak? I know it charted highest, but there were a TON of copies in clearance bins back in the day - I'd have to assume Copper Blue sold better on the whole.

I think FU:EL did better overseas. Like, really well.

Both albums were top ten over there, which is crazy.

also I dunno if I trust Mould's "actually people care more about the band that was my baby a lot more than the band with grant hart writing half the songs" analysis. Guessing a Husker Du reunion would pull a little more money than a Sugar one.

I would guess otherwise. Husker Du broke up a generation ago, 25 years, with only a fraction of mainstream support at the time. Unlike the Replacements, though, I've always sensed HD remains more a well kept secret sort of thing, at least in today's market.

Husker Du had more albums than Sugar, has been namechecked by more bands as an influence, has been memorialized in books and likely has so many "new" fans (since 1988) who missed them the first go-round. Sugar was pretty cool, but likely ranks on par with The Breeders. You could argue that more people know the words to "Cannonball", but it's only the Pixies that could carry out a worldwide reunion tour.

One of my best friends is very close to Mould and his partner; he says Mould's income these days derives from deejay gigs and royalties, most of which come from his post-Husker years (he managed himself very well apparently).

IIRC he pretty much set up a licensing agreement as soon as Sugar started which allowed him to (reasonably) dictate some terms when the band signed. Smart move.

He seems to live an ideal life: happily settled in a very nice apartment in San Francisco, does the deejay club circuit a few months a year, records an album when he feels like it.

Copper Blue is one of my favorite records.

The live take on "The Slim" on Besides is absolutely devastating. I've been hoping for years that footage of one of those takes will show up on youtube, to no avail thus far.

Bob Mould is also a well known furry and is active on the scene.[4]

he gets the catskins for nothing

mould used to get tons of cash for acoustic tours, get flown in, bring an acoustic on the plane, plug into the PA, play and go, no crew, etc.

he should get back into pro wrestling imo

I'm not at all saying Husker Du doesn't deserve the belated accolades, let alone cash, but there's absolutely no comparing their popularity to that of the Pixies, even at the time. Plus the Pixies broke up only ten or so years before they got back together, and it couldn't have hurt that they also broke up right when the mainstream starting adopting the stuff they pioneered. Sure, there'd be no Pixies without Husker Du, but there was no similar groundswell of enthusiasm (unless you could Sugar's brief success). Further, Pixies sales currently stand around 300,000 to 500,000 an album. What was the max HD ever sold? Do you think it's at all in line with the band's influence? Even in terms of namechecking, the number of times I see a band cite HD is close to nil, compared to Pixies or Pavement or whatever.

either way a husker du reunion will NEVER happen

I'm not so much saying Husker Du is more popular than the Pixies than saying that Sugar is to the Huskers what The Breeders are to the Pixies. I'm disagreeing with that Mould is better known for being in Sugar than in Husker Du

i think a huskers reunion would do pretty big business, like for example when i saw Mission of Burma on their reunion tour it was probably 1000 ppl, they commented from stage that there were only like 20 ppl the one time they played mpls in the old days.

also: old punkers are hella loyal.

Dunno if I'd call the Burma reunion big business. Either way, that band broke up originally well before it found out how far it could go (or not. The Huskers gave it a real shot, though. But I wouldn't imagine a HD reunion (which will never happen) would come close to, say, a Replacements reunion. Huskers have stayed relatively underground.

i think huskers would be way bigger than burma. i guess i consider 1000 ppl big business relatively, i dunno.

either way a husker du reunion will NEVER happen

― gr8080 sings the blues (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 4 March 2011 22:49 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^^^^^^^THIS, and matt otm throughout this thread.

I interviewed Bob Mould for his "Body Of Song" album and I asked him at the end of ithe chat what the prospects were of a reunion. He said that it was not likely.

First of all, he claimed that contrary to my assumptions, there are not promoters waving bags of cash at them to do so.

Even without that tempation, he said too many hurtful things have been said by the other two (or maybe just one... I didn't use it in the interview and I don't have the transcript and might not be able to dig up the audio; all I have is the story I turned in) that he deemed it an impossibility.

That said, I cannot believe that nobody with a check book at least took their temperatures. I don't believe it would have been on par with The Pixies in terms of interest but I know a lot of people who never got to see Husker Du live who would pay for the chance now.

I include myself in that, actually.

Mould is too comfortable financially and psychologically to need a HD reunion, I was told.

Husker Du live : you're not missing THAT much.

i have many, many bootlegs that argue otherwise, us steel

IIRC, Mould did an interview, I guess when his last lp came out, where he said not only wasn't there going to be an HD reunion, but also that their SST albums weren't going to be expanded/reissued/remastered because all three guys had to over see/sign off on the project. He then advised fans to hold onto their vinyl.

I've also seen interviews with Hart where he claimed Mould tried to low-ball/strong-arm all the rights away from him and Greg, pissing him off and pissing away what little good feeling came of the hell-freezes-over one-time-only demi-reunion (where, incidentally, Mould chose a Hart song and Hart chose a Mould song - perhaps not coincidentally, "Never Talking to You Again" and "Hardly Getting Over It").

yo stevie -- which husker bootlegs are the best? i don't have any!

It's a pity that the end of Husker was so unnecessarily ugly and messy...that whole thing with Mould telling Hart he'll never have more than 45% of the song on any record and then Hart inevitably firing back after the split, just shake hands and either get a reunion gig going or completely call time on it in the right way. I'm anxious to see how he will depict that last year or so in the autobiography.

It was more complicated than that, too, involving everything from AIDS scares and suicide to drugs (Mould cleaned up first and got the upper hand; Norton, as far as I can tell, has stayed out of it).

x-post Tyler, I have a great Trenton bootleg I've enjoyed. Most famous may be "Lyndale's Burning," Minneapolis '95: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0DF8LFZM

i have about 20gb of husker boots :)

well,maybe 10. on a load of data cdrs

Very little footage of Sugar playing stuff from this album, afaict, but here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSv9e55NfX4

Here is where I admit I thought he was saying I’m no I’m no I’m no. Made sense and it stuck 🤷🏻‍♀️

oh wait! I never thought of that!

He does say I’m not your Jesus Christ so I always thought I’m no made sense.

I saw Sugar in 1993 and they were incredibly loud and fast, so much so that they erased all the dynamics of the music. A fun, visceral experience but the LP is a better record.

I saw that tour as well and it was just that: so loud, so fast. I was exhausted after just watching them play. Yes, there was quite a bit of moshing, but La Luna was packed.

I’m no

does make sense.

I kind of like the ambiguity— is there an official lyric sheet?

yeah it's 'i know' in the lyrics in the booklet

I read their UK live reviews at the time and they were uniformly meh

Idk — prob on Genius? It reminded me of the inevitable son/heir vs sun/air moment everyone eventually has on their own time. For me it happened pretty early but some people go decades thinking one and then plotz when they realize maybe it’s not what they thought.

here you go...

https://i.ibb.co/F44MnwNt/beastr.jpg

from 1993, quality ain't great - a couple of pro-shot clips from this show, sourced from late night music show The Beat presented by the legend that is Gary Crowey - but a couple of Beaster songs on here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGGqv3ho3YM

thanks NickB.

honestly, the record is SO MASSIVE sounding that those live recordings don't inspire much, though I'm certain it was probably astonishing in person.

I've heard that to be in a small room w/Sugar, esp early on, was a volcanic, physical, super-intense experience. I'm guessing a big open-air festival or antiseptic TV studio is never going to capture that vibe.

Sugar did a short tour of small venues before the release of Copper Blue and I would’ve loved to see that show. When I saw them at First Avenue main room in 1994 touring FU:EL it was good but not overwhelming.

Awaiting some new library books, so picked up Dennis Cooper’s ‘Smothered in Hugs,’ a collection of his prose writings on art and music. Included a fascinating interview with Mould, fresh of the heels of recording FU:EL and the Beaster tour.

I wonder if Mould feels differently now about his sexuality— this feature basically has him saying, “My sexuality is my own business and I won’t be a freak for a media circus.” I respect it, but also find it to be sort of a cop-out.

To those who were fans at the time, what was your impression of Mould’s gayness? (I was born in 1984, and tho I remember when FU:EL came out because I was already a Sam Goody/Tower Records rat, I never listened to it)

I will say that I find Beaster to be a very GAY record.

I don't think Mould formally came out until the early '90s, but as I understand it he never actively tried to hide his sexuality, either. Reading his book, it seems sort of like coming out did allow him to explore different facets of his gayness until he found a good fit, if that makes sense. He's married now, so maybe doesn't feel the need to talk about it much anymore? Though he never talked too much about his gayness to begin with.

I was a college undergrad during this era. I noticed the lack of gender specificity and the reliance on the second-person. His SPIN interview in '95 was the Big Coming Out moment.

It wasn't like the Pet Shop Boys, whose the hints over the years were akin to elbows in the ribs.

I wonder if Mould feels differently now about his sexuality— this feature basically has him saying, “My sexuality is my own business and I won’t be a freak for a media circus.” I respect it, but also find it to be sort of a cop-out.

I spoke to him in 2020 about the Cooper interview and his coming out - which he says was p much a fait accompli as the magazine was planning to out him whether he cooperated or not:

In 1994, however, Spin magazine signalled their intention to “out” Mould. “It was, ‘We can do this the hard way or the easy way,’” he remembers. “They sent Dennis Cooper to do the interview, and he was a good guy. But it was awful. I was gay, I had an affinity with the community, but I was in a monogamous relationship, I wasn’t out at gay bars, I hadn’t been burying my friends every weekend. I wasn’t Jimmy Somerville, or Tom Robinson, the guys who’d done the heavy lifting back then. I couldn’t be a spokesperson for anything other than my music.”

The experience was traumatic, but ultimately helped Mould reconcile his sexual preference and his sexual identity. In 1998, he moved to New York’s Chelsea and became “part of the scene, finally. I decided, ‘I’m gonna be gay, get pretty, go to the gym and pick up a new lifestyle.’ It was a blast, hanging out with porn stars, going to wild parties on Fire Island, working out with Sandra Bernhard. Electronic music was the soundtrack to it all: Sasha and Digweed, Madonna, Cher… Here comes the vocoder!”

Mould began experimenting with electronic music, confusing his longtime fanbase. “A gay narrative plus no guitars equals WTF?” he laughs. “I had no idea what I was doing, and nobody else was getting it, but I didn’t care.” He later relocated to Washington DC and, alongside DJ Rich Morel, started the weekly club night Blowoff, where he discovered and was embraced by the “bear” community. “I’d been this confused gay guy who didn’t really have an identity,” he remembers. “Finding a community I was comfortable in, within a scene that wasn’t ‘body-centric’, was like finding home. And those parties were my craziest escapades as a gay man. One night Lady Gaga’s bodyguards took over the DJ booth and she played Bad Romance for the first time ever, standing at the balcony like Eva Perón, and the whole dancefloor froze …”

I haven't got the transcript to hand but he was v open about how there was definitely a gay scene within hardcore that many straight participants in punk were completely oblivious to.

I was a fan at the time (and read that Spin article) at a college in Minnesota, so surrounded by fans or at least people who were familiar with the Minnesota music scene and I think people already guessed or knew. No one I knew stopped being a fan or was shocked. It definitely didn’t surprise me, something in the back of my mind always read him as queer.

thanks! and wow, stevie, that interview portion is wild.

This is what Hart told me years ago:

Back towards the beginning, were you and/or Bob out of the closet? How did people treat you in hardcore punk circles?

GH: Well, I had toured with male companions. When you went to the Longhorn, the original punk palace in town, it was three doors away from a bar that for fifty years has been called The Gay 90s. It became a gay bar conveniently. Especially in the early days in the pre-hardcore American punk thing, there was pretty consistent gayness coming through there. I’m the first one to use that word in the conversation, and it’s not one that I really like the identity of. Especially the way that homosexual culture has moved in the post-AIDS days. I think it’s more about making money and wearing the right clothes. But I had toured with male companions very early on, and my partner at the time was posed with the question “What does it feel like being the boyfriend of this famous man, blah blah blah?” And my friend was pretty unsophisticated, and told her something that was rather crude, but it never seemed to be … you know, when you’re dealing with a very small orbit, it doesn’t seem like such a big thing. Then by the time it would be a big thing, the people that you’re dealing with have dealt with … Take for example Joan Rivers. Here’s a person that my assumption is she’s no stranger to gay people, and by the time we were appearing with her (on her daytime show, 1987) it wouldn’t be the kind of question or topic that the big industry moves you towards. You know what I mean? They accept it, and they’re cool behind it, and they’re doing it themselves, but we can’t let the people down in Topeka think that this is what the case is. And really, it really didn’t define much about the band. If anything, it would have been just another question mark, because we were so unlike the stereotype de jour. I don’t think with us there was … Like Bob, for instance, and this apparent cross he was bearing about the thing for so long. He just belabored making any kind of announcement about because other people were saying he was closeted and stuff, which was certainly not true. If anybody from Minneapolis would have asked “what side is Bob’s butter on?” there was no question. But then he belabored this “coming out” thing, by which time the culture itself had become so unappreciative. I remember reading something in a Los Angeles gay paper, where it was like “Big deal, Bob,” you know? I think that kind of hurt him. Not business wise, but I think it was kind of like he expected other gay people or something to be more supportive when in this day and age they’re off doing their own thing. No real common ground, you know?

So many groups have used their band for politics that it’s almost more surprising to not say anything.

GH: Yeah. I think beyond everything, maybe part of the hurt for him was that maybe a little part of him wanted to be a spokesman. And of course, I just read some very cruel things that I didn’t feel happy about when that happened for him. Whereas I’ve had a more strangely balanced relationship with the public or the media. I realized when the band broke up, and before then, that a couple of vicious people shooting their mouth off can brand you with one topic. In my case the break-up of the band and all the allegations that were thrown around then. It’s just one part of the business that you just have no control over. No matter what kind of publicist you have, or whatever, if somebody decides they’re going to burn you, they’re going to bun you.

Actually it chocked me more Grant had a kid. But then Grant did strike me as the kind of guy who’d try anything once.

Dredging up the old memory banks now and I think I was primed for the Spin reveal because I’m almost positive that the village voice had outed him before that—pointing out in the “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” video that one of the Polaroids of couples (with “This is not your parents’ world” written on reverse) was of him and his then-partner.

does make sense.

I kind of like the ambiguity— is there an official lyric sheet?

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Sunday, February 9, 2025 9:26 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah it's 'i know' in the lyrics in the booklet

― Clock DVLA (NickB), Sunday, February 9, 2025 9:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The lyrics booklet in the box has it "I'm your Jesus Christ, I know..."

Wow my brain fills in the blanks it wants to fill in i guess!!

I hadn't given any thought to whether or not anyone in HD was gay until the outing. I noticed the same things that Alfred noticed but didn't put two and two together at all. I was in high school when I got into him/them and at the time (to me, a girl) I didn't give it much thought beyond the songs being a cut far above the average songs about romantic love. When I found out I was like OOOOOHHH ok. Then I liked him/them even more.

When Bob got into writing for wrestling it seemed like the gayest thing he could possibly do until the DC DJ phase.

One of the Boo Radleys fanzines had a tour diary covering them when they supported Sugar in the US. There was mention regarding Bob being gay which was the first time I'd seen mention of it.

About a year later, it became more widely known, and I remember a letter to the NME where somebody was clearly a fan but was somewhat uncomfortable...

two full listens to Beaster today. pretty convinced this is an album that came to me at exactly the right time of my life and i am fine with it.

gonna get an insane JC AUTO themes tattoo, already have a little sketch of it.

basically: a sign as if an auto repair shop: JC AUTO

below that, the moveable plastic letters saying

I KNOW
I KNOW
I KNOW
I KNOW

As a metalhead who loved punk and hardcore, I never thought about Bob (or Grant) as gay. I never thought about their sexuality, just as I never thought (or think) about J Mascis or Paul Westerburg or anyone else. I may have missed out on a gay nuance in what they did but otherwise... I was always pretty much didn't care about these things. Like, Rob Halford came out and I was like, it's about time, but I felt he made it pretty obvious. Maybe Bob and Grant did too but I wasn't as attuned to notice.

I interviewed Bob for the first time during the Blowoff record release for B-Side Magazine. I am 100% sure I only skimmed over his sexuality and how it influenced his music and that's a shame. I wasn't one to care about it so I didn't and maybe that project deserved it being explored a lot more than I probably did.

There's something positive about "I don't care that you're gay," and maybe Bob liked that positive naivety when we chatted because he was likely inundated with journalists who wanted to speak about nothing but his "gay experience," but to ignore how that informs the art was a blind spot for me at the time.

Inspired by this thread I relistened to Copper Blue and now I can’t get “Man on the Moon” out of my head, especially the “Don’t you know that space is the place“ middle 8.

Especially in America I've seen or heard of some real obtuse reactions to gayness in music. For example, there's the famous story of Boy George at the peak of the band's popularity calling himself a drag queen or something, and all these conservative ears suddenly perking up in anger and protest and confusion: Boy George is gay!?!? I think a lot of people had no idea Freddie Mercury was gay, maybe because especially back then it just wasn't something (straight) people thought about. Same with Elton John. Probably same with Rob Halford. Halford's own response was, yeah, that he made it pretty obvious, but don't underestimate the ability of boneheads to miss the obvious. In the underground/indie/punk world, without a huge platform, in the days before the internet et al., it was probably even easier to fly under the radar, even if you were open. Like, I recently read that great book about the Pogues and learned that not only was Philip Chevron gay, he was openly gay, back when it was iirc literally illegal in Ireland.

Same with Elton John.

I figured Elton was gay because “Nikita” is a boy’s name (which I knew from the wrestler Nikita Koloff).

Me too!!!

not from a wrestler though, but from Khrushchev

Isn't it a gender neutral name, as in "La Femme Nikita"?

I thought Elton John was a Muppet

Understandable
https://nysmusic.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Dm_YOiUWwAExwRO-1.jpg?ezimgfmt=ng%3Awebp%2Fngcb1%2Frs%3Adevice%2Frscb1-1

Heard a clip of his new single Neanderthal, sounded good

the video and music for “Here We Go Crazy” did not inspire confidence imho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe i am too close to the earlier material at the moment

had not previously checked out the lyrics to 'feeling better'

man, when bob writes a breakup song he really salts the fucking earth

This gay stuff is blowoffing my mind because my buddy and I got mega obsessed with Husker Du/Sugar/Bob Mould when we were 14. My friend bought Warehouse on a whim because the name and cover were weird/intriguing. We soon worshipped all things Bob Mould. Bought Beaster the day it came out, etc. The joys and limitlessness of young music discovery.

Anyway, the confusing thing is we both knew they were gay, and it had a profound impact on us. All this time I totally thought it was a 100% known thing. Now I am realizing we just assumed it somehow and were right?

I remember poring over the lyrics, both Mould’s and Hart’s, and thinking about it from a gay perspective (my friend and I are heterosexual) and it was such a great headstart to us being uhh… “woke” on this particular topic, in a American military community in Germany in 1992/3, and vigilantly preaching acceptance to our peers.

But now I’m like “how the fuck did we know?!” No idea.

Good gaydar, man.

After Husker Du broke up there was at least some talk of it following a Hart/Mould personal break up, which both of them consistently denied. Not denied being gay, but denied with varying degrees of angry "he wishes!" Iirc Nova Mob *did* break up because Hart and Tom Merkl broke up, though.

Man, I wish that final Nova Mob album was easier to stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCBd7e0wCBQ

Man, I wish that final Nova Mob album was easier to stream:

It's a fantastic record, and I am so glad I still have my (fairly battered) OG vinyl copy from back then. This is genuinely one of his best songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZaxsYSmSrg

I've got the CD of it I bought the day it came out in Our Price in Hamilton.

I thought the 1994 self-titled Nova Mob album was better than Sugar’s File Under: Easy Listening

I agree (bar the 1st track on fuel) but I think it was maybe the production on FUEL that made it seem not as good as previous

the high points were quite high on it tbf