Bob Mould

Tiff and I went to see Bob Mould play on Thursday, July 12 @ the Henry Ford Museum. Mom and dad had been watching our kids all week so that I could attend Waverly's wrestling camp while Tiffani was in class, and we felt like we overburdened them a bit, but they were game and we dropped off the little'uns @ their house and departed. (thanks again, dad and mom). But, foreshadowing issues later, mom asked if we trusted the car to get to Detroit. In what turned out to be a frantic drive to Dearborn, as there was emergency and scheduled road closures, we were forced to really detour south and then back north, to finally negotiate ten miles of surface roads through Wayne and Inkster and Dearborn to get to the Henry Ford, at what we thought were the narrowest of time margins. I suppose I let my Mould mania control my consciousness and common sense, even though we raced to arrive at the scheduled starting time, because thankfully Bob was on rock-n-roll time, and the show started about a half hour later.

The parking lot was filled with iMax attendees of the new Harry Potter movie, and we hurried inside, only to be carded for age, and told we left our headlights on. Hustle outside to kill the lights and back in to locate Tiff, grab a local beer and a glass of wine and settle in to the cafe seating in the museum's hallway for the show. Disappointingly, there was, perhaps, a hundred people attending, with a predictable age group: folks roughly 30 to 50, but no teenagers. As a fan, while I enjoyed the intimacy of the show and how close we could get to the performance, I also felt like the music fans of Michigan let Bob Mould down with their attendance. There was, however, one carryover from the Hüsker Dü days, a skinny guy about 35, with a freshly shaved and tinted mohawk, who bobbed his head with the music and seemed as glad for the experience as the rest of us.

So, it's about half past seven, and we're sitting at our table, and along strolls Bob right by us. He's introduced by what I recall was the museum's assistant director, a guy who claimed Minneapolis as home as well (the locale for Hüsker Dü, not to mention other musical luminaries like Prince, Bob Dylan, The Replacements, Soul Asylum, among others). While we don't storm the stage, everyone stands up and earnestly gathers where Bob will be playing, and he launches into his acoustic set without much fanfare or banter.

The show was surpassing, about 16 or 18 songs, including the 2 song encore, a mixture of Hüsker Dü, Sugar, and Bob's solo material. Bob would chat with the audience after every third song or so, his commentary an oasis to his devoted fans in the desert. OK, that's a dramatic overstatement, but I'm a big fan. He switched guitars in the middle of the set, closing the case on his acoustic guitar and plugging in a Stratocaster. On the drive home, Tiffani and I commented on the power of Bob's voice, and how amazing it is that he uses it as another instrument, how it constantly fills the air whether with words or wails. After the show, he thanked us and walked down a hallway to the rear, the opposite direction from which he appeared. The crowd sensed more and continued to applaud, and about a half a minute later he reappeared and conducted an audience poll: after telling us about tearing his thumbnail off at the end of the last song, he asked us if we favored encores, to which the crowd resoundingly agreed. He said that killed his theory, and launched into 'Makes no sense at all.'

At the show's conclusion, we got the chance to purchase albums and have them signed, and there was an assortment, all for the low price of $10; Tiffani queued for the autographs while I waited to buy Body of Song. A few moments wait, Bob signed the liner of the CD, I thanked him for coming to Detroit and asked for a picture together (taken by Tiff with my phone; I can't believe I forgot to bring a camera!), to which he was obligingly polite. Incidentally, he's got a great, flourishy, indecipherable autograph, a mashup of lines that all appear as m's. Outside, it was still light, which is nice for us mature folks, and the little Honda didn't agree to start. We asked the neighboring drivers if they had jumper cables, but none did, and it occured to us that we could bump start this little stick shift car. We were home uneventfully 100 minutes later, with much excited discussion about the show. It turns out, Bob liked the show as well.