Live at Revolution Hall. Portland, Oregon
Soul Asylum are one of those bands that require a long conversation. Unfortunately, that conversation usually begins with “Runaway Train”. It’s great song, don’t get me wrong, not to mention being just one of many from one of the most successful alternative records of the early 90s. Helped in part by its video with information about real life missing children, the song even got the band a gig on the White House lawn, going double platinum in the process. They got famous. Very famous. Dave Pirner married Winona Ryder and their songs were in Kevin Smith and I Know What You Did Last Summer movies. They also got lumped in with commercial grunge bands, and likewise had diminishing returns on subsequent albums. That pretty much wraps up the depth of most people’s knowledge of them. Meteoric rise, and predictable downfall. A product of the era.
Soul Asylum aren’t just a popular 90s alternative band who played at the White House though. They’re an 80s punk band who played at 7th Street Entry (and certainly the only band to have ever played both). The aforementioned Grave Dancers Union album was not some magical debut like Pearl Jam’s Ten. It was in fact the band’s fifth studio record, and their actual contemporaries were not the Seattle bands at all. Soul Asylum made up one third of the elite 1980s Twin Cities punk trifecta of Husker Du and The Replacements. Their original name was Loud Fast Rules. Their progression through that decade was incredible, and each one of those five early albums contain all-time favorite songs of mine. “Stranger” off 1984’s Say What You Will… is a Tom Waits meets Replacements drunken ballad with saxophones, and the rest of that record sounds like a wasted Gang of Four. You could put “Ship of Fools” off 1986’s Made to Be Broken on any East Bay punk comp a few years later and it would not only fit in, but be one of the best tracks on there. “Crashing Down” from also 1986’s (remember, this is 1986 when punk bands put out multiple records in the same calendar year) While You Were Out with its Kurt Bloch-style leads could’ve been written by the Fastbacks. “Cartoon” from 1988’s major label debut Hang Time is maybe my favorite song, period. It’s right up there with “Springtime” and “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg”, an actual perfect song I’ve listened to at least a thousand times.
I didn’t know all the backstory either when I was 13 and bought Grave Dancers Union on cassette. I loved it for about a year, along with my Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and other mainstream alternative juggernauts of the time. I then started get into punk proper, and like any other super rational genius 15-year-old with tons of life experience, decided to shun all music that didn’t fit my new identity. Soul Asylum were gone from my collection, and for a long time.
I’d had people tell me from time to time about those classic Soul Asylum records, but I just couldn’t get over the hurdle of where my 15-year-old brain had categorized them all those years ago. I then heard “Cartoon” and “Sometime to Return” off Hang Time, and slowly started to add songs to my iTunes library. The real tipping point was taking a chance with their boxset The Twin/Tone Years I found on sale in 2018. I’ve probably listened to them more than any other band since then, and the five records in there are always toward the front of my stack.
Getting to the point of this article no one asked me to write, I finally went and saw Soul Asylum last week. I had skipped doing so in the past because of two different reasons. 1) I used to be 13 years old and didn’t have a car. 2) My strong preference for their older material, which I figured they wouldn’t play live. Especially after long time guitarist Danny Murphy left the band, it seemed like it’d be SA in name only. I’ve come to appreciate songs from their entire catalog since then, and in particular feel as though 2006’s The Silver Lining is just as stacked with double platinum hits as Grave Dancers Union. Also, like all truly great bands, it turns out even their “bad” records have good songs. I decided to finally go for it and bought a ticket.
With the conversation I had with my wife the night before still fresh in my mind, where she misidentified Soul Asylum as Collective Soul (which was met with a swift, pressured and irrepressible response explaining that I was in fact going to see a legendary Minneapolis punk band), I stepped into the venue to find that the person in front of me in line was a youth with a mohawk. “I knew it,” I thought to myself. Then that person moved and the guy in front of them was wearing a Collective Soul shirt. Dammit. She’s always right. She’s also pretty tired of hearing about legendary Minneapolis punk bands.
In any case, I’m encouraged by the sight of some young folks in attendance. As I wait for my friend to arrive, drinking my $8 venue wine and leaning against the wall with one leg kicked up like a badass, I’m noticing this crowd is difficult to categorize. Most shows I go to are primarily middle-aged men with hats, beards, and black band t shirts. This place looks like a rural campground. Sure, there are other people here who clearly like Replacements, but also lots of families with teenage kids, gray haired couples, aged 90s mainstream rock fans, and even a fair amount of what we used to call “hippies”. The chalkboard next to me has two messages scrawled on it that are clearly written by two people of separate and non-neighboring generations.
My friend I haven’t seen in a long time arrives, and we go into the show space in high spirits (glad to see each other and $8 show wine topped off) just as The Juliana Hatfield Three take the stage. They’re playing their 1993 record Become What You Are in its entirety. I can’t say I’m terribly familiar them, but this was a personal favorite of my sister’s in high school, and I find myself recognizing most of the songs. They sound great, and it appears a significant portion of the crowd is also here for them. Solid opener.
We duck out into the hallway for the last few songs for a refill and to catch up. Some guy in old jeans with the knees blown out and scruffy long hair walks by and we make eye contact. He’s dressed in classic Pirner attire with the same kind of precision you’d expect from a Dave Pirner Halloween costume. I thought I was a big Soul Asylum fan, jeez. Then he walked backstage. Oh, that was Dave Pirner. I sort of wished I’d noticed earlier so I could say hello, but am also relieved in hindsight that I didn’t have the opportunity to ask him what touring with Das Damen was like in 1987.
As we make our way back into the venue space, it appears as though the protests of the older attendees has been successful. The seated balcony area is open and full of gray hair. This has left the floor half empty and somewhat sparse, so we have no difficulty walking right up to the stage. The band come out to the tune of the Love Boat, and then waste no time belting out the lead-off track from Grave Dancers Union, “Somebody to Shove”. I have to admit, it’s blowing my hair back.
The concern with concerts like these is that they’ll feel sad. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s obvious, but you can usually tell if a band doesn’t really want to be doing it anymore (especially if you get up close). This iteration of Soul Asylum is enjoying themselves, and it’s easily reflected in their performance. They’re a proper unit, and the entire show is a good time. Even the funkier songs like “April Fools” and “Sucker Maker” that I don’t like very much are a lot of fun live. They did in fact play a few oldies too. “Never Really Been” off Made to Be Broken and “Little Too Clean” off Hang Time were a blast to hear in person (even if the latter wasn’t followed up by the next two songs on that album, “Sometime to Return” and “Cartoon”). Other personal highlights were my favorite songs from Silver Lining and Let Your Dim Light Shine respectively, “Bus Named Desire” and the encore “String of Pearls”.
The only time Dave Pirner showed any signs of going through the motions was the brief sigh he appeared to take on his way up to the microphone at the beginning of “Runaway Train”. Who could blame him? How many thousands of times has this man played that song, for many years to large rooms full of people who didn’t know the rest of the catalog? It made me wonder where Soul Asylum would be today in the lexicon of punk history if they had broken up in 1990, before they broke through. Funnily enough, I think they’d be more successful now. They’d probably be playing an evening slot at Riot Fest on a reunion tour, Josh Freese would be playing drums, and everyone else would hold them in the same high esteem they have for The Replacements and Husker Du. History is unkind to people and bands who achieve the highest level of fame and then lose it.
I’m glad I didn’t have to sit through an entire day of an over-hyped music festival to see Soul Asylum play live though. Sometimes it’s nice to not be surrounded by middle aged white guys in hats, beards, and black band t shirts. I like people watching at rural campgrounds, and I like that Soul Asylum are unfashionable. Their legacy should ultimately be that they’re one of the best rock and roll bands our country has ever produced. It’s only their unique, meandering career trajectory that clouds the waters of what’s transpired.
In 1986 Dave Pirner asked the question on the song Never Really Been, “Where will you be in 1993?”. The answer wound up being performing on the South Lawn of the Clinton-era White House in celebration of the signing of the National and Community Service Trust Act. Probably not the answer he would have forecasted. When Soul Asylum played that same song at the show, Dave changed the lyrics to, “Where will you be in 2033?”. Still touring and kicking ass, I hope. I’ll be there for it if you are.
–Zach Akenson
