Well this is certainly a massive surprise. Though there have been rumblings over the past couple of years that something might be going down in the world of Hüsker Dü, and that it potentially had to do with their back catalog, its safe to assume that few of their fans could have expected the wealth of treasures that the ’80s punk stalwarts have revealed today.
Titled Savage Young Dü, the new three-disc box set is filled out by 69 different tracks, most of which have never been heard before. The collection is scheduled to drop sometime in November, but you can listen to a preview of the long-lost material over at NPR now.
“By 2010, we were in a place where we were working with people we thought were impossible,” Ken Shipley of Chicago reissue label the Numero Group said about the genesis of the set. “I thought, ‘If we can make these guys work with us, what’s something that seems impossible? Maybe we should try that.’ Hüsker Dü is the first thing I thought of. It took us a while, but eventually Henry Rollins introduced us to [drummer] Grant [Hart].”
The unearthed material was culled from every possible resource, from the band itself, their former sandman, old record labels, everywhere. Originally it was maxed out at a staggering 110 tracks, and was eventually culled down to 69. “At a certain point, making every single thing available was going to be a bit redundant,” Shipley said. “We dialed it into what we thought was the best Hüsker Dü of this early period. We tried to capture every song they wrote, the best performances. A lot of this stuff was never recorded in a studio. There were tons of rehearsal tapes and sound checks.”
You can check out Savage Young Dü over at NPR now.
