Hüsker Dü – Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987)
[Album 664/1001]
Q: What’s better than a band name with one umlaut?
A: Hüsker Dü.
Not to be confused of course with Hūsker Dū.
As when the spelling includes two ‘macrons,’ rather than umlauts, apparently it’s a board game rather than a band name.
It appears with the band & its namesake board game, more is more, 1 umlaut (or macron) would simply be insufficient!
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I find with concentration board games (like the multi-macron Hūsker Dū), I enjoy playing them. They’re my kind of game, but I can only play so much in one sitting.
The reason being, after a few games, the squares all start to blend together and the current game board becomes indistinguishable from the previous game boards.
As the box indicates, with the board game Hūsker Dū, you can bet on having at least 10 minutes of fun.
The question is, how many minutes can one expect to be entertained by the multi-umlaut band?
Alas, there is no explicitly stated estimated fun time on the album cover.
But if you ask me, I’d say the double LP, Warehouse: Songs and Stories, is probably best enjoyed in one side increments.
On average, that would guarantee about 17 minutes of uninterrupted, and more importantly, optimized enjoyment.
Though the 20 songs are generally up my street (sort of Soul Asylum meets Odds), in a 68+ minute front-to-back listen, the individual tracks start to blend together.
However, when I broke up the album into more manageable quarters, I was having a great time, not unlike the young cartoon fellow on the board game box above!
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Verbalize the Positive
Over the past few weeks, my kids & I have been enjoying playing a Hūsker Dū-style memory game named Stone Soup.
It’s a co-operative game, rather than a competitive one, so you’re all on the same team.
And not meaning to brag (maybe a little), we won the game this afternoon, no big deal!
1001albumsin10years 
Nice. I do love me a good umlaut. However, I’m a Sugar fan and I’m a Bob Mould but never did get into the Dü.
I’ve only heard the 1 sugar so far (copper blue) – but they were 1 for 1 there!
I like this record, but it’s a weird choice for the book – normally 1984’s Zen Arcade is the canonical choice. Lots of good songs, but as you said they tend to blend together, and some of Grant Hart’s stuff on this one isn’t that good.
I’m curious if it made it in as it was the ‘last’ album rather than the ‘best’ – and the book seems to favour ambitious double LPs too!
It was easily their highest selling I believe – so a lot more people heard it.
Another one I know of, but don’t listen to nor have I ever played the board game. I did play a card game called Phase 10 with my 12 year old last night…and I lost!!!! She kicked my butt last night. No more letting the kids win as they now can do it on their own now.
I’ve heard of Phase 10, haven’t played myself – and I’m with you, they’re now beating me at games legitimately too!
They get so much joy out of beating me, I am not sure if I should be worried that they might be sore winners. I don’t know where they got that taunting from…hmmm.
Must be something they saw on TV!
We will go with that!
Great post!
Board games were the way f the world for many a year. My personal favs were Battleship and Monopoly. I was really good at losing money and going to jail!
My thanks Deke – cards are also big around our neck of the woods!
They haven’t discovered monopoly yet, but I have a feeling I’ll be joining you in not passing Go & going directly to jail!
Uno is a fun card game!
I’m pretty good at 52 pickup as well!
These days ‘go fish’ is the game of choice ’round here!
In Danish and Norwegian (but not Swedish, which has a completely different word), “husker du” means “do you remember”, which explains the name of the game from which the band derived their name. In Danish and Norwegian (and, for that matter, French and Dutch), “u” is pronounced like the German “ü” (the “u” sound is written “o”, while the “o” sound is written “å”; “y”, which is pronounced the same as “ü” in German, is something between “ü” and the German “i” in the Scandinavian languages.) Perhaps the umlauts should hint at the correct pronunciation. No idea where the macrons came from.
Perhaps the umlauts were a nod to the heavy-metal umlaut, e.g. Motörhead. German fun-punk band Die Ärzte (“the physicians) have three dots instead of two above the “A”. And of course there is the umlaut over the “i” in Spinal Tap.
Extra points if you note the nod to Swedish music above.
We now return to your regularly scheduled post-punk/grunge programming.
I forgot about the Spinal Tap umlaut!
And the 3 dots on Die Ärzte feels excessive at first glance but I guess if it’s fun-punk, 3 might be just the right number!
Well, the German word Arzt has the plural Ärzte, so there is already an umlaut, so they added another dot. To paraphrase the truly immortal words of Nigel Tufnel: “Well, it’s one more, isn’t it?”
3 dots would be the equivalent of an amp setting of 11!
Never listened to Hüsker Dü but thanks for the board game origin story. I always assumed the name was taken from the Scandinavian “husker du” which means “do you remember”.
I think my lasting memory will be of liking the album – but if asked ‘husker du’ about any individual songs, I’m not sure if I’ll remember many of the individual tracks!
A peculiar choice this one. I feel much the same as you about this lot – I need to listen in chunks. I prefer Mould’s solo work and Sugar.
I remember you had good things to say about Copper Blue – and after hearing that Sugar album, I certainly agree!
Yeah, Copper Blue and Beaster are very, very good. I don’t tend to revisit File Under Easy Listening.