--- description: There's a really dumb novelty song called "I'm My Own Grandpa" that basically says due to various genealogical convolutions a man can somehow be his... title: Sugar's Copper Blue Reissued: 20th Anniversary of Bob Mould's Groundbreaking Album image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltecb589a223d7a02d/698a8fd0db29871a822716a9/600_ent_sugarband_0722.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Sugar's Copper Blue Reissued: 20th Anniversary of Bob Mould's Groundbreaking Album by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Jul 24, 2012 2:00 PM CUT  LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 01: Bob Mould performs the entire album 'Copper Blue' of his former band Sugar, released in 1992, on stage at Shepherds Bush Empire on June 1, 2012 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Christie Goodwin/Redferns via Getty Images) LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - JUNE 01: Bob Mould performs the entire album 'Copper Blue' of his former band Sugar, released in 1992, on stage at Shepherds Bush Empire on June 1, 2012 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo by Christie Goodwin/Redferns via Getty Images)Redferns via Getty Images—2012 Christie Goodwin by [TIME Staff](/author/time-staff/) Jul 24, 2012 2:00 PM CUT There’s a really dumb novelty song called “I’m My Own Grandpa” that basically says due to various genealogical convolutions a man can somehow be his own grandpa. Bob Mould can probably relate. Mould laid down the roots of modern indie rock in the ’80s with his band Hüsker Dü. The fiery dirty punk torch Hüsker Dü ignited was passed to Nirvana, among other newly anointed grunge bands that flamed bright in the early ’90s musical revolution. Nirvana then passed the torch right back to Mould who infused his new band, Sugar, with a grunge-inflected pop punk sound scarcely heard before 1992, the year that _Copper Blue_ was initially unleashed on the public. The album is back in stores today, waiting to be discovered by a generation of music lovers raised on the offspring of Sugar’s glaringly brilliant power pop. Bands like Green Day, Gaslight Anthem and The Killers all owe a musical debt to Sugar and the melodic, catchy pop rock that they laid forth in the early ’90s. The reissue isn’t just for new fans, though. The deluxe CD packaging is filled with live performances and the _Beaster_ EP, meaning that there really is something for everyone. (**MORE**: [The Rolling Stones, By the Numbers: Celebrating 50 Years Since They ‘Start It Up’](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/12/the-rolling-stones-by-the-numbers-celebrating-50-years-since-they-start-it-up/ "undefined")) It could be easy to brush off the Sugar reissue as a relic of ’90s nostalgia, but that act would ignore the lasting impact of Bob Mould’s band on the musical landscape. From the first note of _Copper Blue_, the album was revelatory. “The Act We Act” kicks off the record with a sludgy guitar introduction that draws the listener in before opening up into something that was a rarity in early ’90s rock: a toe-tapping melody. The album’s mesmerizing combination of power pop interlaced with grinding guitar work, relentless bass and drum lines, and Mould’s charged lyrics were a welcome evolution of rock. The album as a whole was — and is — nearly perfect, which is why it managed to beat out R.E.M.’s _Automatic for the People_ and PJ Harvey’s _Dry_ to be named NME’s album of the year. An album is comprised of individual tracks that create the album’s story. The songs on _Copper Blue_ are incomparable for the era. When you think ’90s sound, you may not know it, but you are thinking Sugar. This isn’t to imply that the album sounds dated in any way. Rather it captures a musical moment so succinctly that pressing play is like an instantaneous trip through time without the bathetic highs and lows of a stroll down memory lane. As [Mould says](http://filtermagazine.com/index.php/exclusives/entry/filter%5F47%5Fyou%5Fshould%5Falready%5Fknow%5Fsugars%5Fcopper%5Fblue/ "undefined"), “It’s one of those records that sounds like it’s 20 years old; it sounds like it’s 50 years old; it sounds like it was made last week.” Mould [claims](http://filtermagazine.com/index.php/exclusives/entry/filter%5F47%5Fyou%5Fshould%5Falready%5Fknow%5Fsugars%5Fcopper%5Fblue/ "undefined") he “got lucky” with the album, but that’s only accurate if “luck” comes from years spent slaving away in the trenches where musical trailblazers craft the sounds of tomorrow far from the spotlight. His band, Hüsker Dü, along with fellow Minneapolis rockers The Replacements, staged a quiet and frequently drunken, rock n’ roll revolution that helped set the seismic shifts in motion that would allow Nirvana to explode onto the scene a decade later. Hüsker Dü generated some of the best rock music ever, crafting intense emotional songs set to blistering melodies. They were songs that helped slowly move the musical conversation towards the grunge era. In an interview with [The Quietus](http://thequietus.com/articles/08937-sugar-copper-blue-bob-mould-interview "undefined"), Mould said, “Hüsker Dü was like a very, very fast jet plane that never really touched down and it didn’t have a lot of grounding to it and that was the beauty of that sound.” And like a jet, the live-fast band crashed hard in the late ’80s, burning out in a whirl of ambition, attitude and addiction. After drudging away for years on the outskirts of the mainstream, Hüsker Dü was signed to Warner Bros., but failed to crossover to popular success. The band imploded, and by 1991 Mould was without a label or management, but with the mystique of indie rock royalty and hard-earned cred intact. (**MORE:** [Nas Returns to Form with _Life Is Good_](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/20/nas-returns-to-form-with-life-is-good/ "undefined")) He put out two darkly emotive yet exhaustingly atmospheric albums, _Workbook_ (1989) and _Black Sheets Of Rain_ (1990) and toured seemingly incessantly, playing with Dinosaur Jr. and hitting the festival circuit, dragging his 12-string guitar on stage between sets by Sonic Youth and the still relatively unknown act Nirvana. Then came 1991 when The Pixies were falling apart, the D.C. music scene was throwing out the politically charged punk of Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses, riot grrl rock was growing, and Nirvana’s _Nevermind_ hit hard. The album went to number one on the Billboard charts, bringing emotionally raw grungy rock to the masses, whether the band wanted it to or not. It was then that Mould decided he needed a band to fully flesh out the songs he had been writing. He reached out to bassist David Barbe and to drummer Malcolm Travis and the trio drifted into a studio in early 1992\. They realized they had accidentally formed a band when they were offered a slot at a club after another act fell through. They chose a name and Sugar was born. In the studio, the new group laid down the ten tracks that made up _Copper Blue_ along with a number of songs that would be released in 1993 as their _Beaster_ EP. When their album hit shelves in the fall of 1992, it was an alternative radio hit that earned Mould and co. the much sought-after mainstream success. While Sugar was relatively new to the musical scene, there is no doubt that Mould was a seasoned pro. _Copper Blue_ is a resoundingly mature album built from the ground up on a solid framework of well thought out melodic structures. For Hüsker Dü fans, _Copper Blue_ was in many ways the ultimate Hüsker Dü album. While Mould stepped into Hüsker drummer Grant Hart’s pop-punk song-crafting shoes, it was wildly effective, as if Mould had been taking notes all along. And in some ways Sugar was also antithetic to the rock-n-roll-never-dies attitude that infected Hüsker Dü. The group relies on contemplative song writing, forgoing Hüsker’s brashness for strategic poignant musical boldness. Hüsker Dü could never have written “Hoover Dam” with its ’60s- to ’80s-era hopping sound, let alone the haunting “The Slim,” a song that tackled the AIDS crisis with songwriting that lays a visceral punch, as Mould wails, “When you left with your death/ I felt empty when I looked back/ On my pillow/ What you used to say… I’m left behind.” (**MORE**: [Coachella in the Caribbean: Music Festival Cruise Announced](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/18/coachella-in-the-caribbean-music-festival-cruise-announced/ "undefined")) Each of the album’s ten songs is uniquely engaging, from the first strains of “The Act We Act” to the final bars of “Man on the Moon.” Mould and his bandmates David Barbe and Malcolm Travis have a knack for matching lyrics to music, the one informing the other. “Hoover Dam” starts with a Beach Boys-inspired carousel of tinkling notes before sweeping you over the edge and plunging you into the blaring guitars and drums at the heart of the song. Floating like mist over the top of the cataract is an ’80s-esque keyboard that saves the track from any hint of ponderousness. “Helpless” pairs Travis’s huge drums with Barbe’s descending bassline and Mould’s relentless wall-of-noise guitar riffs, which all add to the sense of helplessness and confusion at the root of the song. “Changes” shows the band knee-deep in sonic experimentation, pairing an almost-sweet melody with a noisily cascading guitar track, the result being a composition that is nearly impossible not to bob along to. The emotion in the songs brings you to the brink of tears as Mould makes a relentless and heartfelt plea to make some changes. It’s a sentiment that everyone and anyone can relate to. It’s indicative of Mould’s ability to be almost entirely introspective while also tapping into a universal emotion. It also explains some of the album’s timelessness. The subjects are archetypal and unchanging: love, loss, identity and restlessness are all explored with an intensity of emotion in a hail of guitar-fueled glory. In short, it never gets old. While blazing their own trail and crafting what is now considered the quintessential ’90s sound, there are clear echoes of other bands in Sugar’s lexicon. “A Good Idea” sounds like it could have been plucked off of The Pixies’ _Doolittle_. Hanging out with Dinosaur Jr. also made an indelible impression on Mould’s music with J. Mascis’ trademark fuzzed-out guitar making an appearance on several tracks, including “A Good Idea.” A meandering and lush guitar arrangement puts “Man on the Moon” squarely into My Bloody Valentine territory a year after the band’s peerless album _Loveless_ came out. Mould himself said that when he heard _Loveless_, he was simply blown away. “I thought I had a great bunch of songs to go into the studio with but when I heard that record I was like, “Uh, oh! I’ve really got to step it up here!” he told [The Quietus](http://thequietus.com/articles/08937-sugar-copper-blue-bob-mould-interview "undefined"). The kick in the pants is evident in the rich orchestration and carefully overlayed arrangements that pervade _Copper Blue_. While _Loveless_ is far from a pop punk album, it’s an effect that works well in the genre, offering a depth of sound that takes Sugar’s songs from ditties to powerful and memorable anthems. Sugar followed their success with their EP, _Beaster_, which is included in the newly reissued deluxe edition of _Copper Blue_, as well as a full-length album _File Under: Easy Listening_ in 1994\. _Beaster_ was culled from the same apocryphal crop of some 30 songs that Mould drafted before finalizing the track listing on _Copper Blue._ The EP is cut from the same cloth as it’s sire, and blasts out of the gate at a frenetic pace amping up the energy for each of the six songs. The effect is mesmerizing, but the requisite short length of the EP gives the songs no room to breathe and ends up feeling a touch claustrophobic. _File Under: Easy Listening_ is _Copper Blue_‘s true heir. The songs on the album, which kicks off with a sizzling opener, “The Gift,” offer listeners a dizzying blend of fiery, powerful pop punk. Perhaps due to their mainstream alterna-rock success, or maybe because the band was a few years older and simply less angst-filled, _File Under_ has less of an edge than _Copper Blue_, which makes it somewhat less satisfying. Mould has also written many astounding solo albums, filled with soul-searching anthems and speaker-shattering power pop songs, that are well worth exploring. But if you’re only going to add one album to your collection, it has to be _Copper Blue_. **MORE**: [Frank Ocean Pours His Heart Out on _Channel Orange_: Album Review](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/10/frank-ocean-channelorange-review/ "undefined") **MORE:** [Dirty Projectors Hit a Serious Emotional Stride on ](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/09/dirty-projectors-hit-a-serious-emotional-stride-on-swing-lo-magellan/ "undefined")[_Swing Lo Magellan_](http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/09/dirty-projectors-hit-a-serious-emotional-stride-on-swing-lo-magellan/ "undefined") The Qbar was always an awkward fit in the nightlife of Sevastopol. It was the only place in the Ukrainian city to host the occasional drag show, and certainly the only place where the all-male waitstaff wore booty shorts beneath their aprons. In other parts of Europe, and even many cities in mainland Ukraine, the camp décor would have raised few eyebrows. But Sevastopol is a macho place. It houses the Russian Black Sea naval fleet, and its streets are studded with the homes and memorials of veterans from Russian wars going back to the 18th century. So even before Russia decided in March of this year to annex the city from Ukraine along with the rest of the Crimean peninsula, the locals, both Russian and Ukrainian, looked at the Qbar with a bit of suspicion. “For a long time they were afraid,” says Yegor Guskov, who ran the bar along with his partner, Bogdan Zinchenko, since it opened in 2007\. Mostly out of a fear of the unfamiliar, the Ukrainian officials who worked next door at City Hall were “worried at first that someone would fondle them if they came inside,” he says. “But then they realized it was safe, and the food is really good. So they started coming to eat.” By day the bar would be full of dowdy bureaucrats on their lunch breaks; by night it was packed with lithe young men and women taking Sambuca shots and dancing to Britney Spears. It filled a niche, and business prospered. But like a lot of things about life in Sevastopol, all of that changed after the Russian annexation. In response to this year’s pro-Western revolution in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to occupy the region of Crimea, many of them fanning out from the Russian naval base in Sevastopol. The invasion quickly helped install a new set of leaders in the region, who organized a slipshod referendum to call for Crimea to secede from Ukraine. When the vote passed with an overwhelming majority – most of Crimea’s residents are ethnic Russians – Putin signed a decree absorbing the peninsula into the Russian Federation. Its two million citizens thus found themselves living under Russian law. For the gay community in Crimea, the most worrying piece of legislation was the Russian ban on “homosexual propaganda,” which Putin signed in 2012\. Although the law is billed as an effort to protect Russian children from learning about “non-traditional sexual relationships,” advocates say the law encourages homophobia, signaling to Russians that gays are somehow inferior and should not be allowed to insist on their equality in public. Since March, the new leaders of Crimea have embraced these principles with gusto. The head of the regional government, Sergei Aksyonov, said that the West’s liberal attitude toward gay rights would be “intolerable and unacceptable” on his peninsula during a meeting with his ministers last month. “In Crimea we don’t welcome such people, we don’t need them,” he said, referring to homosexuals. If they ever try to stage a pride parade or any other public events, Aksyonov warned that the local police and paramilitary forces would “take three minutes to clarify what \[sexual\] orientation is right.” That sort of discrimination began to hit home for the Qbar in April, after Moscow appointed a retired officer of the Black Sea fleet to serve as the acting head of Sevastopol. Through their patrons from City Hall, the bar’s owners learned that “someone had whispered to the new leadership that they have a gay bar sitting right underneath them,” says Guskov. A series of fire and tax inspections followed, hitting the bar with fines and official reprimands that made its managers understand they weren’t welcome anymore. At first they tried some cosmetic remedies. They removed the Ukrainian-language sign from their door and made the waiters put on trousers instead of their trademark denim shorts. They even took the letter Q out of the name of the bar, Guskov says, because the local officials said it looked like a symbol for sodomy. “We changed the format,” he says. “We tried to make it into a normal eatery.” But none of that made them feel safe in the city they call home. Not only are the pair among the most open of Sevastopol’s chronically closeted gays, but Guskov and Zinchenko have a two-year-old son, Timur, from a surrogate mother. The chance that some technocrat could question their custody of Timur, plus their desire to have more children, convinced them that it was time to leave Crimea behind. In August, they joined the quiet stream of émigrés – thousands of them, even by conservative estimates – who have left the peninsula and moved to mainland Ukraine since the annexation. The largest groups have been from Crimea’s ethnic minorities, primarily Muslim Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians, who have both raised alarms over repression and discrimination since their towns and cities became a part of Russia. But the region's gay men and women have also been moving away, as much out of protest at the annexation as out of a fear of becoming the targets of a state-backed campaign of homophobia. Guskov believes that campaign won't be long in coming. “When it became clear that Russia needs to prepare for isolation from Europe, it needed to smear the Europeans somehow, and the simplest is to spread this idea of perverted, decadent Gayropeans,” he says, using the derogatory term for Europeans that has entered the Russian vernacular - CONFUSED. IS THIS A TRANSLATION? OR RUSSIANS WOULD SAY GAYROPEANS? BEST TO QUOTE ACTUAL TERM. “So this witch hunt at home is needed as a tool to smear opponents abroad,” he says. In Crimea, adds Zinchenko, the warning signs are easy to see. If elderly neighbors were happy before to coddle Timur and offer his parents advice on how to raise him, now the Soviet tradition of the "donos" – denouncing an acquaintance to the police – has started to return, he says. “People are writing these accusations against their neighbors just to show how patriotic they are, how loyal,” he says. “These are all signals for us. They show that we can become a target.” That suspicion is what forced Guskov and Zinchenko to give up their business in Sevastopol, pack up their things and moved to Kiev. Along the way, the New York City-based photographer Misha Friedman joined them to document their journey, which he felt was emblematic of the transformation that Crimea, and the rest of Ukraine, have undergone since the annexation. “They just struck me as a normal happy family,” the photographer says. “They just got caught up in the politics of bigotry.” As they make their new home in the capital, they’re thinking of opening up a new Qbar, which will have to deal with a lot more competition in Kiev’s vibrant gay scene. But this seems like a minor worry compared to the risks they faced in the new Sevastopol. Yegor Guskov and Bogdan Zinchenko, who owned a gay bar in Sebastopol, feared for their business — and their family ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121805/sugars-copper-blue-reissued-20th-anniversary-of-bob-moulds-groundbreaking-album/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121805/sugars-copper-blue-reissued-20th-anniversary-of-bob-moulds-groundbreaking-album/"},"headline":"Sugar's Copper Blue Reissued: 20th Anniversary of Bob Mould's Groundbreaking Album","datePublished":"2012-07-24T14:00:09.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T06:04:52.289Z","description":"There's a really dumb novelty song called \"I'm My Own Grandpa\" that basically says due to various genealogical convolutions a man can somehow be his...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7121805/sugars-copper-blue-reissued-20th-anniversary-of-bob-moulds-groundbreaking-album/","keywords":["Sugar"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltecb589a223d7a02d/698a8fd0db29871a822716a9/600_ent_sugarband_0722.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltecb589a223d7a02d/698a8fd0db29871a822716a9/600_ent_sugarband_0722.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Bob Mould & Cloud Nothings Perform At Shepherds Bush Empire","caption":"Bob Mould & Cloud Nothings Perform At Shepherds Bush Empire","creditText":"Redferns via Getty Images—2012 Christie Goodwin","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7121805/sugars-copper-blue-reissued-20th-anniversary-of-bob-moulds-groundbreaking-album/","name":"Sugar's Copper Blue Reissued: 20th Anniversary of Bob Mould's Groundbreaking Album"}}]}] ```