By Bill Lynch
For The Charleston Gazette

Bob Mould, one of the trailblazers of alternative rock, bring his latest to the Rosewood Theatre in Morgantown at 9:30 p.m. today. Mould, who played with '80s post-punk band Husker Du and '90s punk/pop band Sugar, is best known as an independent innovator, who embraces change and experimentation.

Q: So, let's just get it out of the way: What about the new album?

A: "Body of Song" has been in the works for a couple of years. It was going to be released in 2002. I spent a lot of time on it then shelved it. It just didn't feel right. About a year back, I sort of came back to the electric guitar, started writing with it and began integrating some of those songs with it.

Q: You've worked with acoustic guitars, electric guitars and electronic. Is this about expanding or evolving?

A: I feel more comfortable working with all the different forms at once. For me, it's an everyday process. I wake up and some days I pick up an acoustic guitar. Some days it's the electric or the bass. I always work in the computer.

Q: What's your take on the impact of technology in music?

A: The one thing that technology has done is that it's shifted from people in unison creating a continuous performance to the best of their ability to this other form where I can record everything I do. It's all still real, but it can be time-shifted, key-shifted and tempo-shifted to fit. The technology is there to just capture and document, then later create this greater work.

Q: Yeah, but you can't repeat it live, can you?

A: That's the line between the purists and the experimentalists. The purists maintain that this kind of stuff doesn't hold integrity. It's not Robert Johnson. It's not Phil Ochs. It's not whoever ... But times change. I understand the need for purity, but I'm someone who is curious.

Q: Like a lot of artists, you've embraced the computer and maintain a blog. Why blog?


A: Blogging is the future. If there's a new way to connect with people, that's relatively free, I'll certainly take advantage of it.

Q: What were you hoping to achieve?

A: It's funny. I started it originally to get the words moving again. In '03, I wasn't writing a lot. I was spending a lot of time on the computer. Somewhere along the way, I lost the ability to string words together. I lost the poetry. The blog was a discipline that forced me to keep the words going. It helped me get back onto the printed page or back into text.


ONLINE:

www.bobmould.com

For more from this interview with Bob Mould, see Bill Lynch's gazzblog "Grossly Underpaid" at thegazz.com.

If you go

Bob Mould performs at 9:30 p.m. today at the Rosewood Theatre in Morgantown. Tickets, $16 at the door. See www.rosewoodtheatre.com or call (866) 468-7619.