My Karl Mueller Story

Amsterdam before noon always reminds of the feeling you have when you wake up and find your house trashed and people sleeping on your couch the night after a great party. There is gray haze that lifts around noon, when people start to think about doing whatever it is they do, again. I am sure there are people in Amsterdam who go to work in the morning and go home to their families at night. I’ve never seen those Dutch people; then again, I don’t go looking for them.

Riding the train in from Amersfoort with my friend Ryan and his sister Andrea my stomach is spinning and contorting inside my torso. I try to point my green nauseous head towards the empty seats in front of me and just focus on a single spot and wait out the ride.

We walk from the train station towards where we think the Bulldog is. Ryan and I desperately need something to fill our legs with blood again. We buy a couple tall cans of beer from a small, dirty store and find some chairs set out in front of a café that has not opened yet. It is 10:30 in the morning and the three of us discuss what to do for the day. Ryan and I are nursing our morning beer and Andy is looking at us with bewilderment.

A giant is walking down the street towards where we are sitting. He is over six feet tall and at least 250 pounds. He has wild unkempt hair like licking flames of the sun trying to escape his skull. He has a beard and wears dirty, grungy clothes: this is 1994. He is obviously American and he walks with determination holding a stack of green postcard size paper. As he walks by the table where we sit he lays one sheet of the green paper down. We all watch him walk away and then our eyes float toward the green piece of paper. We, in unison, look at the paper, look at each other, and then back at the paper.

“Does that say what I think it does?” I ask.

“Yeah. Holy Shit!” Ryan exclaims.

Printed on the paper was a picture of four scruffy Minnesota grunge guys and in print it said: SOUL ASYLUM / The Paradiso / Amsterdam.

Ten hours later the three of us are drinking warm German beer and smoking cigarettes inside a beautiful converted church with stain glass windows and elaborate, articulate woodwork. We stand stage right directly in front of where the bass player is set up.

The band walks out and fills the church with feedback and the crowd goes silent, attentive, and ready to erupt. Just when the feedback reaches such intensity that you swear you can actually hear your heart vibrating sympathetic tones: the band falls into Somebody to Shove.

This is the first of many times I would see Soul Asylum perform. They rock for two hours and the Dutch kids are flying all over the place. This is the politest moshing and stage-diving I have ever seen. After the final encore, there is a scramble for anything left on the stage such as set lists and picks and drumsticks. Failing to procure any of that stuff, Ryan finds Karl Mueller’s can of Heineken, still one-third full. The three of us finish it off and Ryan carries it with him on the train back to Amersfoort.

He proudly displayed that can in his dorm room until the day we left Europe. There were many nights listening to Put the Bone In on repeat and singing along, drunkenly, merrily.

The music scene of Minneapolis was one of the reasons I moved to Minneapolis three years later. I can’t make any grand conclusions about Karl’s life. I can’t make any knowledgeable statements about what Karl Mueller meant to the scene. However, I can say that Soul Asylum is legendary in this town and when I think of Soul Asylum, I think of that empty green Heineken can carried from continent to continent and from coast to coast. I remember my first weekend in Minnesota, standing for hours in the cold outside the 400 bar, waiting to see them play. I remember the Thanksgiving eve shows and walking home to Loring Park drunk as hell and being hung-over as I tried to keep the turkey and stuffing down the next day. These are tremendous memories for me. Thank you Soul Asylum for being there, and thanks for the beer Karl.