Friday, Dec. 21, 2001 | 9:58 a.m.
It was nearly 20 years ago when Rolling Stone proclaimed Soul Asylum "a young foursome with the makings of an Eighties punk rock Who," and Village Voice called the punk rock-turned-alt-rockers "the best live band in the country."
A decade later the Minneapolis band lived up to that promise -- at least commercially -- with the disc "Grave Dancers Union" and its hit, "Runaway Train," which spurred the record to double-platinum status.
And then what happened?
"The reality of rock 'n' roll," said Dave Pirner, the voice behind Soul Asylum, in a recent interview from his home in New Orleans.
The "reality" is that "Grave Dancers" was the band's sales apex. "Let Your Dim Light Shine," the follow-up album, while critically successful, sold only half the copies of its predecessor. And the band's third record with Columbia Records, "Candy From a Stranger," sold even less.
And now Soul Asylum, which performs Saturday at the Aladdin Theatre for the Performing Arts, finds itself shopping for a new record deal.
"It's the exact same premise that we left A&M on" after only two years for Columbia in 1992, Pirner said. "The band made a decision to leave the label. You kind of hit a crossroads where your ability to collaborate with your record label has run its course. They don't know what to do with the band and we don't know what to do with the band either.
"I wouldn't say it ended on a bad note. It had run its course and we felt the direction things could go would not be a direction that we wanted, which would be having somebody tell us how we should make our music (and) something we avoided for this long."
After parting ways with Columbia, Soul Asylum has been on a sort of hiatus, occasionally writing songs for a new album and playing the odd show.
"It's hard to fit in a Britney Spears world and we're trying to do it," Pirner said. "Who knows what people are going to want to hear, but at this point we're pretty much on our own course, and are pretty much determined to do what we want to do regardless of whether or not anyone wants to come along."
His attitude is reflective of his musical upbringing in Minneapolis, a city that lays claim to Bob Dylan, Prince and a post-punk, pre-grunge movement in the '80s that yielded Husker Du, the Replacements and the Suburbs, among many others.
"I'm not like an L.A. kid that wanted to be a rock star. I'm just somebody who's trying to figure out my own art form ..." Piner said, pausing for a moment to realize where the conversation was straying.
"That probably sounds pretentious, but it's just a freakin' rock band. We're out to play and have fun. I think that if we were calculated about it, it wouldn't be very interesting. I think you have to leave yourself vulnerable to whatever comes through your head and not go, 'Oh well, that's not a good idea because somebody somewhere is not going to like it.' "
The group's popularity, however, was not necessarily a negative.
Before the band's breakout, the original foursome lived together in a home in Minneapolis, "the Loud House," after forming Soul Asylum in 1981.
"It was typical dues-paying for 10 years," Pirner said. "It was living like animals and loving what you're doing, but certainly suffering through the conditions in a way that it should be; the way everybody told me that it was going to be."
Not surprisingly then, the success "came as a relief," as it allowed the band to pay off debts, he said, with the biggest break being the video for "Runaway Train," which pushed the single to No. 7 on the charts.
A song about a life out of control and reaching out to someone for help -- "Can you help me remember how to smile? Make it somehow all seem worthwhile" -- Pirner said the video's director "took the word 'runaway' and said, 'I'm thinking of milk cartons.' "
As a result, the video became a public service message about runaway children, flashing the names and pictures of the missing kids, which was fine with Pirner.
"We had this opportunity to cross this boundary that says, the only reason you make a video is as an advertisement for your record. The video had a reaction that took things completely outside of what promotion is all about and crossed into people's lives in a way that was reflective and it made people think," he said. "We recovered a couple of missing children and the whole thing was pretty exciting. It was all good."
What wasn't so good, however, was the grunge label placed on the band. Whether the association was accurate or not, as grunge faded in the mid-1990s, so did Soul Asylum's popularity.
But that never stopped the band, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. In fact, even as contemporaries -- most recently the Smashing Pumpkins -- have called it quits, Soul Asylum soldiers on.
"I think there's a part of being in a rock band where that thought (of breaking up) crosses your mind everyday, almost. There are extreme highs and extreme lows and it can be very trying at times," he said. "But giving up, to me, just feels like giving up."
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