Hüsker Dü were in limbo in 1985. Their relationship with SST was starting to sour after the legendary Twin Cities band’s release of New Day Rising, and by the end of the year they were in talks with major labels (September’s Flip Your Wig stayed with Greg Ginn’s label, but Warner swept in soon after). Now, five live recordings from the top of 85, split between those aforementioned albums, were unearthed and freshened up by the archival titans at Numero Group, who also put out the group’s 2017 box set Savage Young Dü.

Don’t expect a bootleg. The hometown show at Minneapolis venue First Avenue was recorded to 24-track tape for an intended release that never came to fruition. Jan. 30, First Ave Pt. 1 highlights the band’s brash, pop-pushing punk, proving that good things come in threes. Their raw presence surely silenced a few naysayers who, at the time, thought their melodic inclinations and genre bleed pointed towards a “commercial” sound. Some people don’t know what they’ve got until it’s gone … and then recovered by the label that introduced Duster to Gen Z.