[ATTENDED: October 27, 2023] Mudhoney
I have never really been much of a Mudhoney fan. I like “Touch Me, I’m Sick” and I have a couple of their early records but I never really listen to them. Their music was pretty abrasive and didn’t really have any joy for me.
And yet I acknowledge that they are the progenitors of the whole scene that I loved so much.
Nirvana may have been the band that put an entire generation in flannel, and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both sold a lot more records, but Mudhoney were truly the band that made the ’90s grunge rock movement possible. Mudhoney were the first real success story for Sub Pop Records; their music laid the groundwork for the movement that would (briefly) make Seattle, Washington, the new capital of the rock & roll universe. They took the sweat-soaked and beer-fueled mixture of heavy metal muscle, punk attitude, and garage rock primitivism that would become known as “grunge” to the hipster audience for the first time with early releases like 1988’s Superfuzz Bigmuff and 1989’s Mudhoney, and those fans would in turn sell it to a mass audience ready for something new. Mudhoney never scored the big payday some of their old running buddies did, though they did land a major-label deal that produced several strong albums, especially 1995’s My Brother the Cow and 1998’s Tomorrow Hit Today. Their importance on the Seattle scene cannot be underestimated, and their body of work — big, loud, purposefully sloppy, a little bit menacing, and even more funny — has stood the test of time better than their well-known colleagues.
They are also one of the few bands from that scene (besides Melvins, who I also didn’t really like) who stayed around and kept making music. So what do I know?
The crowd was rowdy but not very big.
When the band came out on stage, they shone the album cover of Superfuzz Big Muff on the screen behind them. And I soon learned that they showed whatever album each song was from, which was kind of cool. (more…)
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