When they make the TV miniseries about the rise and fall of the Seattle

music scene in the 1990s, Mudhoney will be something of a glorified blip,

a cameo presence in the background of all the scenes featuring St. Kurt

and Lord Eddie. Yet Mudhoney exists within the (cough) "grunge" milieu

primarily for reasons of geography alone. The group's raucous songs were

closer to the sozzled glory of the Replacements than the opiated gloom

of their more celebrated neighbors, and their role within the kingdom

(Kingdome?) was more akin to court jesters observing the madness than

pretenders to the throne.

Why all the past tense? Well, although they adamantly insist they haven't

broken up, Mudhoney's bassist, Matt Lukin, has officially "retired," and

this new double-CD anthology, March to Fuzz, feels like nothing

if not a fitting coda to a career spent in close proximity to greatness.

Mudhoney's charm was a very specific and decidedly unmarketable one,

without the benefit of the leonine charisma of a Chris Cornell or the

tortured junkie chic of a Layne Staley to help rocket them up the charts.

Mark Arm's adenoidal vocals come from the Neil Young/J. Mascis School of

Acquired Tastes, while guitarist Steve Turner, drummer Dan Peters and

Lukin, though undoubtedly talented, never create a song that couldn't be

played just as effectively after ingesting, say, a case of beer. Suffice

to say that if this is indeed Mudhoney's swan song, it's a glorious one

— a noisy reminder to all of us who always took them for granted.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this 52-song collection is how smoothly

the whole thing goes down, how easily one bottom-heavy rave-up chugs into

the next. Covering the gamut from the group's early Sub Pop singles through

five LPs and two EPs, as well as odds and sods, the collection provides

a perfect overview of Mudhoney's 12-year career. The first disc contains

all the usual suspects, including the essential "Touch Me I'm Sick"

(RealAudio

excerpt), "I Have to Laugh" (RealAudio

excerpt) and the rollicking "Good Enough" (RealAudio

excerpt). Also present and accounted for is the infamous "Into

Yer Shtik," a scathing attack on the rock star trip that infected post-Cobain

Seattle. With Arm spitting lines such as, "Predictable or just plain dull/

Why don't you blow your brains out, too?," the song is, quite simply, what

bile sounds like.

Ultimately, the 22 "best of" tracks prove that what Mudhoney may have

lacked in diversity or experimentation is more than made up for with a

workmanlike consistency that you can set your watch to. Each one boasts

Turner's distinctive, thick, warm fuzz-guitar tone; no Unplugged

for these guys. Even presented out of chronological order, the songs

maintain a certain uniformity: "When Tomorrow Hits," the sludgy anthem

from the band's eponymous 1989 debut, sounds perfectly at home beside the

sludgy anthem "Beneath the Valley of the Underdog," from 1998's

not-so-coincidentally-titled Tomorrow Hit Today.

The 30 "rarities" on disc two consist of various cast-offs, soundtrack

contributions and semi-obscure punk covers. Among the tracks are a couple

of songs that actually may be as close as the band ever got to "hits."

Thanks to its inclusion on the "Singles" soundtrack, "Overblown" —

yet another caustic ode to the music industry's rape and pillage of Seattle

— is, ironically, one of the band's most widely known songs. The

ebullient cover of Elvis Costello's "Pump it Up," from the P.C.U.

soundtrack is another highlight. More indicative of this half of the

collection, though, are gritty lo-fi recordings of hardcore songs such

as Black Flag's "Fix Me," the Angry Samoans' "You Stupid Asshole" and

Void's "Dehumanized."

Packed with plenty of photos as well as song-by-song commentary and

reminiscences from Arm and Turner, March to Fuzz is a must-have

for neophytes and completists alike. From top to bottom, it shows off the

distinctive sense of humor that separated this band from its dour but

better-known Seattle brethren. Unfortunately, like many good things,

Mudhoney may have had to go away before we could realize just how much

we needed them.