Grunge Jokesters
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"
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.