Mudhoney is the redheaded stepchild of grunge. While its fellow bands—Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden—went on to fame and fortune, Mudhoney (like Tad) got left behind, despite the fact that they were arguably the first of the grunge bands and released the great “Touch Me I’m Sick,” a song whose only competitor as greatest grunge tune ever is “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” But they’ve carried on, real troopers, releasing solid records that receive great reviews but inevitably fail to sell. The world, friends, is not fair.
But I never shed any tears, because I was never a grunge fan to begin with. The genre sounded atavistic to me, like a return to the Stone Age past of Grand Funk Railroad, and my tastes ran to noise rock, and bands that didn’t just play great music but put on really fucked-up live shows that bordered on the deranged. I remember hearing “Touch Me I’m Sick” for the first time in a Philly bar and thinking, “This is really something.” Then I left the bar for the stage area and Cows started a riot and I almost got crushed by a giant member of Zen Guerilla (Philly greats!) and forgot all about “Touch Me I’m Sick.”
Hell, I might not have attended the Black Cat show on July 7 at all had Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds not opened for them. I love Kid Congo Powers; he’s my kind of twisted. And his band is tight, tight, tight. But I’d heard great things about Mudhoney—they’re Mark Arm on vocals, Steve Turner on guitar, Dan Peters on drums, and Guy Maddison on bass—and was relatively enthused to see them. It would give me a chance to see if I’d be wrong about grunge all along.
I made it to the Black Cat just in time to hear Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds play their usual outstanding set of originals and covers of The Cramps and The Gun Club, two of Kid’s former bands. Powers was resplendent in a white suit, white shoes, and a blue-and-white striped navy shirt, and ex-Fugazi drummer James Canty was filling in on the skins, but you’d never have known it, the rhythm section was so tight. Kiki Solis is a fucking machine on the baritone guitar and six-string bass, while guitarist Mark Cisneros tossed in some great solos, that is when Kid wasn’t soloing himself.
They wowed the crowd as usual with two perennial Gun Club faves, “Sex Beat”—done in double time—and “She’s Like Heroin to Me,” and also played one of my favorite tunes, the hilariously macabre, “I Found a Peanut.” They also tossed in the frenetic Cramps tune “Garbageman,” which boasted an ominous bass riff by Solis and a wonderful demonstration of the potential psychedelic effects of a properly distorted guitar.
“Haunted Head” was appropriately ghastly, and featured a fuzz guitar that surpassed human understanding. “Are you high or are you dead?” asked Powers, before breaking into the great surf-noir instrumental “The Rad Lord’s Return.” The Phyllis Diller-inspired “Killer Diller” featured a great beat and Powers singing, “Rock and roll is here to stay,” which he proved beyond all doubt on the hard-charging “I Don’t Like,” on which the charismatic Powers flailed about, the consummate performer and Rad Lord truly returned. “Su Su” featured lots of distorted guitar, while Powers sang the tune in a hypnotic voice. As for “Loud and Proud” I don’t know how to describe it, except that it boasted an infectious groove that made you want to do the frug, which I think is a dance. The band closed the set with “Bubble Trouble,” another far-freaking-out instrumental guaranteed to get you up on your hind legs and motorvatin’.
Mudhoney then took the stage and what can I say? I didn’t like them. Thought Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds blew them off the stage. They more or less confirmed my bias against grunge, namely that it was hard rock in a flannel shirt. I can state several reasons why I wasn’t impressed: Mark Arm had an undistinguished voice and zero stage presence, too many of their songs sounded the same, and Steve Turner didn’t particularly move me with his guitar playing. In fact the whole band lacked stage presence; they all kinda stood still, playing their instruments, like flannel statues.
Anyway, they opened with the crowd-pleaser “Suck You Dry,” the highlight of which was a big distorted bass and a cool solo by Turner. “You Got It” slowly increased in volume and featured a happening guitar opening, but the song itself just sorta laid there, waiting for somebody or something to animate it. I liked “I Like It Small” because it was perkier than your average Mudhoney tune, and because Arm did more talking than singing; besides, how can a song that references both G.G. Allin and orgies go wrong? “Oblivion (Symbol for Infinity)” opened on a slow note, and featured a girl in a wheelchair who “Sang the shit out of ‘Dancing Queen,” and while I didn’t particularly like the melody I gave the song a thumbs up for interesting vocal content.
“Inside Job” was catchy and fast-paced and I liked it, what with Arm repeatedly howling, “It takes an inside job/To make it easy/When it’s hard.” I have no idea what that means, but while I was mulling it over Mudhoney broke into “Blinding Sun,” which did nothing for me except show off Arm’s powerful but not all that unique vocals. I’ll tell you a song I really did like—“1995,” which was basically a rip-off of Iggy and the Stooges, “1970,” right down to the “another year for you and me.” The guitar was fuzzed to the max, and Arm kept accusingly crying, “What are you looking at?” It was a good one, as was “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More,” which also dealt in maximum distortion and kinda sounded like a song Alice Cooper wrote but forgot about and left in a dressing room somewhere, where Mudhoney discovered it and turned it into pay dirt. Arm’s sweet young thing is puking into the toilet and he’s screaming like he’s been handed the responsibility for cleaning up the mess.
“Flat Out Fucked” was one very up-tempo tune that did absolutely nothing for me, which is shocking because how can you possibly go wrong with a song title like that? Flagship anthem “Touch Me I’m Sick”—which followed the forgettable “Judgment, Rage, Reputation and Thyme”—set the audience off, and sounded every bit as twisted as it did the first time I heard it all those years ago in that Philly bar. “What To Do With the Neutral” was a slow starter that perpetually threatened to explode, and posed an existential dilemma—it’s good to accentuate the positive, says Arm, and to reject the negative, but what is one to do with the neutral? He finally goes to that great philosopher Billy Preston for advice, but Preston just tells him that nothing from nothing leaves nothing, and Arm isn’t satisfied. Cool song.
“I’m Now” was a semi-winner, with Arm once again coming through with some cool lyrics, this time namedropping The Beverly Hillbillies. “The Final Course” filled the space between “I’m Now” and Mudhoney’s cover of the Angry Samoans’ classic, “You Stupid Asshole.” It takes real chutzpah to cover a song by the great Angry Samoans, but Mudhoney pulled it off, what with Arm introducing the tune as “a little rock ballad for everybody.” I loved the way he turned in the middle of the tune and blandly said, “Guitar” as a cue for Turner to take a solo. Indeed, his affected boredom at that moment was possibly the highlight of my night.
Something happened in the middle of the set that made the later songs more interesting than the ones that had come before them. Namely Arm put down the guitar, and focused on screaming. It was definitely evident in “Chardonnay,” a rush of pure adrenaline and a channel of pure rage for Arm, who kept singing, “I hate you Chardonnay!” over and over, only to be followed by a guitar solo that definitely won me over. On “The Only Son of the Widow From Nain” the band made a big din, and I liked it; Arm’s defiance was bracing, and Turner really kicked keister on guitar. I love the line, “Fucking Lazarus got all the fame,” and the way Arm repeated, “I’m coming back/I’m coming back/I’m coming back/For more!”
“Into the Drink” had a garage feel to it, but left me cold, “Here Comes Sickness” ditto. The latter featured a chorus I didn’t like and lyrics that helped sink the tune, which at least featured some great distorted guitar. “When Tomorrow Hits” started slowly, with Arm singing quietly as the song turned into a drone, but not a particularly captivating one. It was only when the guitar kicked in that things got interesting, but the song’s melody did nothing for me and I wrote it off as a complete wash. Show closer “In ‘n’ Out of Grace” was another crowd pleaser, and Mudhoney blew the audience out of its shoes with what amounts to one of grunge’s half-dozen best songs. Arm was frenzied, Turner cranked out one humdinger of a riff, and the band went out on an up note, one that included some frenetic free-jamming that finally led back to Arm’s vocal caterwaul.
I wish I could say Mudhoney changed my mind about grunge, but in the end they just confirmed it. The band is solid, and they have some excellent songs, but my overall impression while watching them was indifference bordering on boredom. I know they have their fans—people who will tell you Mudhoney was the best that grunge had to offer—and they might be right. But I felt no excitement, no euphoria; I spent more time wondering just how many songs they’d play before I could get out of there. And that’s no recommendation, either of Mudhoney or grunge. Indeed, my highlight of the evening was meeting Melanie Streko of the prominent stoner rock label Meteorcity Records, who kindly helped me to identify some of the songs. Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, on the other hand, made me happy like they always do. And is that too much to ask for? A little happiness? To hell with flannel, says I; flamboyance tops it every time.
