Originally Posted by sonicl
Mudhoney has never behaved like other rock bands. They were the one of the first Seattle bands to capture national attention but one of the last to jump to a major label. As long hair and "grunge fashion" (read: flannel and thrift shop clothes) became the wardrobe of choice for rock stars, Mudhoney were cutting their hair. While other bands advertised their private angst, Mudhoney interviews were gleeful snarkfests. Rather than follow the same endless treadmill as other bands, Mudhoney would take a year or two off to go back to school or play in innumerable side bands. And perhaps most remarkably, Mudhoney has remained together after most of their peers have faded.
Mudhoney's story begins in 1983 when singer/guitarist Mark Arm was introduced to guitarist Steve Turner by a mutual friend, Alex Shumway. Arm was majoring in English at the University of Washington and playing in a band called Mr. Epp and the Calculations (named for a high school math teacher). Turner would join Mr. Epp for the group's final months. Arm, Shumway, and Turner then teamed up with a Montana transplant named Jeff Ament and a classmate of Turner's named Stone Gossard to form Green River. Turner left after 1985's Come on Down (Homestead), and Green River continued with replacement Bruce Fairweather, releasing an EP, Dry as a Bone, and an album, Rehab Doll, on a local label called Sub Pop.
When Green River called it a day in 1987, Arm and Turner form Mudhoney with bassist Matt Lukin (former Melvins bassist and inspiration for the Pearl Jam song of the same name) and drummer Dan Peters while Gossard and Ament would wind up as founders of another legendary Seattle combo, Pearl Jam itself. Within months of starting out, Mudhoney emerged as standard-bearers for the fertile Seattle music scene, touring Europe and being interviewed by English rock journalists. After 1991's Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, the band jumped from Sub Pop to Warner Brothers, releasing three albums (the tepid Piece of Cake and the excellent My Brother the Cow and Tomorrow Hit Today).
During all this time, the members played in all kinds of outside bands: the Thrown-Ups, Monkeywrench, the Fall-Outs, Bloodloss, and Press Corps. Dan Peters filled in on drums for a pre-Dave Grohl Nirvana, while Turner has released two solo albums in a folk-pop vein. Arm toured with the reunited MC5 and played in Wylde Rattz with Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Mike Watt, and Ron Asheton.
Lukin left in 1999, and the band took another hiatus before re-emerging on Sub Pop with a new bassist, Guy Maddison (ex-Bloodloss/Lubricated Goat). For 2002's Since We've Become Translucent, the band expanded their sound, adding horns and recording with different engineers at different studios. They continued this approach with their new album, Under a Billion Suns.
Perfect Sound Forever spoke to Mark Arm about the band...
PSF: You mentioned that when you formed the band that you sort of had this idea of what you wanted the band to sound like. Do you want to elaborate on that?
MA: Well, you know, when we were kicking the idea of starting something out, we were really looking towards a couple of Australian bands--the Scientists and Feed Time in particular, as well as bands we loved for a long time like the Stooges and the MC5 and Blue Cheer and the Wipers, you know, and even Neil Young... and Alice Cooper. These were kind of like the things that had been with us for a while, and that we were not hearing at the time. I don't know if you really remember what college radio and mainstream radio sounded like in the mid-eighties, but bands like Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers and Big Black were by far the exception and not the rule. Most of alternative radio was, you know, the Cure, the Mighty Lemon Drops, and the Cult, and then on mainstream radio was just like the same shit we'd been hearing in the seventies plus Poison. So the brand of rock and roll that we were looking for was not being played, so we decided to make it ourselves.
http://www.furious.com/perfect/mudhoney.html
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.
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