MUDHONEY – MUD SONGS (FLASHBACK)
This is the album that made me fall head over heals in love with Mudhoney and my affection has never waned since.
At the height of grunge the market was flooded with bootlegs from Italy and in Colchester we had the most amazing record shop in the form of World Class Records tucked away in a backstreet which had the most amazing selection of live grunge CDs despite the fact the owner (“Bobbing Ben”) was always playing rave music. Living towards the coast this was a shop that we actually bunked off to school and jumped on a train to head up to. On one visit my friend Glenn bought this CD and it blew all of our socks off. For years I only had a dodgy cassette copy with endured long after I had severed ties and lost touch with Glenn. Thanks to the internet over ten years later I finally found a copy of it online to purchase and finally long after my cassette copy had been played to death I now had my own CD.
Recorded in California in Spring 1992 this is a full twenty song set with amazing quality that suggests the hand of a professional.
Arriving prior to Piece Of Cake but at the height of grunge ecstasy in true bootleg style a number of the new songs from the forthcoming album have bespoke titles such as “Thirteenth Floor Opening” which here is “Dirty Flow” while “Make It Now” is named “Ich Bin Ein Schmetterling” which is German for “I am a butterfly” which for a while was a phrase I was repeating perhaps a bit too much during my final year at school. Unfortunately this included a moment when a lad from Brightlingsea had me pinned against the wall at a part in Great Bromley after I had hit his car to set off the alarm and proceeded to tell him to “fuck off”. Not good.
This bootleg is great from the start as Mark Arm shouts “all right shitheads, lets go!” before the band launch into a great version of “Who You Drivin’ Now”. After this the band truly tears into proceedings with the couplet of “Get Into Yours” and “You Got It” as explicit overtones are fired into the audience without the band missing a beat.
By the time the band are doing “Into The Drink” the band are flying and Arm almost sounds like he is struggling to keep up as around him everyone is at the top of their game. Then as the band tear into “Let It Slide” the extension on Arm’s vocals transcend anything he has ever accomplished before and Turner’s fuzz insertions sound like a flamethrower.
The quiver of “This Gift” is perfect on this showing as the waspy buzz shadows and follows the song through its full duration as it helter skelters in reverse and builds to a defiantly devastating climax that on this showing could level buildings.
As the set tears into “No One Has” the band is seriously unveiling some crushing guitar before Matt Lukin appears to discover that his microphone is turned on and begins delivering his comedy stylings in between songs.
When Mark Arm announces “this song is called “Dan Peters Is Fat”” the band proceed to launch into a high octane version of “Touch Me I’m Sick” that strides at a physically plundering and more effective pace making it into the version of the song you always hoped it would be (forgive me but the single/studio version is just too clean and cumbersome for my liking).
Without missing a beat at the close of “Touch Me I’m Sick” the song immediately transforms into an epic version of “Dead Love” that sounds as if the band are playing for their lives. Again Arm’s howl truly rattles the room before the song drops into a psychedelic workout of overdriven wah as Arm launches into a great positive rant about moving down to California to “make it man” and if that fails then “his Jerry Hall-alike girlfriend can get into acting and he can live off her.” He announces that he has “a deal in the works” and how “they remember me from Mr Epp” when Rodney Bingenheimer sucked his dick (“do you remember Rodney how I remember Rodney? The bald spot kinda going back and forth around my crotch area”). At this point he reels off a list of other acts that “did it” before declaring “I don’t need to be part of nothing!” and closing out the song.
Straight away from here the band tears into a hardcore version of “Thorn” that lasts only one minute and forty seconds but it still lends time for Arm to burst out laughing mid verse. Then comes “Here Comes Sickness” delivered with real bile and yet more incredibly playing from Turner that eventually sounds like lasers towards the end.
The fattest elephant riff in grunge follows as “In’n Out Of Grace” pulls another epic out of the bag. When the song hangs it possesses the kind of pregnant anticipation of a band about to literally drop bombs. Then Dan Peters gets his drum solo as Arm moans about people sitting on the shoulders of others during a “rock n roll concert” which promptly leads him into a harsh reminisce of “having to bob my head all over the place just so that I could see that big old bulge in Steven Tyler’s crotch but there was some big titted chick sitting on some guy’s shoulders in front of me and it was really bugging the shit out of me.”
From here he declares “don’t even let them tell you you’re nothing and L. Ron Hubbard knows what its all about” at which me and my friends listening to the album as impressionable fifteen year olds suddenly began researching Scientology because we were being told “we’ve all bought into Scientology and we have a career” and this apparently the secret to Mudhoney’s success. It was then made even more appealing as it transpired that Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains had all bought into Scientology whereas “The Fall-Outs, they haven’t bought into shit and they don’t got nothing” and “half of Gas Huffer have bought into Scientology and half of them might have a career”. He ends by decreeing “Skid Row: hook, line and sinker” before commanding “eat my fuck!” This was something we’d never heard from a band before and our minds’ were blown.
With Turner’s guitar now in total overdrive the band tear through “Hate The Police” and “Flat Out Fucked” in righteous fashion before ending on “a song about Dan” and “The Money Will Roll Right In” which were words perfect for the moment.
Arm closes proceedings by announcing “be sure to hang around for the discotheque afterwards” as the listener proceeds to pick themselves up off the ground.
Without doubt this is greatest live bootleg of my generation, perfectly capturing a moment and time of a band and movement at their pinnacle. We never had it better.
Thesaurus moment: awe.
Mudhoney
This is the album that made me fall head over heals in love with Mudhoney and my affection has never waned since.
At the height of grunge the market was flooded with bootlegs from Italy and in Colchester we had the most amazing record shop in the form of World Class Records tucked away in a backstreet which had the most amazing selection of live grunge CDs despite the fact the owner (“Bobbing Ben”) was always playing rave music. Living towards the coast this was a shop that we actually bunked off to school and jumped on a train to head up to. On one visit my friend Glenn bought this CD and it blew all of our socks off. For years I only had a dodgy cassette copy with endured long after I had severed ties and lost touch with Glenn. Thanks to the internet over ten years later I finally found a copy of it online to purchase and finally long after my cassette copy had been played to death I now had my own CD.
Recorded in California in Spring 1992 this is a full twenty song set with amazing quality that suggests the hand of a professional.
Arriving prior to Piece Of Cake but at the height of grunge ecstasy in true bootleg style a number of the new songs from the forthcoming album have bespoke titles such as “Thirteenth Floor Opening” which here is “Dirty Flow” while “Make It Now” is named “Ich Bin Ein Schmetterling” which is German for “I am a butterfly” which for a while was a phrase I was repeating perhaps a bit too much during my final year at school. Unfortunately this included a moment when a lad from Brightlingsea had me pinned against the wall at a part in Great Bromley after I had hit his car to set off the alarm and proceeded to tell him to “fuck off”. Not good.
This bootleg is great from the start as Mark Arm shouts “all right shitheads, lets go!” before the band launch into a great version of “Who You Drivin’ Now”. After this the band truly tears into proceedings with the couplet of “Get Into Yours” and “You Got It” as explicit overtones are fired into the audience without the band missing a beat.
By the time the band are doing “Into The Drink” the band are flying and Arm almost sounds like he is struggling to keep up as around him everyone is at the top of their game. Then as the band tear into “Let It Slide” the extension on Arm’s vocals transcend anything he has ever accomplished before and Turner’s fuzz insertions sound like a flamethrower.
The quiver of “This Gift” is perfect on this showing as the waspy buzz shadows and follows the song through its full duration as it helter skelters in reverse and builds to a defiantly devastating climax that on this showing could level buildings.
As the set tears into “No One Has” the band is seriously unveiling some crushing guitar before Matt Lukin appears to discover that his microphone is turned on and begins delivering his comedy stylings in between songs.
When Mark Arm announces “this song is called “Dan Peters Is Fat”” the band proceed to launch into a high octane version of “Touch Me I’m Sick” that strides at a physically plundering and more effective pace making it into the version of the song you always hoped it would be (forgive me but the single/studio version is just too clean and cumbersome for my liking).
Without missing a beat at the close of “Touch Me I’m Sick” the song immediately transforms into an epic version of “Dead Love” that sounds as if the band are playing for their lives. Again Arm’s howl truly rattles the room before the song drops into a psychedelic workout of overdriven wah as Arm launches into a great positive rant about moving down to California to “make it man” and if that fails then “his Jerry Hall-alike girlfriend can get into acting and he can live off her.” He announces that he has “a deal in the works” and how “they remember me from Mr Epp” when Rodney Bingenheimer sucked his dick (“do you remember Rodney how I remember Rodney? The bald spot kinda going back and forth around my crotch area”). At this point he reels off a list of other acts that “did it” before declaring “I don’t need to be part of nothing!” and closing out the song.
Straight away from here the band tears into a hardcore version of “Thorn” that lasts only one minute and forty seconds but it still lends time for Arm to burst out laughing mid verse. Then comes “Here Comes Sickness” delivered with real bile and yet more incredibly playing from Turner that eventually sounds like lasers towards the end.
The fattest elephant riff in grunge follows as “In’n Out Of Grace” pulls another epic out of the bag. When the song hangs it possesses the kind of pregnant anticipation of a band about to literally drop bombs. Then Dan Peters gets his drum solo as Arm moans about people sitting on the shoulders of others during a “rock n roll concert” which promptly leads him into a harsh reminisce of “having to bob my head all over the place just so that I could see that big old bulge in Steven Tyler’s crotch but there was some big titted chick sitting on some guy’s shoulders in front of me and it was really bugging the shit out of me.”
From here he declares “don’t even let them tell you you’re nothing and L. Ron Hubbard knows what its all about” at which me and my friends listening to the album as impressionable fifteen year olds suddenly began researching Scientology because we were being told “we’ve all bought into Scientology and we have a career” and this apparently the secret to Mudhoney’s success. It was then made even more appealing as it transpired that Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains had all bought into Scientology whereas “The Fall-Outs, they haven’t bought into shit and they don’t got nothing” and “half of Gas Huffer have bought into Scientology and half of them might have a career”. He ends by decreeing “Skid Row: hook, line and sinker” before commanding “eat my fuck!” This was something we’d never heard from a band before and our minds’ were blown.
With Turner’s guitar now in total overdrive the band tear through “Hate The Police” and “Flat Out Fucked” in righteous fashion before ending on “a song about Dan” and “The Money Will Roll Right In” which were words perfect for the moment.
Arm closes proceedings by announcing “be sure to hang around for the discotheque afterwards” as the listener proceeds to pick themselves up off the ground.
Without doubt this is greatest live bootleg of my generation, perfectly capturing a moment and time of a band and movement at their pinnacle. We never had it better.
Thesaurus moment: awe.
Mudhoney
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