Mudhoney
Mudhoney were arguably the truest expression of what "grunge" meant before it was a marketing term, and Sub Pop Records' flagship band from the label's earliest days. They just never became the breakout stars.
- Formed
- Seattle, Washington, 1988
- Members
- Mark Arm (vocals, guitar), Steve Turner (guitar), Dan Peters (drums); Matt Lukin (bass, early years), later Guy Maddison
- Key releases
- "Touch Me I'm Sick" (1988 single), Mudhoney (1989), Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988 EP)
- Status
- Still active, with periodic breaks
Mudhoney formed in 1988 out of the breakup of Green River, itself an earlier and highly influential proto-grunge band whose members split into two very different directions: Mark Arm and Steve Turner went on to Mudhoney, while Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament went on to Mother Love Bone and, eventually, Pearl Jam. It's a fork the whole scene's later history runs through.
Mudhoney's first single, "Touch Me I'm Sick" (1988), and the Superfuzz Bigmuff EP that followed became foundational documents of the Sub Pop sound: fuzzed-out, unpolished guitar noise, sneering vocals, and a sense of humor that stood apart from the more self-serious tone some of their peers later adopted. The band never chased, or achieved, the mainstream success of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, or Alice in Chains, despite briefly signing to a major label (Reprise) in the early 1990s.
That relative lack of commercial breakthrough is often cited as part of Mudhoney's appeal: they kept making the same kind of noisy, unglamorous rock records through the decades that followed, largely unbothered by the "grunge" label's rise and fall, and remain active and touring today.
#grunge.