On Warner/Reprise, the band issued four solid, though less critically lauded, full-length albums: Piece of Cake in 1992; Five Dollar Bob's Mock Cooter Stew in 1993; My Brother the Cow (which featured "Judgment, Rage, Retribution and Thyme," a blistering tune in the spirit of Simon & Grungefunkel) in 1995 and Tomorrow Hit Today in 1998. Eventually, the major released the band from its contract. "We fully expected Warner to drop us," Arm says. "We knew that we weren't making them any money. But that's not how I gauge success."
In a new book by Michael Azerrad called Our Band Could Be Your Life (Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991), Mudhoney's irrefutable impact on the grunge mania from a decade ago is rendered in great detail, though not always accurately in Arm's opinion. "There are some things in it that are glaringly wrong, but that's okay," he says. "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I did go to a Christian high school, but I was allowed to wear jeans, and I did watch TV."
From the happy land of mud and honey: Matt Lukin, Steve Turner, Dan Peters and Mark Arm of Mudhoney.
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With the Superbees and Black Lamb.
Saturday, August 18, $15
303-831-9448
Ogden Theatre, 935 East Colfax Avenue
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Arm also splits hairs over Azerrad's retelling of an incident from 1985, when Green River opened for Public Image Limited at Seattle's Paramount Theatre. "We trashed [John Lydon's] dressing room before, not after they played. It had nothing to do with the fact that PiL had mistreated Mission of Burma or Hüsker Dü or the Minutemen or whatever, because we didn't know anything about that. They were just pricks! John Lydon was threatening to cancel the show because there wasn't a La-Z-Boy recliner in his dressing room. He had his own special bottles of wine, which Landru, the singer from Malfunkshun, drank down. So we started raiding their alcohol, and then it went from there. It wasn't like we were maliciously trying to trash their dressing room, but we did end up taking their deli tray and throwing it on the bus down below in the street, but, you know, like, one piece of lunch meat at a time." At the end of Green River's set, Arm apparently told the crowd, "If you want to see what happens to somebody who's completely sold out, just wait." The former Sex Pistol reciprocated by writing the semi-scathing PiL classic "Seattle."
Hijinx aside, Azerrad's chapter on Mudhoney paints a somewhat incomplete picture of the band, though the book's overall intention is to catalogue the ten years that laid the groundwork for the massive eruption and ripple effect of Nirvana's Nevermind. "The ending is kind of a letdown," Arm says. "It kind of puts everything in a reprieve in terms of commercial sales. It didn't have anything to do with the success of how an album was done. I tend to think that our last album, Tomorrow Hit Today, is probably our most complete album."
Azerrad's account of the 'honeys concludes with Arm paraphrasing his fellow guitarist: "Steve [Turner] likes to say that we're a footnote. And probably in the greater scheme of things, that's at best what we will be remembered as."
"It would've been a nice ending to that chapter if they'd known we were getting back on Sub Pop," Arm says. "It would've tied things up kind of nice."
March to Fuzz, a thorough roundup of 52 hits and rarities (and a tremendous value under twenty bucks), came out last year on the very label that gave the band its start and nourished its livelihood in the first place; though Sub Pop's Pavitt has moved on, Poneman remains at the wheel. With plans to release new material soon, Mudhoney earns a partial living from its music, but spends the majority of its ten-and-a-half non-touring months working in Seattle. When he's not issuing music through his indie label, Super Electro, Turner does landscaping jobs with friends on a need-to basis. Peters, a proud new papa, is married to a lawyer and works the occasional photo shoot as a production assistant. (When asked if he ever thinks about being in the shoes of Dave Grohl -- the man Nirvana hired behind his back during a shuffling of drummers -- Peters is quick and to the point: "Not at all. Not at all. Wouldn't want to be in 'em. We'll leave it at that.") Arm plies his trade at an underground comic-book publisher called Santa Graphics, home of Ghost World, among others.
Any regrets the players may privately grapple with are likely on par with those of your average working-class Joe. "We didn't get to do it in the Lincoln bedroom," Arm says, sighing. "We don't have that kind of cash."
