How Did You Find Out About Mudhoney?

[Smallstone]

I guess a lot of this is down to age. Clearly Nirvana were the catalyst for many people getting into Mudhoney. This was abundently clear at the last Mudhoney show in London, which took place not too long after the NME had put out their Kurts Choice CD covermount which featured Touch Me I'm Sick. But in saying that folks certinlay knew the words to a lot of the old songs!
However there are a few of us on this board who are the wrong side of 30 and who discovered Nirvana through Mudhoney.....
Personally I found it quite odd to be seeing Mudhoney play the Astoria in London 15 years after I had seen them play there with Tad supporting and Nirvana opening up (to a about 500 people tops!).
What a show that was......

[RaunchHands]

my story begins in a similar way (i.e. nirvana). after that, i wanted to know everything about seattle. i was a young teen at the time and that was my first encounter with rock music. the only problem for me was that i never got into pearl jam, alice in chains, smashing pumpkins and all that stuff. i thought their dresses were ridiculous and that their music wasn't that good. i couldn't stand superunknown - era soundgarden either (loved their earlier stuff though). the top-40 record store i went to at the time didn't carry any screaming trees or mudhoney or all those other bands i had only knew by the name. then one day i came across an interview with mudhoney and it was the craziest thing ever! these guys were obviously making fun of the stupid journalist, they were so sharp and funny but at the same time it was clear they knew what they were doing. and in the photo coming with it they had dirty hair and thick glasses, wearing punk rock tshirts and drinking cheap beer. i was like, "fuck all those rock stars, these guys are just like me!". on the following days i finally ventured into my city's indie record stores to look for their records, and one year later i was coming out of those stores with a bunch of new york dolls and angry samoans cd's. so, uh, thank you mudhoney!

my opinion about their astoria show: too many kids with nirvana tshirts that knew the lyrics to every mudhoney song but boo'ed holly golightly and couldn't tell black sabbath from black flag. but, hey, they're kids after all.

[Smallstone]

Wow were people (kids) really booeing Holly G? Thats awful!!! I didn't hear it where I was!! I thought she was amazing that night. You gotta love Holly Golighly!!

I think one thing that seems to have piqued folk's interest in Mudhoney either from the offset or when folks got into the band was their irreverance. They did back in the day come across like a breath of fresh air in the UK press anyway. Back in the late 80s you basically lived and died on the 3 x music papers opinions. Sounds (RIP) really loved them as much as Melody Maker (RIP) did. NME (sadly still here) never really 'got' the whole US underground/grunge thang until Nirvana were so in their face they couldn't ignore them more!!
At the time bands seemed so desperate to please the press, whereas Mudhoney were so much more PUNK rock and indifferent to the whole circus!

I certainly agree with you RaunchHands! As a wee 17 year old at the time it felt like I had found kindred musical spirits! Even though I was on the other side of the world! Ha ha! All seems quite amusing now, but me and my mates at the time all had long hair, wore hooped shirts, beads, wore converse, listened to Stooges etc. We thought we had found OUR band:)

[I love Kim Deal]

Yes this the usual thing but:

I was a Nirvana fan, then I read a Kurt interview where he mentioned Mudhoney, his exact quote was "You know, Mudhoney released a better album in 1991" so I went hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... and went and bought Piece of Cake (it was the only Mudhoney album in the shop) and was really blown away. (Oh I also bought 'A Sides' by Soundgarden as well) And the rest is history!

[jotsch]

hmm, i think, scratch, POSITIVE it was back in 1995 when my brother the cow came out. i think it was jus before my 6th (ever heard of a six year old mud fan?) birthday my dads mate had this compilation tape that sum1 had made for him. legend has it that the song on the comp was "...ball peen hammer" so the album must have been out. any way i remember sittin the car n my dad put the tape in the cassette player n soundgarden came on. the song was head down. cos i remember the really long outro n the song after was orange ball peen hammer. my dad was really in to heavy stoner rock like sleep n kyuss at the time so that song didnt really catch his attention. when i showed him translucent he jus said "theyre jus rippin off nebula!" as a joke, n he got in to mud years later but thats a different story. yeh, my bro the cow was the first mudhoney album i heard. i think i still got it on 12 inch sumwhere. dunno tho. but it was only a matter of time i got hooked on mud! i bought the my bro the cow album . bought all previous n i havnt looked back! nice little story

[erd]

Well I had heard of them but nothing by till senor Jotsch introduced them to me...

[darren]

Just joined the forum and am not too familiar with this kind of thing, so bear with me if I'm fucking up.

I believe I'm responding to someone asking how we were first introduced to Mudhoney?

My story began in 1989 when I was 16. What a great time to be 16?

I was inroduced to Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers from a TV programme we had in the UK called 'snub TV'. Around that time, Mudhoney were touring the UK with Sonic Youth, so I walked into the nearest indie shop to check them out. No shit, by coincidence, there was a guy who worked in there, literally laying on the floor behind the counter, off of his head, at about 10am on a weekday, whilst wearing a Mudhoney 'Bigmuff' T shirt. Rather than waking him, I asked his colleague of any releases, and he handed me a European copy of Superfuzz. Changed my life.

However, I'd been introduced to them earlier, unbeknown to me. As a teenager I would occasionally tape the John Peel show and re-record the tracks I liked, cutting out the talking etc. Some songs would be misinterpreted and later corrected (e.g. The Pixies' 'hey' was written on my tape as being by 'Strange Fruit', which I later realised was the record label that released this live version). Similarly, 'Bucharest', by a band I believe were called Fifteen, was written on my tape as 'Book arrest' - what a naive little boy I was.

Anyway, I had these two tracks on one tape that I loved but had no idea who they were by. Frustrating! I had one written down as 'Pulsebeat' and another as 'death squad'. When you live in a crappy village in the dead centre of England, where the most experimental anyone ever got was to listen to Morrissey, how could I find out? Somehow I did, and the two tracks were revealed as Metal Duck's 'cheese puff death squad', and Mudhoney's 'hate the police'.

Apologies if I bored anyone. Like I said, i'm not familiar with these things.

Cheers

Darren, Leicester, England

[MarchToFuzz]

Welcome to Mudhoney board Darren
and remember almost everything goes,
and yr story was nice to read.

[jotsch]

hahahaha! cool story man, where is this record store where th guy is off his face! sounds like a fun place!

hey darren, welcome to th board man.

[Thurston_Whore]

Nice sorty indeed! wish i was 16 in those days and listened to most of the music at that time instead of playing with my action men and riding my bike

And welcome to the board darren ;D