Slidin' In 'n' out of grace
“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked”―Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr
August 29th, 1989: My friend Marc Silverman and I were walking down Telegraph Avenue on a chilled school night, probably having just hit a few record shops or picked up a few study hours at one of the nearby cafes. We stopped to check out the gig fliers that were posted on a telephone pole right across from the the UC Berkeley campus (Go Bears!) and saw one for Mudhoney playing at the Berkeley Square with the Lemonheads. We didn’t care much for the Lemonheads, but Mudhoney had recently put out an EP on Sub Pop records called Super Fuzz Big Muff that we had been listening to incessantly. With immediate anticipation, our eyes scrolled down the flier, past the xeroxed Charles Peterson photo of the band, realizing that the show was happening now…in fact the first band probably had just hit the stage.
We look at each other, eyes and mouths wide open…we had to go! And as luck would have it, there was an empty cab parked at the red light in front of us, which we hailed as we jumped in, directing the cabbie to 1333 University Avenue, the Berkeley Square, a club that was the destination for most of the underground acts we were embracing during the early college years. We arrived at the venue as The Lemonheads took the stage. They were a bore…as they would continue to be time and time again, when I was forced to muddle through one of their sets to see a band I loved. But we didn’t care…it gave us time to grab a beverage and get ready for the main event.
In between sets, I went to the bathroom just to find that the other person in there was Mark Arm, Mudhoney’s lead singer. We spoke for a moment…me explaining how excited I was to see him, he with his wide grin of sincere appreciation thanking me for coming…both of us completely unaware of how the future would bring us together.
Mudhoney erupted onto the stage with an instrumental called Magnolia Caboose Babyshit that would be coming out on their debut full length record in mere months. I found myself on guitarist Steve Turner’s side of the stage, watching in awe as the sloppy mop-haired, bead necklaced guitarist gunned through an intense array of fuzzed-out surfs-up guitar leads atop Mark’s wall-of sound slide-driven power chords. Mudhoney was completely electrifying, with drummer Dan Peters hitting the traps so furiously that his arms were a blur and bassist Matt Lukin, with his hair covering his face while marking time with the rhythm he was keeping. We were witnessing the big bang of a new musical era.
They blew through a set of songs like a wild beast eating its prey, ferocious and primal. I only knew eight Mudhoney songs at that point, those from the EP and the two from their iconic first single, Touch Me I’m Sick, which had only been released a year before. Five songs in, they went into one of my favorites: If I Think. The song starts out with a quick burst of guitars only to lull through a verse with Mark crooning: “I forgot how to breath, I forgot just what I need…” And then comes the chorus, one of my favorite guitar-riff tidal waves this side of Led Zeppelin IV, with everyone in the club head-banging along with Dan Peters, as he slammed those drums into submission.
I open my eyes
Watch the sky turn blue
I felt so good I almost forgot
All about you
Mudhoney blazed through an incredible set of material, most of which I had never heard…not realizing (how could I) that eventual set staples like Get into Yours, The Farther I Go, Flat out Fucked and Spacemen 3 cover When Tomorrow Hits (which was unexpected and fantastic) were being performed live for the first time that evening. They left the stage with Dead Love, a song that would end their upcoming record, only to return with the last song from their first EP, my other favorite: In and Out of Grace. I would learn later that it was Lukin who came up with the epic riff for the song, who that evening provided the foundation for the sonic attack that found Mark and Steve wrestling on the floor during the song’s bridge, their guitars intertwined with a sweltering noise framed by the rhythm section: I am not sure how Turner was able to keep his guitar solo going throughout…but it was ecstatic.
Mudhoney was (and are) the greatest of the grunge bands that came out of Seattle. No one could (or can) touch them live, and their unapologetically punk rock attitude, while maybe keeping them out of reach of the fame achieved by bands like Nirvana who had gotten their start opening for them, kept them continually creating raw, distorted and mind-bending rock n roll.
I will never forget that show that I got to witness thirty-three years ago today, two years before their lawyer, who was managing the band Fear Of God that my boss Roberta Petersen had signed, mentioned to me that they might be looking for a major label deal…another story for another time…..
You can actually listen to the show at the Berkeley Square through the Internet Archive and watch a show from a few days later as well which proves beyond a doubt the greatness of Mudhoney.
Happy Monday!
Guthries, Lomaxes, and Seegers
Todd Harvey is a reference archivist, curator of the Alan Lomax Collection, and acquisitions coordinator for the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. He is one of my favorite public servants and always has incredible items to share from the Library of Congress archives. This recent post of his takes a dive into some choice ephemera around the relationship between three giant names of 20th century musicology including a memorandum where the head of the Folklore Center at the time, Edward Waters, was asking the main Congress Librarian for money to purchase acetates for (an unknown?) Woody Guthrie to use to record his songs.
The Hoax That Inspired Mary Shelley
On the eve of Mary Shelley’s 225th birthday, I found and really enjoyed the above article, about Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman whose story inspired Frankenstein.
Russian Museum Director Detained for Speaking Out Against Ukraine Invasion
“Yevgeny Roizman, a prominent Russian museum director, has been detained for speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine…His referred to Russia’s actions in Ukraine as an “invasion” and a “war,” as opposed to a “special military operation,” which is a crime in Russia, according to Vladimir Putin’s new censorship law. Most Russian dissenters have been arrested using this new law.”
On the record by Jay Nordlinger, On the preservation of classical music.
For someone like myself who is not as knowledgable about classical music as I would like to be, Nordlinger’s article…which is almost a stream-of-consciousness look at great classical recordings, is an engaging read an a great place to jump into a listening session…
Recently discovered ‘sea bugs’ can grow up to 1.5 feet, eat entire alligator corpse
While I do not consider the NY Post to be the mountain top of scientific journalism, this is a crazy sci-fi styled read…and much easier to get through the the scientific journal essay from which the story came….
Death of a Naturalist
By Seamus Heaney
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst, into nimble
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
