Hiccupping thru grunge

After reading Our Band Could Be Your Life, I had a greater appreciation for Mudhoney. Also, a greater appreciation for Sub-Pop and especially photographer Charles Peterson. I had always seen the images of grunge-era record sleeves and noticed the similarity (check Nirvana's Bleach, Soundgarden's Ultramega OK, and of course Mudhoney's compilation of early singles Supefuzz Bigmuff... strangely, Peterson had nothing to do with the sleeve for Mudhoney single Touch Me, I'm Sick yet that was chosen as the title for his rock retrospective released in 2003) but never researched the photographer... perhaps I naively believed that all grunge shows were photographed in that gritty, in-your-face fashion (as they should be).

So now that I dig backwards thru the underbelly of grunge that I missed the first time around, due to splitting my music attention span between grunge, metal, and hip-hop... then directly into street punk, I find that Mudhoney is clearly my favorite from that era. Mostly because of Mark Arm's ability to write songs that deliver a heavy sound without the melodrama or macho metaphors in the lyrics as used by many of his contemporaries at the time.

Here is Superfuzz Bigmuff, the aforementioned collection of Mudhoney singles from the early days of Sub-Pop. It was released in 1990, I was 11 and still fascinated by Guns-n-Roses. Now I know that if I would have been rocking out to this shit back then, I would not have felt the joy I feel now by discovering it after having to deal with the GnR scenario.