Still Superfuzz Bigmuffs: Mudhoney

IN THE '80S, Mark Arm's bands Mudhoney and Green River pioneered and perfected a loud, brash, dirty style of music that fused punk, garage-rock and early metal. This old-new stew was soon dubbed "grunge," and it became the taste of a generation — though the dour image of most of Arm's musical peers is somewhat at odds with Mudhoney's tendency toward exuberant performances and wry humor.

Mudhoney remains more active, less recognized — and better — than most of their peers and imitators. Life isn't fair, and these days, rather than pushing wheelbarrows full of cash around his mansions, Arm works a day job managing the warehouse of the record label he's closely associated with: Sub Pop.

A tour supporting both the deluxe reissue of the band's epochal 1988 disc, "Superfuzz Bigmuff," and Mudhoney's solid new album, "The Lucky Ones," brings Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, drummer Dan Peters and bassist Guy Maddison to a surprisingly intimate venue, the Rock & Roll Hotel, on Monday.

Express spoke with Arm about working for a living, "The Lucky Ones," "Touch Me I'm Sick," Kurt Cobain and more.

» EXPRESS: Your new single, "I'm Now," sounds more like The Stooges than The Stooges' new album. Do you agree?
» ARM: I don't know if it's more Stooges than The Stooges. It has more words than Stooges songs [laughs].

» EXPRESS: Do you like the new Stooges' album, "The Weirdness"?
» ARM: I don't want to get into that [laughs hard]. I love the Stooges; let's just leave it at that. You know, when we started, The Stooges were severely underground. When I discovered them in 1980, their records, except like "Raw Power," weren't even available. The impression that band made on me at a young age is severe and deep. But that's true of a couple of other bands, too.

» EXPRESS: Which are those other bands?
» ARM: The Sonics, MC5, Captain Beefheart, The Wipers, Black Flag — I could go on and list a fair percentage of my record collection.

» EXPRESS: The song "The Lucky Ones" seems as angst-filled as anything you've written. Do you agree? And what are you saying in that song?
» ARM: Well, it's from the point of view of a character. It's nothing but angst, yeah.

» EXPRESS: So, it's not written from your perspective?
» ARM: A lot of songs aren't from my perspective. "Touch Me I'm Sick" isn't from my perspective. "Sweet Young Thing" isn't from my perspective. A lot of the songs, I'll come up with a character or a goofy little plot and go from there. It's not who I am [laughs]. This isn't confessional singer-songwriter [stuff]. Who really cares about that? I don't care if someone's been dumped. Who hasn't? [Laughs]

» EXPRESS: What's "Touch Me I'm Sick" about?
» ARM: At this point I'm not even really sure [laughs]. I guess it's wallowing in creepiness.

» EXPRESS: Tell me about the song "Tales of Terror." It's one of my favorites on the new record. I wasn't sure if it was a cover or a tribute to another band.
» ARM: Tales of Terror is a band from Sacramento that came through Seattle in early '84. No one knew who they were, but they played the local all-ages club and they were astounding. They were a punk rock hardcore band, but they were moving out of the confines of hardcore. And they were totally wild live. The singer would do backflips while the rest of the band was lying down. By the end of the night, everyone was wrapped up in guitar cords, and it didn't seem preconceived. It was just the natural flow of this really [messed] up band that also happened to be great.

A friend of mine had gotten a turntable hooked up to his computer and was like, "Hey, do you have any records that you want digitized?" And I immediately went and got the Tales of Terror record. So, I'd been listening to that a lot. Once I put it on iTunes at work, I was listening to it constantly.

And that song [is] in the style of Tales of Terror. I was kind of stuck for a name — the title I had I wasn't really digging. [Mudhoney guitarist] Steve [Turner] finally said, "Why don't we just call it 'Tales of Terror'?" And that kinda fit the lyrics, too.

» EXPRESS: Has there been any response from the guys in Tales of Terror to that song?
» ARM: I haven't heard anything. I don't think they have a MySpace page or anything [laughs]. I know two of those guys are dead at this point.

» EXPRESS: I know that you're a fan of Minor Threat. Do you have other favorite D.C. bands?
» ARM: Void. Void. Void. Void. Void [laughs].

» EXPRESS: I read the essay that you wrote about going to the White House with Pearl Jam and in that, and in other things I've seen, you've always been pretty open about your pot use. How do you think that impacts your creativity?
» ARM: "Pot use" [laughs]. I don't smoke pot all that much. I did get stoned last night, though [laughs] — after the show. I'm not opposed smoking pot or to people smoking pot. Every now and again I smoke a joint, but I don't get stoned and come up with creative ideas. I usually get paralyzed on the couch.

» EXPRESS: Is it true that you coined the term "grunge" to refer to a style of music?
» ARM: I've been getting that question an awful lot on this stretch of interviews. Is that somewhere in the bio or something?

» EXPRESS: It's on Wikipedia.
» ARM: Oh [sighs]. You know, Wikipedia's all lies. People can just make anything up and put it in there. You know, I doubt it [laughs].

[Sub Pop honcho] Bruce Pavitt, for a description of a Green River record, wrote something like "Grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation." Somehow that became the term for a whole new thing, which was actually an old thing. You know, it was largely based on music of the past. It seemed fresh at the time, because everything had become so glossy and slick — even on the hard rock and metal end of things. And the college rock at the time — a lot of those bands, like The Smiths, were effete people wallowing in self-pity. I think it was refreshing to see people get up there and rock and have fun.

» EXPRESS: Is Dan Peters the richest guy in Mudhoney from playing drums on Nirvana's recording of "Sliver"?
» ARM: [Laughs] I guess he gets more royalties than anybody else. That doesn't make him rich, by any means. I like to think that we're all rich, with the lives that we lead and the music that we play which touched the hearts of millions [laughs]. You realize that's a joke, right?

» EXPRESS: Hundreds of thousands.
» ARM: Hundreds.

» EXPRESS: I know you've said that you have no regrets about how your career's gone, but I just wonder: Wouldn't it be better to be playing music for a living now rather than working in a warehouse?
» ARM: I do both. It's not an either/or proposition. I had a 10-year-run of not having a day job, which was something that I never anticipated before that. Of course, as that was ending, it was a little difficult to come to terms with at first — you know, having my wife go, "Maybe it's time you looked for a job."

But I'd much rather just play music the way I want to play it and not concern myself with how to keep our audience or expand our appeal or anything like that and just do what we do because we love to do it.

» EXPRESS: I want to ask you about the new Tad documentary, "Busted Circuits and Ringing Ears," because you're interviewed in it and I think a quote in it really applies to Mudhoney, too. Charles Cross says that "Tad is the story of what could have been, rather than what was." But I feel that's a dumb way to look at a band that toured Europe, was nationally-known and people are still interested in.
» ARM: You know, Charles is a really nice guy, but he wasn't there. He was in Seattle at the time, he ran a music magazine called The Rocket, but, you know, he wrote that book on Nirvana ["Heavier Than Heaven"] and I don't think he ever saw Nirvana. If he did, it wasn't until like the "In Utero" tour. He was not a person who was going out to shows and seeing local bands that played original underground rock.

Somehow he's become this spokesman for the era because he wrote that Nirvana book, but it's kind of baffling to me. ... His perspective on that whole thing is as skewed as the quote you were talking about. I mean, he's coming at this whole thing from a Billboard point-of-view.

» EXPRESS: Did you like "Heavier Than Heaven"?
» ARM: I didn't read it. Why would I? Why would I read any book about Nirvana?

» EXPRESS: As I recall, you're quoted in there a lot and it talks about you a lot.
» ARM: That's plausible [laughs].

» EXPRESS: I'm sure you're sick of being asked about Nirvana, so I'll just ask one question. What do you think Kurt Cobain would think about the new Converse line of shoes dedicated to him?
» ARM: How should I know? [laughs]

» EXPRESS: From reading that book, it seemed like you knew him well.
» ARM: You know, we hung out. We played shows together. We even did drugs together. But the dude barely talked.

» Rock & Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NE; with The Points and The Cynics, Mon., 8:30 p.m., $18; 202-388-7625.

Written by Express contributor Tim Follos

Photos by Sean Brackbill