Staying true to their grunge roots

Before Bill Gates relocated what would become his behemoth Microsoft empire to Washington State in 1986, there was a popular saying among West Coast workers: "Will the last one to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?"

Riding the turbulence of the region's mercurial economics in the '80s, members of a generation often called "X" pooled gas money and took to the road in secondhand cars and clothes. Hopping between small clubs in Olympia, Seattle and Portland, by the '90s these crews of fashion-illiterate, couch-surfing nihilists had permanently placed the Pacific Northwest on the rock 'n' roll map.

Nearly a decade before Nirvana's Nevermind went platinum 10 times over in 1992, Mudhoney vocalist Mark Arm had formed a band called Mr. Epp, which he allegedly described to a local fanzine as "Pure grunge! Pure noise! Pure shit!" Although the real origin of the term "grunge" remains as suspect as the notion that Seattle was the Liverpool of the '80s, the string of bands that Arm and his cohort guitarist Steve Turner would found and front, from Mr. Epp to Green River to Mudhoney, remain central to the grunge legend.

Not exactly punk, not exactly metal, maybe not even grunge, and laced with '60s influences ranging from the thug-rock of the Stooges to the biker-psych of Blue Cheer, Mudhoney has never been an easy band to figure. But it was "brains," Turner says, that led him to identify and participate in the Northwest's punk rock scene.

"In retrospect, I found a lot of things from the '70s that were cool, but the stuff that was aimed at me in the late '70s was like KISS and Ted Nugent, that kind of hard-rock mindlessness. And punk rock was a complete turnaround from all that," Turner recalls. "You had the Clash, Wire, Devo and Gang of Four's first album, which I stared at and listened to for months. It politicized me at the same time as the Clash. A lot of English bands were coming from the artist or writer's point of view, and I think it was totally brainy music.

"And then there were the runaway street punks, suburban kids and middle-aged beatnik types that were going to the early punk shows. Which was a lot more interesting than going to the arena and watching dudes vomiting, which made me hate rock music."

Actually, it wasn't hard to avoid arena rock in the Pacific Northwest in the '70s and '80s, as many of the major bands would play Vancouver, then bypass Washington and Oregon on their way to more lucrative dates in San Francisco and Los Angeles. As a result, the region took on a homegrown attitude, with a scruffy breed of road warriors dominating the local scene. Outside influences crept in only gradually.

"I didn't even know what Neil Young sounded like until I kept reading comparisons of the Meat Puppets' second album to Zuma," Turner says.

Mudhoney's most recent effort, the 2008 CD The Lucky Ones (on Seattle's Sub Pop) sounds more or less like it was recorded in a garage, which is both a compliment and a reflection of how little their music has changed. Basically, the band is still riding the same loose musical impulse that back in 1986 led the now-defunct Seattle biweekly The Rocket to predict, "Something is going to happen."

If Mudhoney's riveting 2006 show at the Roxy is any indication, a lot will happen at their concert at Akropolis this weekend. And anyone who catches it will leave with little doubt about why grunge happened, and why it still rings loud and true today.

Darrell Jónsson can be reached at
features@praguepost.com