CHIRP: The Chicago Independent Radio Project

Chris Siuty writes

Rediscovering Our Record Collections: Mudhoney's "Superfuzz Bigmuff"

In 1990, a friend of mine walked into my high school cafeteria, in his ratty unbuttoned flannel shirt and matching ratty hair wearing a Mudhoney shirt. He looked like a combination of Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes and a moodier, dirtier Steve Albini. I was never sure where I stood with him, but no else really did either. He was either slightly just less than happy to see you, or entirely indifferent to your existence. That day, he was a bit more pleasant than usual and was enthused to tell me all about this great band he saw over the weekend. He demanded that I do myself the favor of finding the Superfuzz/BigMuff record. I did just that, mostly because I generally found his music taste agreeable with mine.

Today, I spent the better part of the afternoon lying on my bed listening to records and about five minutes ago, I dropped the needle on my first edition vinyl copy of Superfuzz/BigMuff. I haven’t pulled this record off the shelf in several years, because I haven’t been in a Mudhoney mood in quite sometime. You see, I listened to Mudhoney almost everyday between 1990 and approximately 1993. They were on heavy rotation pretty much all the time. Lately though, I’ve been less into blistering hardcore and melodic punk (which is my usual flavor) and a bit more into “stoner jams,” so to speak. This record probably holds up infinitely better than most of it’s contemporaries, short of the Melvins discography.

Taking equal parts influence from Texas natives the Dicks, Black Sabbath, fellow Seattle natives, the Fastbacks, they created a sound that was unique, coupled with an all around “no bullshit” attitude that was refreshing for the time. If any band that truly deserved to be part of the “grunge explosion” of the early 90’s, it was most definitely Mudhoney. But what held them back from the charts was their lack of willingness to drop the “no bullshit” attitude and their lack of desire to “write hits.” They kept things simple and dirty, which is why their records hold up infinitely better than albums from that era that sold millions of copies.

Unlike those other Seattle bands, Mudhoney is just the right mixture of mid tempo punk, stoner rock and honest lo-fi basement punk to keep me interested and fired up. Over the last two decades, this album has aged well and even with the crackles and pops, I can still listen to it with the same zeal and wide-eyed excitement as I did when I was 15.

Bypass the special editions of this record and the “Superfuzz/BigMuff Plus Early Singles” version on CD and spin a nice crackly vinyl version. You can thank me later.