mudhoney / the big muffs
09-09-2011
mavericks, ottawa
i noticed the guys in the big muffs checking me out during the show. i was dancing perfectly in time, i seemed to know all the shifts in dynamics as they happened.....and, when i leaped, i landed on the one. always. was i a fan?
well, i'd heard of them before, but, to be honest, i didn't even check out their myspace page before i went. i knew exactly what they were going to do because they're extremely predictable.
they have a set of clear and related influences that runs from the band they opened for, mudhoney, through to what may be the last mainstream act in the genre before a generational tidal wave pushes alt. rock back to the fringes, namely queens of the stone age. that makes them great for a beer if you like the general style...
....but it also restricts their movement out of the bar scene.
fun if you like it, but very generic.
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the refreshing part of seeing mudhoney in a little bar in ottawa last night was realizing that mudhoney are, in fact, still mudhoney. this is, of course, an act with a pure genealogy out of mid 80s seattle, composed of a number of people that were instrumental in the construction of 'grunge'. most people, however, will know them as one of kurt cobain's favourite bands. in fact, they're more than that; if you take their history back into green river, there's a strong argument that they're really the central focus of what grunge *was*.
they never had a success level comparable to the other acts that came out of seattle at the same time, and that's probably due to the fact that, like the melvins, they were always messier, noisier and less marketable. they never had a hit single because they never wrote one....
they did everything "right" - the energy, the cathartic noise, the irreverent obnoxiousness.....
....and it helped that i did everything right by getting fairly toasted before i went and slam dancing in the pit fairly hard....
....but it's only going to work in a small bar. in a large venue, the sweat and feedback and chaos is going to get eaten up by the ambience of the space and the distance between performer and audience member. it's not clear how much longer they'll be in top form for, so don't miss them in a small venue while you still have the chance.
i don't have footage from ottawa, but this is another off-night bar set from the same period (they were on tour with pearl jam that fall but did select bar dates):