When Seattle's Green River announced an all-ages show in my hometown in the mid-eighties, there was so much buzz surrounding the appearance that I dragged my Huey Lewis-lovin' high-school ass down to the thrift store/art gallery where the band--named after a Pacific Northwest serial killer --was playing. Raw, angry and louder than a jet engine, Green River provided a jaw-dropping introduction to grunge. A few years later, the band split up, its members helping to form Pearl Jam and Mudhoney.

Pearl Jam, of course, transcended grunge to become a superstar rock act. I will always remember the mob scene at Soldier Field in 1995, when, crushed by the crowd and sapped by July's killer heat wave, I spotted a guy I knew from my fave hometown record store relaxing inside the almost-empty pen surrounding the sound board. The guy, who was always bragging up his friendship with bass player Jeff Ament, said a startled hello and then walked away like the reincarnation of Louis XIV when I begged him to let me inside the fence for a breather. There's a celebrity sleeve-hanger for you.

The other band, Mudhoney, never quite scaled those arena-show heights. According to "The Rough Guide to Rock" and other sources, that was more or less by design. Green River supposedly split up over guitarist/singer Mark Arm's punk-rock disgust with Jeff Ament for snuggling up to major-label A&R reps. So Ament and bandmate Stone Gossard co-founded Pearl Jam, while Arm and other bandmate Steve Turner formed Mudhoney. Both bands kept touring and churning out energetic discs through the post-Cobain nineties.

Now, Mudhoney recalls the Seattle sound's salad days with a 52-track, two-disc (or three-album) "hits" compilation, "March to Fuzz." What should listeners expect? As "All-Music Guide" puts it: "Leave the serious themes to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains--Mudhoney takes the same themes but makes them sleazy and trashy, like the Russ Meyer film they named themselves after."

Frank Sennett

Newcity.com affiliates offer up a taste of Mudhoney:

FUZZ BOXERS
Mudhoney, the best and worst band of the late eighties/early nineties, has emerged from a post-grunge layer of dust with the two-disc retrospective, "March to Fuzz"

GO HOME
Seattle's Sub Pop label gets back to its grunge roots

ENDURANCE TEST
Mudhoney, Seattle's perpetual underdog, marks a decade with "Tomorrow Hit Today"

MUD IN YOUR EYE
Why should anyone care about Mudhoney? Because the band kicks ass.

SEATTLE SURVIVORS
"Tomorrow Hit Today" put Mudhoney's four booze-swillin' grubworms back on top of the decimated grunge-rock heap