The Year: 1990The Album: Mudhoney, Superfuzz Bigmuff Plus Early Singles
Who It Influenced: Hole, Nirvana, Whirlwind Heat, Comets on Fire, Pissed Jeans, Male Bonding
When Mudhoney issued their all-time-classic debut single, "Touch Me I'm Sick" (b/w "Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More," no less) in 1988, they effectively introduced the world to Sub Pop Records, to the Seattle music scene, and to a sound that'd soon be known, worldwide, as grunge.
With its sludgy guitars, sarcastic screams, and pounding caveman drums, the song reveled in a dirty, fuzzy, scuzzy sound that stood at odds with the predominant late-'80s culture of hair metal. Mudhoney harkened back to garage-rock reprobates like The Stooges, but set out to play their riffs in as noisy and unkempt fashion as possible.
Mudhoney followed this early single with an EP called Superfuzz Bigmuff &Mdash;so named after their two most treasured distortion pedals— and, in 1990, with grunge fast gaining steam and compact-discs starting to take over as an industry standard, Sub Pop squashed them all together on one disc.
The result was, in many ways, the definitive grunge record.
- Full review: Mudhoney, Superfuzz Bigmuff Plus Early Singles
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