The Seattle Times, 11/12/98

Small Sensations: Mudhoney Never Went Big-Time, and That's Just Fine With Them, Thanks
By Tom Scanlon

Still groggy from a show the night before, Mark Arm woke up one Saturday morning in Salt Lake City. No, make that Boise - Salt Lake City was Thursday night. After collecting himself for a phone interview, Arm and his Mudhoney bandmates would pile into a van, off to the next stop on a club tour.

Ten Novembers after releasing their first album, Superfuzz Bigmuff, these founding fathers of grunge are back on the road with a new, critically acclaimed album, Tomorrow Hit Today.

Some folks around Seattle will tell you that Mudhoney is just as good as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains - and any other grunge band that went huge.

Yet Mudhoney never went huge. The band never even became big. Instead of heavy radio rotation, stadium concerts, platinum record sales and MTV, it's been college radio, nightclub concerts, modest sales and no-TV.

So is Mark Arm bitter? Angry? Feeling even a little bit disappointed?

"Not really," he says, in a mellow voice that is a far cry from his howling vocals. "It was never one of our goals to become part of the mainstream. We're pretty stubborn about what we want to sound like.

Even so, singer-guitarist Arm, guitarist Steve Turner, drummer Dan Peters and bassist Matt Lukin sound clean and clean on Tomorrow Hit Today. The album, which might be Mudhoney's best yet, was produced by Jim Dickinson, known for his work with the Rolling Stones and the Replacements.

Fans have had to wait three years for Tomorrow Hit Today, which almost did not happen at all. After taking more than a year off to work on other projects, the band regrouped and was ready to return to the recording studio but was stunned to learn that new management at Reprise Records (the band's label since it left Sub Pop in 1992) wanted a sample tape before it would fund the album.

"It was the first time we ever had to do a demo...which was freaking me out at the time," Arm says. "I was ready to be like Chicken Little - the sky is falling."

Dickinson eased Arm's worries, the band did the demo, and Reprise gave it the green light. Still, this added months to the album-making process. And when the actual recording finally started, it was on-again and off-again, with long breaks to accommodate Dickinson's busy schedule.

"It was kind of frustrating at the time," Arm says. "In retrospect, it helped us sit back, not overanalyze but walk away from (new songs) for a week or two."

Whether it was the additional recording time, Dickinson's production skills, a maturation by the band or all of the above, Tomorrow Hit Today has been getting rave reviews.

Rolling Stone magazine's Ben Edmonds gave it four stars (out of five), with the note "we may have to start paying attention to these clowns - whether they want it or not." The Los Angeles Times proclaimed, "Mudhoney has finally realized its potential."

Then again, Mudhoney has been getting rave notices for years. It's albums Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge and Piece of Cake made Spin Magazine's top 20 lists. And its 1995 recording, My Brother the Cow, also received four stars from Rolling Stone.

"Yeah, I guess it only proves kids don't give a damn what critics say," Arm says.

Spoken like a true commercialism-hating punk rocker. Punk remains the core of Mudhoney, as it was in the beginning.

"We all basically met in the early '80s going to local hard-core punk rock shows," Arm says. The big Seattle grunge bands, most of them got their start from that scene. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden - all of them would hang out at the Metropolis...kids from bands would play music for each other."

After talking for 45 minutes about everything - from what he is reading (When Corporations Rule the World) to his feelings about Seattle ("I really don't like this place at all; but everyone else wants to stay") to his musical roots (Black Flag, the Stooges, Neil Young) to Mudhoney's constituency ("I've seen people in bands go through so many incarnations, it's kind of funny to see them end up nowhere") - Arm brings the conversation to a sudden end.

"I'd better go. We've got to boogie on up to Spokane...I don't believe that I just said 'boogie on up.' Anyway, we've got to go to Spokane."

In Arm's Way:
More words of wisdom from Mark Arm

On Grunge:
"I think it's kind of weird that this form of music in even the smallest degree had anything to do with this international fashion."

On the long break between albums:
"We didn't feel the world was clamoring for another Mudhoney record."

On whether this is Mudhoney's best album:
"I've heard that. It might be true. It also might be hard for us to be objective."

On Seattle:
"I don't drink coffee. I hate computers. Seattle's a drag."