[Note: this is an excerpt of the article, containing the interview with Mark]

One of the guest singers in the current reunion tour, Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm, will feel as if it's 1969 all over again when he let's rip on stage with The American Ruse:

"They told you in school about freedom/But when you try to be free they never let ya/They said it's easy , nothing to it/And now the army's out to get ya..."

"The MC5 were young and optimistic," says Arm, on the phone from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a few hours before the band play their ninth show of the tour.

"They thought like people did during World War I - 'We just need to get through the Vietnam War and with today's technology and everything, we'll move on. It will be the war to end all wars.' But singing their songs today, I feel like they were written for today."

Arm says the MC5 were shrouded in mystery when he grew up. You couldn't even find the records until they re-issued them in the '80s.

"It's weird. I never thought something like this would come up. I questioned the idea, tried to wrap my head around it to think how it would work out."

But after one rehearsal, he felt "completely at peace with the idea".

"I can't copy Rob, so I just try to get to the essence of the songs. I do my darndest to sing the hell out of them."

There is no questioning Arm's credibility (Mudhoney belted out grunge years before the more celebrated Nirvana), but the presence of fellow guest singer Evan Dando, especially early on the tour, has not been so widely welcomed.

One review of the show at the Phoenix in Toronto, by Dan "The Mouth" Lovranski, attacked the "outrageous grandstanding" of Dando, saying he didn't know the lyrics: "Never have I talked to so many people after a show that wanted to literally kill a performer. This guy pretty well pissed off the entire crowd right out of the gate."

Unlike Dando, Arm was invited to sing by the band. He said he ignored reviews, and would not be drawn into a debate about the appropriateness of Dando's presence or on-stage performances.

"The crowd's been really enthusiastic - people have been waiting a very long time for this."