Mudhoney
March To Fuzz

I love Mudhoney, it's impossible not to.

Born from the ashes of Green River, among the founding fathers of grunge, whatever that may be; masters of a rock that reeks of mud, fuzz, basement, honey, sickness, pieces of pie, and big bosom movies from the '60s. From 1988 to today, they're still around playing as they like, with commercial success far below what they deserve. After giving us important lessons in musical coherence, out-of-fashion album covers, absurd titles, and fuzz abuse, Mudhoney also show how a proper collection should be done. Truthfully, I tend to avoid compilations. Not because they are commercial operations per se: these poor souls do need to eat. The fact is that greatest hits are usually shockingly useless. Fifteen songs among the most famous of a group, usually ignoring the deserving but less catchy episodes, plus a few unpublished tracks discarded from previous albums, usually for well-justified reasons. Or bombardments of compilations one after another or, even worse, a greatest hits for a band that’s only done maybe three albums.

Mudhoney, however, are indeed grubby, and we love them for that too, but also good guys, and they like to do things right. "March to Fuzz," whose title is a program, was released in 2000 under Sub Pop. It's a double album, an excellent compendium of Mark Arm's band's career. The first disc is the true best of: a balanced selection of songs from albums released up until then, obviously not forgetting their beginnings summarized in that fabulous "Superfuzz Bigmuff plus Early Singles," an unsurpassed masterpiece of rock decay. Sure, someone will say, Mielfango's songs don't exactly shine for heterogeneity, nor are their hit singles much softer than their more rotten songs: "Touch Me I’m Sick" and the cover of "Hate the Police" by the Dicks are perhaps among their most famous songs? Precisely for this reason, a good selection of twenty-two tracks is not easy. The real gem, however, comes with the second disc, and this is indeed what justifies the purchase of "March to Fuzz": the rarities disc. Unreleased tracks and b-sides that wouldn't look out of place on any official album and a delightful collection of covers of Motörhead, Elvis Costello, Suicide, Black Flag, and the worst of '80s punk, like Angry Samoans and The Adolescents. Things done properly then: no pathetic drop in quality, no cover abuse, no uselessness. For this reason, there's no point in mentioning one song over another, here it's just a taste of mud and honey.

Alright, it's still a compilation, so of relative utility and importance. "March to Fuzz" is still an excellent summary of Mudhoney's career in the 1988-2000 era, really useful if you don't feel like listening to all their albums or if you want to savor listening gradually: after all, it consists of fifty-two (52) tracks and listening to them all in a row would be slightly confusing. However, this is also why I am personally attached to this album: listening to it in small pieces little by little accompanied me for a long time before I finally decided to listen to each album in full. The only real flaw of the collection is the absence of "When in Rome," "Magnolia Cabhoose Babyshit," and Sonic Youth's "Halloween," but you can't have everything in life.