Musing with Mudhoney
Musing with Mudhoney
July is a phenomenal month of music for the Artist to Watch program! Not only are we featuring At Mount Zoomer, the new album from Wolf Parade, but we also have the delicate sounds of Miwa Gemini and the sweetness of Vetiver. Not to mention, we have tracks from the new Mudhoney album, The Lucky Ones and a special live version of In 'n Out of Grace.
Mudhoney is often credited with inspiring the Seattle grunge movement and with influencing the likes of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. They just released their 8th full-length album, alongside a deluxe reissue of their first EP Superfuzz Bigmuff. We recently spoke with lead singer/ guitarist Mark Arm about the new album, about social networking and digital distribution and about the music industry at large. Here are the excerpts. Enjoy!
The 20 year reissue of your first EP along with your 8th studio album sort of bookends the story of your career – but for me, it also tells the history of the music industry at large for the last 20 years. So much has changed – and you have had such a unique vantage point for all of it. Do you mind talking about what you think are some of the biggest differences in the industry today versus when you started?
We can talk about that but I can tell you right now that to me, the music industry at large – the big picture of it – is completely irrelevant.
In what sense?
I don’t feel connected to anything that is happening in the pop charts. I never have. And that’s usually what people talk about when they talk about the music industry. And that is pushing music as fashion. And I can give a shit if Hanna Montana is big or not.
Do you think that anybody needs to go to a major label now? Is that even necessary with the new distribution methods and new ways that people can play music and get music exposed?
No. I don't think anyone ever needs to go to a major label period. The only reason we ended up going to one was… we were weary of them to begin with… especially watching what had kinda happened to the records of Hüsker Dü and the Replacements when they were on independent labels and all of a sudden they record these major label records and they are really slick and watered down sounding and we just assumed that was because the major label told them to record that way.
Right – looking for that hit single.
So what we did when we when we left SubPop was talk to Caroline Records which was the company that distributed SubPop at the time - we just figured we would cut out the middle man and go straight to the distributor, right. And we had a meeting with the president of that company and he told us that we couldn't do any side projects – Steve and I had just done the Monkeywrench record. That we would have to go on tour for nine months like their new hot band the Smashing Pumpkins - they were getting some traction by constantly staying on the road. And then they said that when we recorded, we would have to sweeten up our guitar sounds. At which point we thanked them for the very expensive lunch and decided if that is the kind of shit we are going to hear from an independent label, we might as well talk to major labels.
And I think we were lucky in the time we were talking to major labels because things were – had just turned so upside down for them – that they didn’t know what the fuck was going on – that they gave us complete control. They never once – for any of the records we recorded, well I guess I shouldn’t say that – up until the end - they never fucked with what we were doing. They just kind of let us do what we did and to make a point, we recorded our first major label album n the same basement studio as our last SubPop record.
And I think we actually witnessed the last days of…you know, Warner Brothers at the time and for many years before that had been known as the “artist friendly” major label. It was the label Neil Young went back to after he got sued by Geffen for not sounding enough like himself. It was the label that put out records by Captain Beefheart and Devo and the Sex Pistols and tons and tons of others. They stuck by Randy Newman for years before he had any hits. They put out countless Ry Codder records that weren’t hits. You know-- so it seemed that if we were going to go to a major label, this was going to be the place to go to. And we saw the dying days of that era.
You know – getting back to social networking and music blogs and how people hear and get exposed to new music today, I noticed that you have over half a million page-views on your MySpace page. Is this something that you ever pay attention to?
We don’t even run our MySpace page. There is a kid from Texas who does that.
Do you pay attention to any of those things or is it just something that is completely separate from the music.
I don’t. I know that Steve has a MySpace page. I think Guy, our bass player, has this other band so he started up a MySpace page for his band The Bricklane, and Steve has one because he does solo stuff. I don’t even know what you would do with a MySpace page
As far as the new album goes, did you do anything different?
Yeah you know, we decided that the 2 previous records seemed like a pair so we went into this one thinking that we would do something a bit different and one of the things that we had talked about after I did that tour with the remaining members of the MC5, was maybe just writing a couple of songs were I don’t play guitar and play the role of Front Man more. And we ended up writing the whole album that way. I don’t play guitar on it.
What are the differences with that? Does this give you more time? Do you like being that Front Man role?
Well, when we were writing the records, I put more focus on the vocals instead of coming up with a guitar riff that would fit in with everyone else’s stuff. Which was also maybe a little more awkward. I didn’t have pages of notes or anything to pull lyrics from. I just kind of pulled shit out of thin air or my ass – which ever seemed handiest. Just trying out different melodies and stuff like that in front of people. Normally what we do, what we had been doing, is we got a little 4 track cassette player and recorder and we would put down our riffs and then when everyone was gone, I would add a spare track that I would try doing vocal stuff on. But this time I had to do it live and in front of people. And you know, no one really laughed too much so it was good.
Mike Diaz Interview mp3
July is a phenomenal month of music for the Artist to Watch program! Not only are we featuring At Mount Zoomer, the new album from Wolf Parade, but we also have the delicate sounds of Miwa Gemini and the sweetness of Vetiver. Not to mention, we have tracks from the new Mudhoney album, The Lucky Ones and a special live version of In 'n Out of Grace.
Mudhoney is often credited with inspiring the Seattle grunge movement and with influencing the likes of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. They just released their 8th full-length album, alongside a deluxe reissue of their first EP Superfuzz Bigmuff. We recently spoke with lead singer/ guitarist Mark Arm about the new album, about social networking and digital distribution and about the music industry at large. Here are the excerpts. Enjoy!
The 20 year reissue of your first EP along with your 8th studio album sort of bookends the story of your career – but for me, it also tells the history of the music industry at large for the last 20 years. So much has changed – and you have had such a unique vantage point for all of it. Do you mind talking about what you think are some of the biggest differences in the industry today versus when you started?
We can talk about that but I can tell you right now that to me, the music industry at large – the big picture of it – is completely irrelevant.
In what sense?
I don’t feel connected to anything that is happening in the pop charts. I never have. And that’s usually what people talk about when they talk about the music industry. And that is pushing music as fashion. And I can give a shit if Hanna Montana is big or not.
Do you think that anybody needs to go to a major label now? Is that even necessary with the new distribution methods and new ways that people can play music and get music exposed?
No. I don't think anyone ever needs to go to a major label period. The only reason we ended up going to one was… we were weary of them to begin with… especially watching what had kinda happened to the records of Hüsker Dü and the Replacements when they were on independent labels and all of a sudden they record these major label records and they are really slick and watered down sounding and we just assumed that was because the major label told them to record that way.
Right – looking for that hit single.
So what we did when we when we left SubPop was talk to Caroline Records which was the company that distributed SubPop at the time - we just figured we would cut out the middle man and go straight to the distributor, right. And we had a meeting with the president of that company and he told us that we couldn't do any side projects – Steve and I had just done the Monkeywrench record. That we would have to go on tour for nine months like their new hot band the Smashing Pumpkins - they were getting some traction by constantly staying on the road. And then they said that when we recorded, we would have to sweeten up our guitar sounds. At which point we thanked them for the very expensive lunch and decided if that is the kind of shit we are going to hear from an independent label, we might as well talk to major labels.
And I think we were lucky in the time we were talking to major labels because things were – had just turned so upside down for them – that they didn’t know what the fuck was going on – that they gave us complete control. They never once – for any of the records we recorded, well I guess I shouldn’t say that – up until the end - they never fucked with what we were doing. They just kind of let us do what we did and to make a point, we recorded our first major label album n the same basement studio as our last SubPop record.
And I think we actually witnessed the last days of…you know, Warner Brothers at the time and for many years before that had been known as the “artist friendly” major label. It was the label Neil Young went back to after he got sued by Geffen for not sounding enough like himself. It was the label that put out records by Captain Beefheart and Devo and the Sex Pistols and tons and tons of others. They stuck by Randy Newman for years before he had any hits. They put out countless Ry Codder records that weren’t hits. You know-- so it seemed that if we were going to go to a major label, this was going to be the place to go to. And we saw the dying days of that era.
You know – getting back to social networking and music blogs and how people hear and get exposed to new music today, I noticed that you have over half a million page-views on your MySpace page. Is this something that you ever pay attention to?
We don’t even run our MySpace page. There is a kid from Texas who does that.
Do you pay attention to any of those things or is it just something that is completely separate from the music.
I don’t. I know that Steve has a MySpace page. I think Guy, our bass player, has this other band so he started up a MySpace page for his band The Bricklane, and Steve has one because he does solo stuff. I don’t even know what you would do with a MySpace page
As far as the new album goes, did you do anything different?
Yeah you know, we decided that the 2 previous records seemed like a pair so we went into this one thinking that we would do something a bit different and one of the things that we had talked about after I did that tour with the remaining members of the MC5, was maybe just writing a couple of songs were I don’t play guitar and play the role of Front Man more. And we ended up writing the whole album that way. I don’t play guitar on it.
What are the differences with that? Does this give you more time? Do you like being that Front Man role?
Well, when we were writing the records, I put more focus on the vocals instead of coming up with a guitar riff that would fit in with everyone else’s stuff. Which was also maybe a little more awkward. I didn’t have pages of notes or anything to pull lyrics from. I just kind of pulled shit out of thin air or my ass – which ever seemed handiest. Just trying out different melodies and stuff like that in front of people. Normally what we do, what we had been doing, is we got a little 4 track cassette player and recorder and we would put down our riffs and then when everyone was gone, I would add a spare track that I would try doing vocal stuff on. But this time I had to do it live and in front of people. And you know, no one really laughed too much so it was good.
Mike Diaz Interview mp3
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