Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and Mudhoney singer Mark Arm showed up at MC50’s show at the Showbox in Seattle on Tuesday night. MC50 features MC50 guitarist Wayne Kramer, Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil, Soundgarden/Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron, and Faith No More bassist Billy Gould. Vedder and Arm were photographed backstage, and Arm came onstage to perform for a song. See photos below.
Kim Thayil discussed how MC5’s High Time influenced him in a new Seattle Times interview, “I find this and it’s different,” Thayil says. “This is much wilder. This abandon in this music, it’s more dangerous. There’s elements of chaos and a little bit sinister. There’s a political component. The lyrics aren’t as vacuous as the rest of what would have been called heavy metal or hard rock then.”
Wayne Kramer told Cleveland.com, “I’m having the time of my life playing these songs we wrote when we were 18 and 19 years old,” says Kramer, via phone in advance of a show in Montreal. “Even 50 years later, this music doesn’t feel dated at all – it has a style and a substance and is completely relevant with what’s going on today in America.”
Thayil told the Seattle Times that playing in MC50 was the only offer he’d accept at this point after the end of Soundgarden, “I think if anyone else had called I would have declined,” Thayil says. “But because it was the MC5, which is my favorite band ever, and that opportunity was there, I had to say yes.”
