Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner discussed Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love in a new Straight interview.
“We met her years before she and Kurt got together. Hole and Mudhoney did a tour of the UK in 1991, I want to say—maybe it was 1990.”
“I think the drugs pissed some people off, and what junkies do to each other, I think is a big part of why some people have a hard time with her, but I wasn’t involved in any of that stuff, so I don’t have any horror stories about her. I certainly don’t blame her for Kurt’s death. And she knew what she wanted to do musically—it wasn’t all Kim Gordon. Kim Gordon recorded the record, and people like that record, but Hole was already a going thing before that. They knew what they were doing.”
Andy Frisk recently published a review of Mudhoney’s new album Digital Garbage on Alternative Nation.
He wrote:
Referring to Mudhoney as “court jesters” is in no way meant to take away from their musicianship or ability to continue to crank out album after album of brilliant Iggy Pop influenced fuzz punk, something they’ve been at for 30 years now. No, it’s more a reference to their Shakespearean freedom to stand up and say that the “emperor has no clothes.” On Digital Garbage, it’s quite evident that it’s more than just the current fool on the hill in America who has no clothes though. All of us who partake in the insanity rampant in America at the current time is running around stark naked. Yeah, Donald Trump might be the one who “feeds on your fear” in “Paranoid Core,” a song that lists a litany of paranoid fears that shake Trump’s supporters to the core. All of which range from overblown idiocy to downright racist dog whistles. “Kill Yourself Live” metaphorically bashes all of us who have metaphorically “killed ourselves live” on social media for attention and likes. The song is perhaps the darkest on the album lyrically, but is the most uplifting musically. A high riding surf punk song, replete with the obligatory 60s surf music organ riffs is a rolling retro-punk blast of pure joy, again only musically. The dichotomy is brilliant. Mudhoney will have you walking around singing “kill yourself live!” somewhat joyously, and unconsciously, albeit nervously. Yeah, the song is that catchy.
