Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner discussed Nirvana members Kurt Cobain, Dave Grohl, and Krist Novoselic in a Straight interview.
“You know, I didn’t really know Kurt very well,” Turner replies. “He seemed fairly private and shy. We were friendly, and we did lots of shows together, but I don’t know if I ever had a meaningful conversation with him. The other guys—Grohl even—I got to know pretty well, and Krist [Novoselic] we’d known through the years because he was always ‘that tall weird guy who hung out with the Melvins.’ He was always with the Melvins, from ‘84 on.
So you know, we got to know him pretty well, even before Nirvana, and it was kind of exciting: ‘hey, the Melvins roadie-guy has a band! Cool!’ That’s what I thought of Nirvana at first. I never knew Kurt really well—what drove him, and what, ultimately he was fighting. It’s a sad, tragic tale all around; obviously he did not get the help he needed.”
Andy Frisk published a review of Mudhoney’s latest album Digital Garbage on Alternative Nation.
He wrote:
While Trump, the specific racists and paranoid bigots who support him, and everyday slaves to social media are bashed by Arm and company, it is religious hypocrites that are reserved for the the harshest of Arm’s ire. “21st Century Pharisees,” “Prosperity Gospel,” “Please Mr. Gunman,” and “Messiah’s Lament” all attack everyone from peodophile priests to church going hypocrites. “He doesn’t give a f*** about your Jesus! And it’s clear that you don’t either!” screams Arm in “21st Century Pharisees.” The best song of the lot attacking hypocritical religious types though is “Prosperity Gospel.” “F*** the planet/Screw your children/Get rich!/You win!” sings Arm over dual guitar lines, one fuzzy and distorted and one clear and straightforward. The double guitar rhythms draw attention to the two lines of thought that oppose each other in the oxymoronic phrase “prosperity gospel.” Doing things that are anti the spirit of the gospel gets you blessed by God and makes you rich. It’s the metaphor that sums up so much of what’s wrong with America today, and Mudhoney have no problem addressing it with wide eyed clarity.
It’s not only far right religious types and company that are lambasted here though. In the oddly touching, especially for Mudhoney, track “Messiah’s Lament” Arm blasts the type of politically correct thinking that would lead advocates to deride a very specific event in the New Testament. “Turning water into wine/Is dismissed as a parlor trick/That’s insensitive to/The struggles of alcoholics” sings Arm in the song’s first verse. “Look what they’re doing in my name!” laments Arm. Both sides of the political and poli-social spectrum are equal targets for Arm. It’s hypocrisy and bigotry, and the ignorance that drive both, that gets Arm’s goat.
