The past, annotated
Not long ago, someone posted this video to YouTube from a VHS recording. It’s 61 minutes long, from a Mudhoney show that I attended, May 12, 1989 at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. It’s a fairly notorious show. The press – specifically the NME – called it a “riot.” It’s also discussed in the documentary “I’m Now: The Story of Mudhoney.” It was mostly not a riot, but it's fun to call it that.
My paper ticket is somewhere in a box. I throw away everything except books, but I’ve kept this ticket for over 35 years. Wish I could remember which box.
Was John Peel there? I swear he was. An older man who looked just like John Peel stood about ten feet away from me, so I decided it was him without going up to ask. It was him. Anyone wants to tell me I’m mistaken can do so and I’ll hear them out, but I will also hold onto my story.
I stood in the back of the room, which was not especially large. Not a theater. A hall with a small stage. Tables in front of the stage. Big PA stacks on the sides.
I remember that I wore a Sonic Youth t-shirt from the “Flaming Telepaths” tour, purchased at their show in Austin at Liberty Lunch, 1986. I remember this because I wore that shirt to shreds. My Linus blanket.
I almost remember that a not-imaginary band that might have maybe been called Sharky’s Machine was possibly first up. I'm more convinced that John Peel was nearby than that this band made an appearance. The ticket, wherever it is in my home, says “Mudhoney, plus support” on it, referring to whatever band that was. And Soundgarden.
Soundgarden was not yet famous. I already had one of their records so this was almost as exciting to me as seeing Mudhoney, with whom I was less familiar but suddenly more enthusiastic about based on the strength of one single, “Touch Me I’m Sick.” You can walk around perfectly happy to enjoy your Soundgarden cassette and then you hear “Touch Me I’m Sick” and you think holy shit who the fuck are these fuckin dudes what the fuck, and you have a new fascination of 1988.
Soundgarden’s set was about 40 minutes, dense and heavy. Chris Cornell had very long hair, and was not wearing a shirt. He writhed around the mic stand. The band did not speak to the crowd at all until they finished, when Cornell said, “We’re Black Sabbath. Goodnight.” That was it. My memory is that the British music press, in reviewing the show and focusing entirely on the antics you're about to read, didn't give one damn about Soundgarden.
TIMELINE:
00:01 – Intermittent guitar sounds on stage.
00:02 - All four Mudhoneys have that hair, the kind of hair that eventually comes to be read as “grunge” hair, the hair that works its way through Kurt Cobain and Marc Jacobs and K-Mart ads and winds up on Angela Chase. Mudhoney hair hits the shoulders. It's not as long as Cornell’s which is beautiful metal hair but not hair-metal metal hair more like Metallica metal hair except maybe some Silkience is involved. Mudhoney hair seems unwashed, and that's at a distance. So.
01:45 – Is there going to be a song? Perhaps. I’ve never cared much if a band has songs. Noises are fully satisfying. They’re making noises.
04:10 – Still no song. Mark Arm, lead person, has already hurled himself into the crowd. He has climbed back from there, retrieved his guitar. Then he invites the entire audience to come on stage. A lot of them take him at his word. Now it’s a happy frenzy.
8:00 – Someone in a suit is attempting to restore order. Kids are climbing on the tables where the monitors are. Will the P.A. stacks fall over? No music is happening but there’s a scramble of bodies up front. I grew up obsessed with the movie “The Poseidon Adventure” and from childhood made a habit of observing emergency exits and making contingency plans for escape. I’m already standing in the back, and the atmosphere still feels jovial in the way that Mudhoney songs, dark subject matter or not, feel like they come from a place of comedy or at least a deeply observed stoner sense of absurdity. They can end a song screaming, “YOU’LL DIE ALONE!” and you shout along happily because it always feels like a joke you're all telling to each other. I move closer to the exits.
12:30 A song. I don’t know which song it is.
16:45 – Arm tells everyone to climb up on top of the speakers. Chaos set in motion once again.
19:00 – At some point security and/or cops arrive. This is where my memory and the timeline of this video get fuzzy. It’s dark in back. Not as dark as this video makes it seem. But dark enough, and 36 years ago enough, that the troop of authority figures who walk in could have been security or police or a blind date of both. None of them show up on camera. They simply stand around waiting. The band does not begin performing their cover of The Dicks’ “Hate the Police,” not that it would have been easily recognized by anyone who didn't pay for a ticket. I move away from the exit and back into the anonymous dark. Don’t need this in my life. Arm says, “Security’s gonna kick your heads in.” I'm willing to observe this but also would prefer not to. Let cops be bumbling and teenage "riots" be jolly.
20:00 – Song: “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More”
23:00 – Tables collapse. Security does nothing about this. I feel excited and lucky to be here.
25:00 – The band, having invited insanity, now seems mildly frustrated by it. “If you want us to play, take it easy… These people aren’t gonna let us play until you mellow out… We’re not your parents.” A weird semi-scolding moment, but, like, dude you asked for it.
27:00 – Arm: “Steve [Turner] has to change his guitar string.”
31:00 - A roadie tries to keep kids off the stage. The set has properly begun. “If I Think” and then “Mud Ride,” “Here Comes Sickness,” some songs I know from “Superfuzz Bigmuff,” and some I can’t make out.
50:00 – Arm says, “Goddammit” into the mic. An Americanism, I’m told by a local friend named Siobhan. She says that in her experience British people simply don’t use that word very much. She’s from the South of England, which I’m told is “posh.” Maybe that’s why. It’s the word she likes to say when she’s trying to do an American accent for my amusement. She says that’s what she thinks of when she thinks of an American, someone saying “Goddammit.” When she asks me what word I associate with Brits I say, “Cadbury.” (A lie. It’s “cunt.” Everyone says that all the time, to anyone, everyone, in any situation. Children say it. I find this to be insane. And I feel like a 19th century schoolmarm for being shocked by it.)
53:00 – “Touch Me I’m Sick” and, I think, “In and Out of Grace,” “Chain That Door,” “This Gift.” Others I don’t recognize for some reason. No Shazam back then.
1:01 – Arm: “You guys fuckin’ rule, man.” And it's over.
I'm aware that memory rarely matches up with how an event really happened, so I'm pretty surprised that these memories were powerful and long-lasting enough that nothing in the video seems to contradict what I experienced, aside from the band-focused frame. The complete show was absolutely an audience-powered spectacle.
Someone comes up to me and sees the Sonic Youth shirt and asks me where I got it. “Texas,” I say. “I’m from Texas.” He wants to buy it from me. Like off my back. I would then be shirtless at night in London where it’s very cold even in May, riding a subway looking like an insane person. I did not sell him my shirt. I went back to Texas and continued to wear that shirt until it died. But I did buy a Mudhoney t-shirt from the record store where I was working in 1990. Blue and red, a Warholian color-blocked man, like a squattier version of George “The Animal” Steele, a favorite. I wore it to shreds.
