Mudhoney - Melkweg - Amsterdam

Still reeling from Pearl jam at the Astoria, the next grunge adventure has arrived. Mudhoney are playing at the Melkweg.






The Melkweg is a club in Amsterdam. It performs various functions, but my favourite function is it's use as a small venue for bands. There are various halls, but the main one holds a few thousand people so you get very intimate gigs. Pearl Jam played here during their first European tour in 1992, so it;s one of the few places I had heard of before I came to live in Amsterdam:



I've seen various bands in the Melkweg, but the he first time I was there was in 2002 to watch Mudhoney with the Bulgarian Bride.

Mudhoney are the ultimate Seattle band. They hark back to the earliest days of the Sub Pop label. Before that they were green river:



Green river consisted of members of Pearl Jam plus members of Mudhoney. They reached the kind of almost famous stage. By the time their break through record came out they had actually split up, due to one half of the band thinking you needed to be able to play your instruments and the other thinking you could pretty much get through it on beer alone. Mudhoney were the ones who reckoned you could get through it on beer alone. I'm paraphrasing a little, but it gives you an idea of what they sound like.

The truth is that Mudhoney are simultaneously the worst and best bands in the world. How they remain so real after so many years is a testament to their love of music. During the Nirvana hey day, Mudhoney sniffed worldwide fame. Lucky or unlucky, they never quite crossed the barrier from the underground, so they remain as honest and gutsy as they always have, with a diehard fan base that make you feel like you're at the showbox circa 1992:




Mudhoney are a time machine back to that... or maybe even further back. They sound like the stooges in the raw power days, or the MC5 during the death rattle of the 60's.

In 2002, I had never been to the Melkweg before, so I was unsure which of the doors along marnixstraat led to the venue... I apprehensively walk along peering in trying not to lose my cool in my Sub Pop T-Shirt:



I knew I was in the right place when I saw Steve Turner, Mark Arm, Dan Peters and the Catheters(The support for the night) at the bar:







I headed in and offered to buy the band a drink. Mark told me they had a free bar and we should keep our money.

For anyone who wishes that they could be involved with the conversation of such superstars of Grunge. Mark and the Catheters were talking about having to hitch from paris when their car broke down, and Steve was talking about some Über Obscure band that he found a 7" of like the least cool stamp collector in the world.

I didn't stick around for long, cos I didn't want to over stay my welcome. I was happy to survive on the music that night. It was wonderful! They were on point all night... blasting out hits like there was no tomorrow. The vocals sound terrible the drums sloppy but precise, the guitars out of tune and lofi... and it pulls together to magical whole that no music lesson in the world can ever teach.

I had a few run ins with the boys after this. Steve Turner did a tour in support of his solo album sometime in 2003 when I was back living in Scotland:



He was considerate enough to chose one of my favourite bars on in Glasgow for the Scottish leg of the tour; Nice N' Sleazy's:



Nice N' Sleazy's is a grungey little rock bar on Sauchiehall street in Glasgow. John Peel once said that it had the best stocked Jukebox in the UK. My history with the bar goes back slightly further than that. It's on of the few bars where you could go if you were alternative(Or it was before alternative was the mainstream). When I was up in glasgow for a concert at king tut's(Just round the corner) in about 1997, one of my older peers taught me that Diesel was the drink of choice in Nice N' Sleazy's:



Diesel is half a pint of lager, half a pint of cider and a shot of blackcurrent juice. For some reason it gets you to an extremely merry drunk, extremely quickly(I think it must be the Blackcurrent). Ever since then I've always had (At least one pint) of Diesel when I've been in Nice N' Sleazy. This made pub quizzes in 1999/2000 quite enjoyable. Tuesday night was pub quiz night. We were on a strict regime of good eating, no drinking and hardcore studying. Tuesday night was our night off, but we limited ourselves to 3 pints. 3 pints of diesel meant that we answered full marks on rounds 1-6 fell asleep during the sport round and then woke up drunk during the last round. We'd make the jolly walk home, and wake up with no more ill effects than a purple moustache tattooed above our lips.

Anyway...... bizarre that I should get caught up in stories of beer during a Mudhoney blog...

Steve decided to play at Nice N' Sleazy. I presume because he was staying at Eugene Kelly's house during his stay in Glasgow. Eugene is famous for being in scotland's contribution to lofi grunge -The Vaselines - and more obviously for Nirvana covering several of these songs(Son of a Gun, Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam, Molly's lips). He's not super famous, but Mowgli and I like to spot him in Glaswegian bars, cos it usually means there's someone more famous at his side. We've seen him hanging around with Evan Dando quite a few times, and on this night he's providing the support for Steve.

Eugene played various songs..... I've seen him quite a few times. He's a good song writer, but the Nirvana songs always sound funny in a Scottish accent.

Steve's solo stuff has a delicate brilliance. He plays acoustic guitar just as he does electric....i.e. he cares more about rhythm than he does getting the chord exactly right and her strums parts that should be picked. Its rough and ready but his nervous voice lamenting tales of lost love over the top of it give it a delicate beauty which can't be described. I think a lot of the realness and raw emotion in Mudhoney comes from steve... I respected Mudhoney a lot more after that night. They;re often seen as the joke band of grunge because they play with a lot of humour, but the sentiments expressed in the songs wouldn't be work if they didn't mean it.







Anyway. At the end of that gig. I was standing with my Mowgli and my pint(Diesel no doubt) and Steve came out to see what was happening. Everyone knows the score with Mudhoney. Very few people ask for an autograph or ask what Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam are like. They just kind of pat Steve on the back, congratulate him on his solo stuff and then leave him be. Some people have some obscure underground band knowledge that interests him, others don't. He tells us that the next day, him and Eugene are going to be having some drinks in Stereo. Stereo is another little alternative bar. It has gone through various guises. In first year of uni, its position next to a student halls of residence meant that it was our venue for half price cocktails before clubbing on a tuesday. Mowgli and I have also had a drink with Eugene Kelly there of a Hogmannay(Well we were all drinking in the same bar at the same time), but this particular saturday we found ourselves drinking a warm bottle of beer at 3pm on a saturday afternoon while Steve rattled off a few songs. All very relaxed.





Needless to say, I'm not exactly starstruck when I see steve now. Just respecting.

In 2004 once I was back in Amsterdam I had a little grunge adventure when I went to see the MC5 play in the paradiso in Amsterdam:



The remains of MC5 had reformed and guest singers were handling the vocals. The concert was billed as having Mark Arm and Evan Dando(It's a small world) as special guests, but eventually it was only Mark Arm. He was absolutely outstanding. The ultimate front man, who was reeling from playing with his heros. The Paradiso is such an intimate setting that my pint was sitting beside his on the stage:













This time around I am heading to the gig in a kilt. After the joys and new friends of Pearl Jam in London I felt it was expected of me. I am meeting the Bulgarians(This time married) at the gig. Mowgli is not attending due to uni commitments, but in his place is a friend of ours who we will call Paprika. Paprika, not just because it was her childhood nickname, but also because she's small, hot and spicy:



Paprika is a grunge fan, a mac user, a moleskin lover and traveller, so I'm surprised it's taken her this long to get into the blog.

Anyway. With a grunge certified kilt.....



......a sonic youth T-shirt......


.......a grunge is dead T-Shirt




..... some Pearl jam Wrist bands......



.....and some trusty converse.....



we're officially ready to rock.....

We meet a Norwegian friend of mine(AMENt TO THAT) from the Astoria in a bar across from the Melkweg. He's videoing the entire Mudhoney tour, and later in the year he'll follow Pearl jam round their entire European tour.

Paprika has been in Amsterdam for less than 24 hours, so apart from a quick walking tour of the city we've done much i.e. not been drinking yet. She did however try scotland's other national beverage as a pick me up:



Beer is the Mudhoney drink of choice though, so I give her a sip of my choice brew of the evening:




She's impressed so maybe later in the week we'll partake in some more Belgian beer drinking... for now... it's Mudhoney!!!!



Mudhoney have just brought out a new album. Given that I've got a new Pearl Jam album to memorise, I've not listened to it as much as I'd like to, but that doesn't really matter, cos Mudhoney songs have a strnage nack of feeling like an old friend on the second listen.

We meet the Bulgarians and head into the venue. I love that moment when you walk into a venue. You start to smell the atmosphere, check out the other people who are there. This can be boring when you go to too many concerts, but a Sub Pop concert is always good, cos everyone has obscure T-shirts and references to obscure bands. It's good fun.

We make our way up to the Balcony. The Melkweg is a great venue in that you can stand at the back and take in all the atmosphere, see everything and still quietly enjoy a drink. We do just that.....









The support band are about half way through their set. I don't listen too much. It's a pretty good effort. They're an interesting band called the Holy Soul. I think they're from Australia. I need to do a google.

When Mudhoney takes to the stage, the whole place erupts... literally. The energy that this band brings to the stage is phenomenal. They just exude pure energy. I never know if it's them... the songs..... or maybe magic beer of some sort.

These guys are all over 40 and I pretty sure they play with as much energy as they did when they were in green river. The pace is absolutely relentless, and the catchiness of the songs makes it seem like every song is a hit.







The crowd are old school too... there is a not stop stream of crowd surfing, stage diving and just the general sway of an early 90's festival crowd which you wouldn't imagine can happen with only a few hundred people.

I bop away through the hits. Every one sounding better than the last.





There's a few technical issues where the guitars are falling in and out. Mark makes a few jokes... Steve makes a ban on witty banter suggesting that they are a more serious band than that. I suppose a Mudhoney gig with perfect clean sound wouldn't really be a mudhoney gig.

As an encore they play when tomorrow hits and in and out of grace. The place is going pretty wild.

They end with Hate The Police. Mark Arm ditches the guitar. He goes wild as a front man, just like he did with MC5. I wish he did this for every song, but Mudhoney kind of needs that double guitar onslaught for the dischordey sound.

The full setlist is:

Suck You Dry
It is Us
You Got it
Where is the Future?
Hard-on for War
Sweet Young Thing
Touch Me I'm Sick
Where the Flavor is
I Have to Laugh
If I Think
Sonic Infusion
Beneath the Valley
Here Comes Sicknesss
Blindspots

When Tomorrow Hits
In 'N' Out of Grace
Hate the Police

After the cleansing of Mudhoney we head off to the Zotte for a quick drink.... It's strange being one of my locals in a kilt.



Over a Kwak and a Chimay Red we talk about our memories of the gig:





After this Paprika and I say Лека Носх to the Bulgarians and we head off to Leidseplein to get some drinks with AMENt TO THAT and his friends. We tell funny stories about Pearl Jam In London, Mudhoney in Amsterdam, Norwegian Airport security and future plans for the grunge summer ahead until it's time for bed....



Paprika and I head back on our bicycle built for two.... well I say built for two. It was built for one Dutch person which is only a little smaller than Paprika and I added together.



This turned into a little bit of a rant, but it's been ages since I blogged, and I'm sitting on a train spouting on and on and on about a band I love.

Good night........