Full Flickr Set. (lots of good crowd shots. See if you’re there)

It must have been 1991. I can’t think of any other time it could be. Bush, the first one, was still president, only nerds had heard of the internet and Nirvana had changed just changed everything.

I was in high school at the time and “for my own good” I had been shipped off to military school in South Texas. So far south that whites were the minority and winter was something you had heard about, but shorts in December weren’t out of place. Miserable doesn’t really begin to sum up my life at the time. I was young, intelligent and antagonistic. I had little in common with the people who wanted to be there, who were the sons of the rich with proud military traditions. I had more in common with the people who were sent there, given the opportunity to attend military school to stay out of jail or juvenile hall. But I didn’t have much in common with them either.

My only escapes were nerd culture; video games, Role Playing Games, comics, science fiction and music. Sweet, sweet music. Each week, we were given twenty dollars and set loose on the local populace. We behaved much like you’d imagine teenagers stuck in small towns with a little money and a lot of boredom. There were shuttles that ran and would deliver us to the local malls and movie theaters, safe places.

There was one record store, a Sam Goody or some other chain that wishes the internet had never been created. Grunge had exploded and tucked in the back between Rock and Gospel was an Alternative section. That’s where my money went. I wasn’t listening to country or metal like everyone else, I was out there taking chances. No communication with the outside world, just me, Andrew Jackson and some faceless, anonymous music buyer that’s noticed that we have stopped buying Scorpions albums and have started to buy weird shit.

There was something about that cover. Two guys (?) playing guitar, well one guy playing guitar the other thrown or stumbling. And the name. Superfuzz Big Muff plus Early Singles. What the hell is a superfuzz? Is Big Muff a reference to pussy? It has to be. I was already attracted to the weird end of music and my buying decisions were based solely on covers, but even then, I knew I had something special.

Well probably not, but you’ll forgive a bit of self-mythologizing. It’s my blog.

First listening to this, it was not like anything else I’d heard, even in the heyday of “SIGN EVERYTHING FROM SEATTLE.” It was packed with a kind of mock dangerous menace. Slow, low and blown out. When it was fast, it was just out of control, teetering over the edge of a cliff, inviting you to step up to the edge with a friendly smile and a hand shake. They weren’t playing guitars, they were playing hurricanes, directing the wind and chaos and fury in controlled blasts. The slower pieces, “If I Think”, “Mudride” and “Sweet Young Thing” would tap into that teenage lizard brain and provide me with breathing room.

I played that CD until it vanished. Stolen or misplaced, but it didn’t matter, I bought it again and again and again. For a period of about four years, Mudhoney was my favorite band in the world.

And yet, I never saw them live. I didn’t escape from South Texas until 94 and then didn’t have a car until my twenties, so I couldn’t call the shots on where we went on weekends, so yeah. Last night was pretty much the fulfillment of my teenage dreams and It didn’t disappoint.

White Hills play the soundtrack to heroin overdoses. Imagine Hawkwind if Lemmy had gotten his way. Imagine Black Sabbath slowed down with Ozzy and Ronnie sent out for beer so the musicians could get some work done. Imagine me just throwing a bunch of heavy obscure psychedelic bands at you that no one has even heard of then shouting “BUT CRAZY.” White Hills came on stage, guitarist Dave W in silver face paint and a purple paisley print shirt, bassist Ego Sensation in an outfit that was Go Go pirate, the keyboardist and effects person looked like an velvet robot sent to learn about our time and the drummer looked out of place with a Winston cigarette short and jeans.

If you’re not a fan of space rock or psychedelic progressive, this band is not for you. The people up front stood stock still, waiting for something to happen, above the fury on stage. The time moved and shifted, songs would explore an groove so thoroughly you’d think the were lost before they’d pull you by the hair in another direction before shifting back again, daring you to close your eyes and just trust the band on stage. Their musicality pushed and pulled at you; guitar playing would devolve to string destroying. Sustained feedback loops feeding the bass as it stayed on one note like your life depended on it, the drums would tense up, filling seconds with percussive noise only to relax, comforting you before throwing you to the chaos.

Phrases were hooks, set to grasp against unprotected flesh, barbed, digging in further, pulling you tighter into the noise that comes like age, inevitable, and is as time, unstoppable. Last night White Hills sounded like the inside of a Jerry Cornelius story, out of time, familiar to what came before, yet pushing forward in unknowable directions, daring the audience to be as adventurous as the musicians.

I had never heard of them before and now I feel like a fool.

“The worst thing about wearing tight jeans is that everyone can see what kind of cell phone you have” we’re told at the start of Pissed Jeans’s set. By the end of that set, a hold had been found and expanded on until the entire back half of one of the pant legs had been split and flopped around like some mad JNCO experiment had escaped the denim labs. His shirt will have been removed, and fights would have started in the periphery of the pit.

I should be a fan of Pissed Jeans as they touch all the integral parts of music that I love to draw in and create their own semi-sludge semi-hardcore sounds, but unlike other bands working in the same spheres, Jeans never really grabbed me like they should have. Yet they put on one hell of a show.

I knew that there wouldn’t be any trouble from the older people there. These people had 401(k)s and something to live for. It’s not like seeing Pissed Jeans at the Market Hotel, where my glasses were destroyed, my shirt torn and I hated everything about it. Yet there was an energetic half-dozen people who were there to cause each other grievous bodily harm in service to the music. They slammed around a bit too much for one girl’s liking and she lashed back out punching and kicking at people until her companion had to pull her back away. She must have cause some bruises because no one slammed into that portion of the audience any more.

There’s always the fear when you see a band you like for the first time or a band that’s been around forever. Do they still have it? Will it grab you like it did when you were a kid? Do you know the words? Have all that come after them robbed the band of that special element, that spark that first drew you to them?

Mudhoney was worth the nineteen-year wait.

We got up close and as set lists were taped down, a dozen hungry eyes peered over the edge of the stage to catch a glimpse of what was to come. Spread out over their career, it would have served as a good overview of what had come before. Taking crowd favorites and band favorites equally they pulled from their impressive back catalog to touch upon nearly every point.

The hits were there, the newer material was there and it was played to perfection, like a band that like you never got tired of “Touch Me I’m Sick” “Let It Slide” “You Got It” or “The Money Will Roll Right In.”

The only tragedies were that we didn’t get a few songs I had wanted, no “Paperback Life” none of their amazing covers, but the positives outweighed the negatives. Mudhoney knew what the audience wanted and it gave it to us, like zoo keepers throwing bloody red meat into a lion cage.

It was Crowdsurfin’ U.S.A. to the point that instead of escorting people off, the roadie would just push them right back into the crowd that had delivered them to the stage, usually to hilarious slapstick response as a crowd egalitarian enough to deliver members of the audience to the stage were reluctant to readily accept them.

So, yeah, fifteen year old me, that night was for you. Sorry it took so long.