Mudhoney is reissuing their sophomore LP Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge for its 30th anniversary, expanding it into a deluxe edition with bonus tracks and demos. The deluxe edition will be released on July 23 via Sub Pop.
Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge was the grunge group’s follow-up to their self-titled 1989 debut full-length, which in turn came out after their popular 1988 EP Superfuzz Bigmuff and singles including their hit debut single, “Touch Me I’m Sick,” and its B-side, “Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet Anymore.” The biggest song off of it was “Good Enough,” which is one of the less grungy tracks from their heyday.
That said, Mudhoney weren’t just going for three-chord grunge tracks on Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. They were inspired by a lot of different kinds of music, which poked through on a couple of other tracks. “Broken Hands” borrowed from Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” without quoting it, turning moodier before climaxing with Steve Turner’s wild guitar solo and a Hawkwind-inspired electronic outro. The closer, “Check-Out Time,” is said to have been equally inspired by psychedelic rock group Spacemen 3 and UK punk act Zounds.
Turner stated, “I remember in the early days thinking to myself, I could exactly copy a riff from some obscure record, and by the end it wouldn’t sound anything like that because the other guys wouldn’t know what it was I was ripping off. Like, OK, now it’s completely different!”
The band also shared a remastered version of one of the outtakes from the Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge sessions, called “Ounce of Deception.” It’s very much a grunge track, with the added flair of some keyboard banging, a roaring guitar solo and some energetic punk drums. Frontman Mark Arm sings the easily-screamable hook, “An ounce of deception kills/An ounce of deception kills/An ounce of deception kills a pound of pain.”
A video for the song uses live concert footage, both in color and in black and white, constantly moving, and spending a lot of time watching the crowd surfers. It starts with Arm coming out of a porta potty with “MUD” taped above the company’s name, Honey Bucket. It wasn’t the first time the band willfully associated their band name with human waste. This year, Seattle named their new tunnel boring machine after the local group, in preparation for the machine’s upcoming work on reducing Seattle’s sewage overflow.
Steve Turner started a new band called Sunday State this year, who released their debut self-titled record in April. Mudhoney’s last release was a collaboration with Melvins called White Lazy Boy.
Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge: 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Tracklist:
- Generation Genocide (Remastered)
- Let It Slide (Remastered)
- Good Enough (Remastered)
- Something So Clear (Remastered)
- Thorn (Remastered)
- Into the Drink (Remastered)
- Broken Hands (Remastered)
- Who You Drivin’ Now? (Remastered)
- Move Out (Remastered)
- Shoot the Moon (Remastered)
- Fuzzgun ’91 (Remastered)
- Pokin’ Around (Remastered)
- Don’t Fade IV (Remastered)
- Check-Out Time (Remastered)
- March to Fuzz (Remastered)
- Ounce of Deception (Remastered)
- Paperback Life (alternate version) (Remastered)
- Fuzzbuster (Remastered)
- Bushpusher Man (Remastered)
- Flowers for Industry (Remastered)
- Thorn (1st attempt) (Remastered)
- Overblown (Remastered)
- March From Fuzz (Remastered)
- You’re Gone (Remastered)
- Something So Clear (24-track demo) (Remastered)
- Bushpusher Man (24-track demo) (Remastered)
- Pokin’ Around (24-track demo) (Remastered)
- Check-Out Time (24-track demo) (Remastered)
- Generation Genocide (24-track demo) (Remastered)
Photo credit: Stephen Hoffmeister