Mudhoney

March to Fuzz is a two-CD set that showcases both the "best of" and the many rarities that this band produced. Disc one is great buzzy stroll down the memory lane of Mudhoney's career and includes a lot of predictable faves like "Touch Me I'm Sick," "Hate the Police" and "This Gift," as well as more cult tracks like "Generation Genocide" and "Let It Slide." Just when things couldn't get any better, along comes the second disc and blows you away with 71 minutes of singles, B-sides, unreleased tracks and alternate takes. You get the cool covers, like the Angry Samoans' "You Stupid Asshole," the Damned's "Stab Your Back" and Black Flag's "Fix Me." One of the funniest songs here is the rejected soundtrack number "Run Shithead Run," which reminds us that humour was as important to these guys as kicking ass. In the ultra-informative booklet, we find out that the song was submitted with the "Shithead" lyrics when the band in fact wanted the instrumental version of the song to appear in the film With Honors. As it turned out, the movie people ended up not choosing either version, and this was the last time they were asked to submit music to a film. We also get a fantastic Billy Childish cover, "She's Just 15," which shows how well these guys can handle a straight garage track. If nothing else, this CD finally cements the idea that these guys were as much hard-partying fans of all types of cool punk and hard rock as they were the progenitors of "grunge." This fact is what always set them apart from the stone cold serious bands that followed and imitated them, and made them way more fun. The artwork on this record evens harkens back to the playful Every Good Boy... era, which Steve Turner, in his liner note comments, reveals as his favourite Mudhoney album. The only thing that could possibly be better than listening to this CD would to have somehow been a member of Mudhoney.