Nirvana may have been the band that put an entire generation in flannel, and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden both sold a lot more records, but Mudhoney was truly the band who made the '90s grunge rock movement possible. Mudhoney was the first real success story for Sub Pop Records; their indie-scene success laid the groundwork for the movement that would (briefly) make Seattle, WA, the new capital of the rock & roll universe; and they took the sweat-soaked and beer-fueled mixture of heavy metal muscle, punk attitude, and garage rock primitivism that would become known as "grunge" to the hipster audience for the first time, who would in turn sell it to a mass audience ready for something new. Though Mudhoney never scored the big payday some of their old-running buddies did, their importance on the Seattle scene cannot be underestimated, and their body of work -- big, loud, purposefully sloppy, a little bit menacing, and even more funny -- has stood the test of time better than their well-known colleagues.

Mudhoney's time line begins in 1980, when teenaged Mark McLaughlin (who would soon adopt the punk handle Mark Arm) formed the band Mr. Epp and the Calculations with some high-school friends from the Seattle suburb of Bellevue; none of whom actually knew how to play at the time. More interested in goofing off, breaking things, and posting flyers for shows that were never scheduled than actually making music, Mr. Epp didn't get around to playing a show until late 1981, opening for a band called Student Nurse. Despite their legendary ineptitude (they were described as "the worst band in the world" on more than one occasion), Mr. Epp began to develop a following, and released a 7" EP in 1982. In 1983, in a bid to sound more like a real band, the group added a second guitarist, Steve Turner, who had previously played in a garage band called the Ducky Boys. That same year they released their Live As All Get Out cassette, but things began to peter out for the group, and they played their final show in February 1984. In 1981, Arm and Turner, who'd become fast friends, also began playing in another joke-punk band, the Limp Richerds, and briefly placed their focus on that group until the Richerds also broke up near the end of 1984.