re: Your top 5 Nirvana songs

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I never understood why Mudhoney didn't get as big as the others.

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Because they were too punk rock. I mean, Nirvana has some punk influence, but Cobain really had some outstanding pop instincts. He wrote great hooks. He wrote punk songs disguised as pop songs, and later, the opposite.

Also, Mudhoney broke first, to a much smaller audience. They broke when "breaking" for an indie band meant selling a few thousand copies. They forged the path, for other bands to use, which is what often happens to the first adopters.

But mainly, Mudhoney went out of their way to sabotage their success, in often hysterical ways. They were offered a chance to record a new song for the Singles soundtrack, they recorded "Overblown". They got signed to a major label, and they changed their sound and removed the distortion and added keyboards. They were the band they truly did not give a shite and openly mocked the whole rock star thing (which is why they never broke, had a modest career, and are all still alive and putting out albums today).

Cobain talked about not being mainstream, but his instincts took him there. Which is perfectly valid. Mark Arm and Steve Turner seems to make every decision to reject mainstream success. Hell, the formation of their band is all about rejecting label success and doing stuff for their friends (short version - Green River broke up over whether to try and have a major label career: half formed Pearl Jam and the other half formed Mudhoney, you can guess who was om each side).

But yeah, Superfuzz Bigmuff is the single greatest thing to come out of the Seattle scene, and I don't think it's close (worded to exclude Hendrix).