Now, the term ‘grunge’ has always inspired a shudder of self-consciousness in me…primarily because when you’re a fourteen-year-old eldest child trying to find culture in the void of early-90s Midwestern suburbia, you jump at the first “counter-culture”-ish offering you see. For many like me, it was the commercialized version of the heavy, chugging rock dirge that had been slowly seeping out of the Northwest since the mid-1980s. Nirvana’s Nevermind may have been coated in an impenetrable shellac of radio-friendly shimmer, but many of the bands who made that record’s explosion possible continued to toil just under the surface veneer of the grunge phenomenon.

Along with Monetsano, WA’s Melvins, it’s arguable that one of the most important voices of the early years of the movement belonged to Seattle foursome Mudhoney and unstoppable frontman Mark Arm. It’s not a stretch to say that most insiders in and around Seattle in the late 1980s felt that Mudhoney’s leaden pop scuzz would be the torchbearer of the Northwestern rock scene to the rest of the world, rather than the looser and more metal-leaning Nirvana. “Touch Me I’m Sick,” the first single from 1988’s iconic Sub Pop release Superfuzz Bigmuff, still crackles with raw, grimey fire and an engulfing, melodic roar. Against the backdrop of the neutered, blip-blop electro-programming that passes for “independent rock” today, the 20th anniversary deluxe edition of Superfuzz sounds even more galvanizing and freshly ferocious than it did two decades ago.

I didn’t realize how long it had been since I’d attended a bona fide rocknroll show until I wandered down to Reggie’s last week for Mudhoney’s set. I’m in the middle of reading Everett True’s tell-all grunge memoir, so the timing was appropriate for me to see this show. The full pussyocity of most of the bands I go see these days was thoroughly exposed by Mark Arm, Steve Turner, Dan Peters, and the guy who replaced Matt Lukin (and looked like he’d been plucked from a gig in a Jimmy Buffet cover band). Arm strutted around the stage like it was 1990, bringing all of Iggy Pop’s swagger and intensity to the band’s raw-but-calculated assault. Classics like “Touch Me” and “Suck You Dry” had a real-life mosh pit swirling in front of the stage, feeding off the ball of energy that doesn’t seem to have dissipated over the past two decades. Even the recently-released The Lucky Ones brims with the same buzzing, melodic teeth that made the Northwest’s signature sound so revolutionary.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so self-conscious after all.

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