Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

by Carrie Brownstein

In that fall of 1992, she brought Mudhoney to Western. We learned that there was going to be a surprise guest, and that the guest would be Nirvana. They would “open” the show. When Nirvana took the stage, they played in front of an audience that didn’t really expect or deserve their presence—which was probably all they had hoped for at that moment. I, of course, completely took for granted the fact that they likely felt lucky they could still surprise anyone, that they could sneak onto a stage and play a normal show, that they could open for friends in a small college town in their home state, that they could pretend to still just be some normal guys. I took for granted that set, the ease and exuberance of it. They played mostly off Nevermind, just three people with the best songs you’ve ever heard, scrappy and guttural and really loud. And as openers for Mudhoney you could really hear the context from which all this was happening: chainsaws making sonic carvings, hollowed-out selves amplified and discordant. There was some thread of sweetness underneath, a melodic sense that hit you in the back of the throat and made you want to raise up a weary, tentative fist, hoping that gesture would mark you as having been found, or ready to no longer feel lost.