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See Mudhoney’s Noisy, Historic European Debut

Mudhoney performing "If I Think" in 1988

If the people who ran independent record labels were always supremely organized, then we wouldn’t have good news like this: Berlin-based indie !K7 is releasing a DVD of a recently rediscovered Mudhoney performance!

!K7 label head Horst Weidenmüller, whose company formerly doubled as a video production outfit (hence the existence of the footage), will release Mudhoney’s Live In 1988 on November 12 in the U.S.A. and a day later in Europe. More than just a prime visual document of the Seattle groundbreakers rampaging through material from their seminal Superfuzz Bigmuff, the DVD also captures a key moment of rock’n’roll cultural exchange: The band’s performance, filmed at Independent Days festival in Berlin, was their first-ever European show. Which means the gig was very likely the first-ever Old World grunge show of any kind.

The Germans were in for something fierce. Superfuzz‘s “If I Think,” seen here via Noisey.com, rages and roils, moving from eerie verses to screamed choruses. The song ends with a noisy free-for-all — but this performance was the start of something big.

Ryan Short and Adam Pease’s Mudhoney doc I’m Now: The Story Of Mudhoney is also on the way. The film, which features interviews with Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil, Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, and more staples of the Seattle scene will be available for rental streaming October 30 via Distrify, according to the A/V Club. The DVD ships on December 11.

Here’s “If I Think” plus the doc’s trailer: