Grunge Is Dead
Page 15
CHRIS HANZSEK: I went back into the studio business after that. For a brief time, I partnered up with Jack Endino — for about a month — when I started the second version of Reciprocal Recording. He decided he wanted to be a producer, and didn’t want to have anything to do with paying the bills, buying the equipment, or making any of the business decisions. So he went off on his angle, and I stayed with mine, which was studio owner/manager/ chief engineer.
LARRY REID: I think Endino sort of engineered the Seattle sound.
JACK ENDINO: I knew all the bands, and they already knew me, because I was in Skin Yard. I was already “one of the guys.” Bands have an instinctive distrust of people in studios — especially if the people in the studios are not musicians themselves. Because there’s no qualifications really for being a guy who works in a studio — plenty of idiots can do it. You can go to recording school or you can have a rich dad, who buys you a bunch of equipment, and you open a studio. The most important piece of gear in the studio is the guy running it.
People had heard my four-track recordings, which sounded like albums. All of the stuff I’d done in my basement was circulating around the city because I’d been making demo tapes for people in my basement studio — literally the basement of my house. Malfunkshun could come in, and they knew that I wasn’t going to be like, “You’re going to have to play with a click track.” Nobody was covering this sloppy, noisy rock music that was happening. And nobody had any money. The studio I was working at was one of the cheapest ones — it was just a little eight-track studio. We charged fifteen dollars an hour — that included me.
Mid–Late ’80s
CHAPTER 11
“If we can just keep it a secret”: Mid–Late ’80s
By now, it could no longer be ignored — Seattle was the location of a fast-growing, fertile local music scene. With a straight-ahead/un-glamorous approach, grunge was a much-needed antidote to what was going on with overblown mainstream rock at the time … but it would still take a few years for the rest of the world to catch on.
JONATHAN PONEMAN: Seattle was a much smaller city at the time — much more “user friendly.” The roads weren’t as busy, the neighborhoods weren’t as cluttered. Nobody was thinking about houses so much — apartment and house rentals were cheaper.
MARK ARM: All-ages shows were completely shut down in Seattle in ’84–’85. So as soon as these musicians became twenty-one, their bands started playing in the bars — mostly for each other.
JERRY CANTRELL: It was a very supportive type thing, without being a real blowing-smoke-up-your-ass/ass-kissing fest. It was a healthy community of pissed off, fucking young guys, and a lot of shit that was weird in the world. Music could become really stagnant, and the last part of what was playing out was already played out.
JONATHAN PONEMAN: To this day I don’t really believe that there was ever “a Seattle sound.” There were some pivotal events, bands, [and] shows that shaped the listening habits of probably a dozen bands that played together frequently.
ART CHANTRY: What I was going to see back then were those monstrous mid ’80s touring punk bands — Sonic Youth, Hüsker Dü, Big Black, Butthole Surfers, Live Skull, Scruff y the Cat, the Replacements, Pussy Galore, Camper Van Beethoven, Tupelo Chain Sex, the Cramps. These are the best fucking bands I’ve ever seen in my life. The Northwest was part of the network, and they all passed through here. There were just some astonishing performances — mind-boggling stuff. If you never had the chance to see Scratch Acid or the Butthole Surfers at their very peak, you don’t know what you missed.
JEFF GILBERT: Before the floodgates opened, our bands were starting to get on major tours. There was a very palpable sense of electricity, excitement, and “in the know.” Like, “God dang, this is happening right here, right now.” It was funny, somebody said, “If we can just keep it a secret.” Because at any given night, you could go downtown, and see 7 Year Bitch, Tad, Love Battery, Mudhoney. I was blown away by how fun it was. I’m still surprised I’m still standing. My liver — I’m surprised that still works. Because it was not uncommon to go to a club three, four nights a week here during that period. The word would get out, and they wouldn’t even have to advertise it — it was all word of mouth. “Hey man, Alice in Chains over at Graceland.” “Cool!” Well, you’d walk through a dog-poop-filled alley, and it would connect up with rkcndy. So in between sets, you would go over to the next club to see what was going on over there. It was like everybody was on their game. The girls were starting to look better, the places started to smell a little better.
KURT BLOCH: Nobody would come to see us. It was like, “OK, great — another show with thirty people.” By the end of ’87, I think Lulu was out, and we were playing as a three-piece, which could have been good, but ultimately, we were just tanking. Kim was off in another world, and the drummer was off in another world. I kept trying to book shows, and couldn’t find people. “Where’s Nate? Where’s Kim? Can’t practice, don’t know where they are.” So by the end of ’88, I was like, “Forget it — there is no Fastbacks.” Which is really too bad, because we recorded a song for Sub Pop 200, and it was great. We recorded the three-piece with Jack, and everything turned out pretty good, but everybody was off doing other things. The curse of being twenty-seven.
So that fizzled until late ’89, and by that time, there’s tons of Sub Pop records coming out. I remember running into Jonathan, and he’s like, “You guys should do something.” We were going to put out our second album, thinking, “This will either get us going again or it will be the end.” Around the same time, a label in England put out our first record, and put out a couple of singles. The singles got back to Seattle, and got some plays on underground shows in England. So we scrounged up the three-piece recordings we’d done before the band blew up. I remember being at Sub Pop talking to Jon — he’s like, “Can you give me a ride to the U District? I want to take some records to the store.” Jon didn’t even have a car.
So I gave him a ride, and I was playing the Fastbacks thing. He’s like, “Wow, this sounds really great. Are you guys going to be playing again?” I was like, “This label in England put out our record, and they’re putting out this one too, and we’re thinking of trying to go there to do shows.” He’s like, “If you guys can get a band together and start playing, I’d love to put out a single.” So I call everybody up, and was like, “Let’s try to do something.” So we had two albums out, which Sub Pop was distributing, and we went in and recorded more stuff, and put out that first Sub Pop double single. They’re like, “That’s pretty cool — would you want to put out a compilation? Do you want to make a new record?” Sub Pop and that label in England, Subway Records — that’s what revitalized the group.
JIM BLANCHARD: After seeing what happened in Minneapolis, you could tell something similar might happen in Seattle — in terms of it blowing up nationwide and getting a big media response.
SCOTT VANDERPOOL: Another band I would list on the “should have made it” thing — Feast. Feast [included] Danny Peters, who later ended up in Mudhoney, on drums. They were one of the first bands to go real slow and heavy. Black Sabbath/Zeppelin, and still kinda punk. That was in the real early days, and they would play the Vogue a lot.
KIM THAYIL: Too bad they never made a record. Sub Pop was getting ready to do a Feast single and EP — all the other bands were really into supporting them. They just fell apart.
TIM HAYES: The Nights and Days were fantastic, and then morphed into the Night Kings after that. Rob Vasquez was the kingpin of those bands, and he had many bands after that, like the Gorls, Ape Lost — the list goes on.
DYLAN CARLSON: Slim [Moon] had this rock band called Lush. Then there was Heliotrope, that was sort of all the Evergreen students’ hippie band.
BEN LONDON: Hammerbox were selling out 1,000 seat venues before they’d even put out a major label record, and their record didn’t really translate what their live show was. They were a great live band. And Gas Huffer.
CHRIS PUGH: Young Pioneers played a lot of shows — we were a drunken college band. We were influenced by a number of the bands going on at the time — the Wipers, Green on Red, REM. One time our guitar player didn’t show up for practice — he was three days late or something. I wanted to be a little more serious — that’s when I started Swallow. Swallow played quite a bit in that era, opening for other bands. I don’t think we ever had quite the draw as some of the other bands — we wrote some good songs. There was a yellow vinyl single, and then a record [1989’s Swallow] — I think it was one of Sub Pop’s first CDs. We were young and [had] certain substance abuse issues — we could have been volatile at times.
ROD MOODY: [Swallow] went on to play shows with Mudhoney, Blood Circus, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Cosmic Psychos, and more. One of these shows, at Capitol Lake in Olympia, featured Nirvana opening, Swallow in the middle slot, and Soundgarden headlining. Something to tell the grand-kids about.
JIM TILLMAN: Coffin Break was as hard — if not harder — than Nirvana. Those guys were never home — they’d tour nine months out of the year. But somehow, never got past the C/Z sort of punk rock credibility to break wider.
ROD MOODY: Coffin Break was the hardest working band around. They had a cool mix of metal and sing-songy pop. Cat Butt put on amazing, drink and drug–fueled shows that were always on the verge of going out of control. The tension between bandmates sometimes resulted in onstage flareups. Front man David Duet had the grunge rock star bit down pat, and the combination of his gravelly whiskey-soaked vox and Brother James’s twisted blues guitar rave-ups made them an unstoppable force. That is, until they stopped.
L7’s Donita Sparks in Melkweg, Amsterdam, 1992
BLAG DAHLIA: I used to stay with the Cat Butt guys a lot. They were always good for some insane fucking dope addict shit. There would always be some weird stripper chicks over there. You’d hear stories. I never actually saw this one, but I remember Dave telling me about a guy that stayed at their place, and got so strung out and crazy that he pretended that a piece of cat shit was dope, tried to melt it down, and shoot it — but they stopped him. Very fucking sick.
DONITA SPARKS: [L7] had already toured the country in ’88, but we had never played Seattle. We were fortunate enough to hook up with Cat Butt — we met up with them for some shows in Northern California, and headed up to Seattle. My first impression of the town was flyers everywhere — flyers on every phone pole and street lamp. It just seemed very alive — very youthful. The music community seemed really connected from my eyes. We stayed at [Cat Butt’s] house, we danced to the Sonics — literally every night. Danny from Cat Butt booked the bands at Sub Pop — he worked at Sub Pop. I think he was kind of a “tastemaker” over there.
So we stayed over there where he lived, with his bandmates pretty much, in this place called “Blaine House” — which was filthy. The shower stall was covered in mold — you had to stand in the middle of the shower to not touch the mold on the walls. I guess our first time up there we stayed for a few days, and we played a place called the Hollywood Underground. We swapped clothes with Cat Butt — we wore their clothes and they wore our clothes. I think the next time we went up there, the guys at Sub Pop saw us and decided to do a Singles Club with us.
BLAG DAHLIA: [The Dwarves] first went to Seattle in 1989 to play a two-day event that Terminal Booking was putting on. Seattle was a good town for rock ’n’ roll because it was basically a white suburb where young drunks could play music in their basements. Most urban environments like New York, L.A., San Francisco were embracing hip-hop — not rock. In the alternative realm, the Dwarves were the only band to wear women’s clothing onstage, perform naked, and jump into drum sets — all cheap tricks that were later copied by various Seattle bands who became much more famous than us.
ROD MOODY: Blood Circus, along with Mudhoney, were the epitome of “grunge version 1.0” — bludgeoning sledgehammer riffs combined with deep guttural growls from singer Michael Anderson. Like Swallow and Cat Butt, Blood Circus was a train wreck, and one never knew what to expect at their shows. Sometimes they were phenomenal, other times, too sloppy and drunk to do much more than make din.
Lookout, the Fluid is coming!
BLAG DAHLIA: We couldn’t get over the fact that girls in California were so much better looking than the ones in Seattle — so we didn’t like hanging out there very much. Although you could always get good weed up there. We recorded with Jack Endino who thought we were amusing, but rude. He was right. We hung out with Mudhoney, Dickless, Tad. The Supersuckers — or as we referred to them, “Dwarves Jr.” — opened many shows for us.
RON HEATHMAN: [The Supersuckers] were under the impression that we were just going to take it over. Because that’s what we knew in Tucson — you form a band, you’re instantly the best band in Tucson. So we figured that’s what’s going to happen. Our second show, we played a two-day event at the COCA Art Gallery — Nirvana, Cat Butt, Tad, Mudhoney, Gwar, and the Dwarves. We were just like, “Oh my God, all these bands are amazing!” It was all the little simple things — the beer was stronger, the pot was stronger, there was, like, four or five different clubs that bands played, whereas in Tucson, maybe one would stay open.
ROD MOODY: The Fluid from Denver sounded like no other band on the roster — a killer combo of Stonesy swagger and melodic hooks that stayed imbedded in your head long after they were done playing.
GARRETT SHAVLIK: Denver was very violent — the pit was out of control and people would get hurt. Then you’d come up here and people were having a gas — there was always an after party, and you had a place to stay. Me and Dan from Mudhoney became best of friends — it turned into this lovely family. So whenever [The Fluid] came back up, not only would it help finance the rest of our tour, but we always had a lovely time. So we would take a couple of days off just to hang out with Bruce and Jon. This was like our second home. We did a St. Patrick’s Day show at the Backstage, in Ballard. We played with Coffin Break, and there was some dirty acid going around. I usually wouldn’t partake in that before I had to play, but my two guitarists, James [Clower] and Ricky [Kulwicki], and sometimes our bass player, Matt [Bischoff ], would “drop in.” I look at them and they look like children — their eyes were really huge like those crazy paintings — biting their nails. Pavitt, I guess, had given it to them, and Pavitt’s tripping his head off. But then all of a sudden, we start playing, and it’s just perfect — kids were all over the stage.
GRANT ALDEN: The other thing, it’s important to remember that it wasn’t just Sub Pop and grunge. At that same time, Sir Mix-A-Lot was happening in the Northwest and nationally. There was a substantial garage rock scene being led by the Mono Men and Estrus Records out of Bellingham. There were the Walkabouts that were huge in Europe, and never made it in the United States. Even if you go back to Sub Pop 200 — there is a great variety of sound there. There was a substantial pop scene, led by the Posies.
KEN STRINGFELLOW: Jon [Auer] and myself came from Bellingham — we went to school there. I moved to Seattle to go to the University of Washington. We had been friends and played music together all through high school. Then after my first year of college, we reconnected. Found that we were in a similar vein, and our thing was very melodic and “sunny.” A naive version of another area of music that was inspiring to us — Squeeze, XTC, and Elvis Costello.
One thing that also brought skepticism to our cause is a band that’s really popular in Seattle locally, in some weird, fluky way. Jon had a home recording studio — we made this thing that became [the Posies’] first record. In our wide-eyed, don’t-know-the-rules-enough-to-be-intimidated way, we brought them to local radio stations. There was an am commercial alternative radio station, KJET. They played Soul Asylum, the
Replacements, They Might Be Giants, Suzanne Vega. Local bands they didn’t play much. We walked in with this cassette, like, “Hey, do you guys want to play our music on your radio station?” Like total dweebs. “I’ll give it a listen.”
Normally, “give it a listen” means they’ll chuck it in a wastebasket. Four or five days later, I heard our song on the radio. Then an hour later heard it again, and then an hour later heard it again. Not only are they playing it, they’re playing it all the time. So being that we had found our way into an area where some other local bands had not, I think it was assumed that we were more calculating than we actually were. It took us a while of playing shows where people were like, “They do something really different than what’s going on. They’re not totally out-of-the-loop musically; they’re just on a slightly different trip.”
MARK ARM: The “Seattle explosion” was weird — to us we thought it had peaked in ’89. It hadn’t cracked the mainstream consciousness and there was no reason to think it would. We just figured it was the latest underground hype.
DUFF McKAGAN: That talent was always in Seattle — the industry finally went up and tapped it, that’s all. It wasn’t like there was some sort of genius stroke that just hit Seattle in ’87 with Mother Love Bone, and continued on for the next six, seven years. It was there since I started playing music and seeing bands in ’78.
DAVE DEDERER: Who would have ever thought? I flash back to the moment I described of being on the U Dub campus with Stone in ’84–’85, and he’s talking about his look, and how he’s not washing his hair anymore because he wants it to look like Johnny Thunders. Who would ever think five years later that kind of bullshit would actually come true? And it’s even more unbelievable that it comes true not just for one person or one band!