by Nick Soulsby
RONNA MYLES-ERA: We had some good reviews and did some touring. This sparked interest from Lee Joseph, who ran Hell Yeah Records … We thought they were this big L.A. label … but it was just one guy who ran the label out of his small house … The record kept being delayed until finally Damon [Romero] and I decided to fly to L.A. for ourselves … It was eye-opening. Lee was great but just didn’t have the time or the money to push the release. We ended up working at Epitaph stuffing Bad Religion records … It did eventually come out, though, and we managed to go to Disneyland!
PETER IRVINE, Cordelia’s Dad: You are not alone in never having heard of Okra, and that illustrates our problem—it was a very cool label, but was basically just one very nice, dedicated guy [Dan Dow] working out of a record store in Ohio. There was no staff. The first time I met Dan, I proposed doing a video—it’s a miracle he didn’t tell me to fuck off right then …
TOM DARK: Amphetamine Reptile from Minneapolis wanted to do a seven-inch, and a Cleveland label, St. Valentine, inquired about doing a twelve-inch EP … And nothing happened with either. In the end I took four of the songs, formed Hit & Run Records, and released an EP, then later ended up releasing the Wolf Hour album on Hit & Run with a license deal with Double A Records in Europe too.
MARK ROBINSON, Unrest: My friends and I started TeenBeat when we were in high school. I had always been interested in music and fascinated with records. The main reason that we started the label was just to have people hear our music, since we had no clue as to how one would go about performing an actual concert. Having someone else release our record seemed like an unattainable fantasy at the time so we just had fun and did it ourselves. The original releases were just a lending library. Only one copy existed of each release and we lent them to our friends for a few days so they could give a listen.
RICK RIZZO, Eleventh Dream Day: Amoeba was a one-man [Keith Holland] label—basically my college friend who had money because he had a good job in engineering. Our first two records cost almost nothing to make. There was no support beyond the production costs. We did all of our own press, set up our own shows, printed our own shirts … I worked at a record distributor at the time, in the shipping department with Dan Koretzky, founder of Drag City …
JED BREWER, Thornucopia: Lather Records was started by my friend Mike and I … It was just a way to release my own stuff and my friends’ stuff. I never paid for my friends’ bands’ releases. It was just a way to have it under one label to hopefully give a little more profile to the releases instead of everyone doing separate self-releases …
Beyond the egregiously famous Sub Pop and K Records, the Northwest was not devoid of other labels.
PAUL KIMBALL: Dana [Rich] from Bluebird Records out in Enumclaw, he had a label called Horton/Reflex, and was basically the insane patron saint of underground music on the outskirts of the Seattle area. He seemed completely unfazed by the low chance of financial return on his projects, or maybe he just knew something no one else did, but he put out great stuff in cool packages that nobody was really clamoring for. I always admired the hell out of him, and wished he’d catch a break somehow.
GEORGE SMITH: He owned a record store where you could get real music, one of those little beacons.
LISA SMITH, Dickless: Up Records was started by our dear friend Chris Takino [RIP], who was a true music fan and probably didn’t make what he deserved in his short life for all the hard work …
CONRAD UNO, PopLlama: Tom Dyer from Green Monkey Records, he recorded in a closet essentially, and had a great fun little record label like I did … if you were a band with a product (or a circle of friends with bands with product), you made up a label name and stuck it on there for fun, same as now; that’s essentially why PopLlama started. The great thing about starting a record label is that as soon as you have a name and a tiny bit of success, people out in the music world assume a certain level of functionality. We were barely functional ever. I really loved recording the music I liked, and making some records, but the rest of it was not really up my alley. Promotion and bookkeeping are really no fun. My studio (and everyone else’s for that matter) was busy, busy, busy. Everyone wanted to record … It all worked fine for the little performance that was PopLlama and Egg Studios.
LARRY SCHEMEL: eMpTy was a local label that put out our records … They were an independent record label in the truest sense of the word; we would go over to Blake [Wright]’s apartment to hand-stuff singles …
STEVE MORIARTY, The Gits: Daniel House was fired from Sub Pop … he was doing distribution, so he focused on C/Z, which was “the other label” in Seattle. There were a few other small ones, but he seemed to have the resources of Sub Pop at his disposal because he’d taken them with him—distribution especially … They would make posters for us, that was about it—and they had a publicist.
MARK PICKEREL, Screaming Trees: Velvetone was really just born out of the studio that recorded our first few releases [Albright Productions]. The staff was made up of Sam Albright, who owned the studio; Steve Fisk, who was house producer; and myself for a little while. I did tape duplication and mailings; I even got high school credit for my job there. We also did tape duplication for K Records … can you imagine? I actually got school credits for listening to hours of Shonen Knife, Girl Trouble, and Beat Happening while getting paid minimum wage!
SLIM MOON: Kurt’s ambition was to get a record label to put out a Nirvana album. He talked about it a lot. So did Krist.
Luckily for Nirvana, Sub Pop took an interest first. But to be fair, Sub Pop was barely one step up the ladder, at least initially. Bruce Pavitt’s brand had started as a radio show, then a fanzine, then a tag for cassette compilations, then a newspaper column.
BRUCE PAVITT: The audience was small. The first issue was printed in an edition of five hundred; the first cassette [SP#5] sold two thousand. Collectors shopping in indie stores and other fanzine writers were my primary audience. I did get a lot of write-ups because the information I was providing, reviews and addresses of obscure indie releases, was rare …
LEIGHTON BEEZER, The Thrown Ups: This was a time when future grunge alumni were more like grunge freshmen.
One exceptional strength lay in Pavitt’s decade-long grounding in underground labels and media—his understanding of record collectors, scenesters, and fanzine writers. Few people had spent so long cataloguing these networks. Yet it wasn’t just Nirvana that had trouble scratching together cash. Following a 5,000-edition compilation in 1986 it was a full year before another Sub Pop release could be attempted. Sub Pop was still a strictly local name well into 1988.
JOSH HADEN, Treacherous Jaywalkers: The show was booked by Global. We were just following their scheduling, I wasn’t familiar with the Vogue beforehand, and I really don’t have any memories of it other than it was a typical dingy little rock club that smelled like beer … I wasn’t aware of Sub Pop or the Seattle bands … I knew of Soundgarden a little later when they came to L.A. to sign with SST.
What changed in 1988 was the addition of Jonathan Poneman, who provided some cash and a touch of business acumen. Poneman and Pavitt officially incorporated Sub Pop in April 1988 amid their first contact with Nirvana. Bruce Pavitt describes his proudest achievement as “letting people know that culture starts at home. You have to support local scenes and independent artists if culture is going to move forward. We helped create a model for that.” This gut instinct was backed by intelligent decisions to focus on a specific identity that encompassed sound, visuals, attitude—expressed live, on vinyl, in the press; everything was advertising.
STEVE MORIARTY: They did a few things right … like buying a couple of vans and putting their bands on tour—the hardest thing to do in those days was to book a tour in the US. It’s a huge country. Gigs don’t pay; if you were lucky, someone would call ahead and send posters, but if not you’d be playing to four or five people, maybe up to forty if you were really lucky—all for fifty bucks. You spent more on gas than you made on T-shirt sales
. So Sub Pop invested in a couple of vans and sent their bands on tour, which was a very smart thing. And they had a publicist who would get ahead of the shows—Nils Bernstein—who would send articles and hype the bands.
DAMON ROMERO: Chad and Kurt had met at some previous time at the Community World Theater when their bands played together but didn’t really remember that. So I introduced Chad to Kurt, as I knew they were looking for a drummer—Chad was a great drummer, really wanted to play in a band, one that worked and played a lot. So I got those two talking to each other—I think it was at the Community World Theater at that March 19 gig … Chad and some of my friends came down to watch Lush. My girlfriend actually suggested I should introduce those two, so I did. Chad was in the band pretty quickly. He did an audition then started playing with them. I was really psyched about that—Chad’s a great guy and he was good in the band.
Their early drummers—Burckhard, Foster, Crover—had been a link backward to Aberdeen; Channing was the way forward, residing on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. He was also a younger guy with a far gentler spirit. Then again, maybe the calm demeanor signaled his physical confidence, as implied by one anecdote that made me chuckle.
LEIGHTON BEEZER: No one would mess with Chad … Even though he was the smallest member of the band, he had been studying Tae Kwon Do for quite a while and would kick your ass if you messed with him. Tad [Doyle] found out the hard way one night, when he told Chad he could outplay him on drums. That happened one night at some party in the U-District. Tad went first, and he was excellent. He had been a drummer in H-Hour. Chad took one look at Tad, then proceeded to destroy the entire kit with his fists and feet. Tad’s eyeballs opened as big as saucers—remember, he is a big dude, probably outweighing Chad by two hundred pounds—and Tad said “Fuck this shit,” and left.
Just as Cobain’s amplifier earned cockeyed interest, Channing’s equipment would draw attention …
PAUL KIMBALL: Chad was definitely good, and his drums were just a total visual statement.
ABE BRENNAN: Chad used to play these black drums that flared at the bottom—can’t remember the brand, but it was a distinctive look. He obviously wasn’t as good a drummer as [Dave] Grohl, but he was solid …
SCOTT VANDERPOOL: A fiberglass-shelled make of drums with big swooping bells at the end that was about the uncoolest kit you could have back then … endorsed by jazz guys like Billy Cobham.
ED FARNSWORTH: The drummer was playing Staccato drums, those weird, curvy drums that the guy from Bow Wow Wow plays in the “I Want Candy” video. That was totally cool.
SHAMBIE SINGER: Their drummer was a tiny guy and his drum kit featured the most bizarre rack tom set I’d ever seen. The toms were long and curved—like an elk horn … Those freaky-looking drums made more of a lasting impression than anything else.
Making people look could do no harm to a band wanting to be noticed. The visual contrasts within the band were significant.
GEOFF ROBINSON: I remember having several beers at the Vogue with Krist, and saw him in DC when we toured with Les Thugs. Krist was tall like me, so we kind of hit it off, even though he was nearly ten years younger … I liked that their bass player was out front, in the open. I admired all the great bass players in rock and I could tell that Krist admired them too by the way he played.
ABE BRENNAN: Krist stood out—or up, I should say. He was a towering individual, and he moved well onstage, swaying, bouncing, swinging the neck of his bass around. Kurt didn’t move a whole lot, but he was intense when he sang, and he played with an edge, a physicality, that appealed.
SCOTT VANDERPOOL: Chad was a drummer so he and I got along just ducky. Krist, of course, is very tall, as am I … But I’m only six-four and I always enjoyed having to look up at someone for a change. Local artist and guitarist Whiting Tennis is also super-tall. We were like the “I could never fit in a Ferrari” club.
It’s telling that there was more note made of Novoselic than of the future iconic front man.
PETER LITWIN: Back at that time, they didn’t seem to be a very exciting live band. Kurt seemed kind of shy onstage. I think Krist and Chad were a bit more animated, and Kurt wasn’t … My stand-out memory is just what a nice bunch of guys they were … I remember Kurt as being a quiet, kind of shy pothead. Krist was super-cool and has always been a really friendly guy.
GEOFF ROBINSON: Kurt had a huge chip on his shoulder (I now know it was because he was picked on by jocks in Aberdeen, and three members of Blood Circus were over six foot tall—I’m six-six), so we didn’t interact with him too much …
SLIM MOON: The main “audience interaction” … was just Krist being drunk and grabbing the microphone to say something weird or funny. That started early …
Sub Pop made use of what advantages they had to get Nirvana’s name out.
SCOTT VANDERPOOL: I met Jon Poneman when I started doing radio at the University of Washington’s then all-volunteer not-so-student radio station KCMU … Mark Arm followed me on-air Friday afternoons … all the future Sub Pop band members that worked with Bruce at Muzak would call in with requests … I ran live sound for a lot of Poneman-produced rock shows, and played briefly with him and Gary Thorstensen (later of Tad) in his band the Treeclimbers before he quit to make Sub Pop a full-time concern.
JAIME ROBERT JOHNSON, Crunchbird: The first time I heard “Paper Cuts” by Nirvana I was down at the Comet Tavern one night and they had KCMU on the overhead speakers, who were playing the song. Hearing that was a revelation to me because here was a band thinking about rock in the same way I felt I was …
PETER LITWIN: I was listening to a local radio show called Audio Aces on KCMU and heard a Nirvana song. I immediately called the DJ (who happened to be Jonathan Poneman) and asked him who it was. I loved it! I loved the heaviness of it; it reminded me of the Melvins, but with more melodic vocals. I just know I loved them at first after hearing that song on the radio. I think that same week I went and saw them play one of their first shows in Seattle at the Vogue. I was one of six people at the show. They were great.
Poneman’s presence at KCMU got Nirvana on-air almost immediately while Bruce Pavitt’s work at the Rocket meant by the time of an April 24 show, the fliers and listings already showed “Sub Pop w/Nirvana.”
Of Nirvana’s eleven Seattle shows in 1988, three were branded Sub Pop Sunday. Instead of trying to promote individual bands, Sub Pop used the prestige they’d earned from existing successes and sold that connection to audiences; buying a Sub Pop release always meant buying not just the band but the label, too.
SHAMBIE SINGER: At times on that tour we were booked to play with other bands either from Seattle, or with a Sub Pop release. Usually both. In some cases it was clear Sub Pop had booked us with other bands on the label in order to promote the label itself. I recall, for example, being one of the bands on the bill for “Sub Pop Night” in Houston, Texas. I felt like putting together Sub Pop bills was part of the whole Bruce and Jonathan Motown hit factory aspiration.
The label also used their many friends to get Nirvana out there.
SCOTT VANDERPOOL: I think Jon asked me if one of his bands could open a show we already had down there …
JOE GOLDRING, Amorphous Head: At our first show in Seattle, Jonathan Poneman happened to be there. He liked a couple of songs and paid for us to go into the studio with Jack Endino to record a seven-inch for C/Z … One of these tracks ended up on the Teriyaki Asthma compilation (also with Nirvana). So when Nirvana were heading down to San Francisco for the first time, Poneman asked us to put together a gig at an appropriate venue … so we booked it at the only place we could; the Country & Western saloon. We also gave them a place to crash at George [Miller—Amorphous Head guitarist]’s house—George suspected they were some kind of weirdo Christians … I have no idea where this came from.
SHAMBIE SINGER: They’d put out the single “Big Cheese”/“Love Buzz.” Loved it. Especially their version of “Love Buzz.” Think a chick named Shannon who was a DJ
at WOZQ [Smith College] played it for me one afternoon when I was hanging around the station.
Sub Pop made the call that Nirvana’s cover of Shocking Blue’s song “Love Buzz” should be the A-side for the single. The decision made perfect sense; it was the most pop-oriented song Nirvana possessed, and the provenance of the song was a talking point for musos.
GEORGE SMITH: At that show I remember them playing “Love Buzz” and being very taken by that song, a little piece of the crowd thinking, Hey, these guys are pretty good …
LINDSEY THRASHER, Vomit Launch: I really liked them because they covered “Love Buzz” and I’m a Shocking Blue fan and had never heard anyone cover that song … I remember telling Kurt how much I loved “Love Buzz” … They played with Tad in Chico once and I asked him to please play “Love Buzz,” which they were going to do anyway.
The single wasn’t just Nirvana’s first release. More important to Sub Pop, it was the inauguration of the Sub Pop Singles Club, a series aimed at collectors that quickly needed to secure an audience so the label could gather sorely needed member fees—which is why Sub Pop was so particular about the release, insisting on a particular song and sending Cobain back to the studio to rerecord vocals.
SCOTT VANDERPOOL: I do remember thinking it somewhat brilliant they’d covered that obscure Shocking Blue song … Managed to hang on to a test pressing of “Love Buzz” that Jon gave me to play at KCMU … sold it on eBay about ten years ago during some financially tough times … got quite a lot for it, which sort of made up for Sub Pop never paying me my sales commission.
It was a first vindication of Nirvana’s efforts, too—something they marked with a pointed joke.