by Everett True
4 Let’s Together and Let’s Kiss were tape compilations of Pacific Northwest bands put together by Calvin, and sold via his fledgling K distribution network.
5 Scratch Acid were from Austin, Texas, contemporaries of Butthole Surfers and Big Black – ribald squalls of abrasive noise and churning riffs.
6 Live Skull were early East Coast contemporaries of Sonic Youth. Singer Thalia Zedek later fronted the powerful narcoleptic Sub Pop band, Come.
7 Al Larsen: singer with Some Velvet Sidewalk – they played a heavy, primal grind not dissimilar to Nirvana, but more directly personal. “Some Velvet Sidewalk was a mixture of reading William Blake and taking classes in Critical Theory,” explains Al. “History is fucked up.”
8 Dylan once told me he’d been inspired to form Earth after seeing The Legend! perform live – sandwiched between Nirvana, Tad and Screaming Trees in Portland’s Pine St Theatre, 1990. “Well, if that guy can do it . . .”
9 Richard Brautigan was a US writer, best known for Trout Fishing In America – full of child-like wonderment and metaphors. Born in Tacoma, Washington. Committed suicide in 1984, age 49.
10 The other two most powerful performers, in case you’re wondering, are Courtney Love in the early Nineties and Nick Cave in his Birthday Party days.
11 Daniel Johnston is a troubled singer-songwriter who used to hawk his homemade cassette tapes round the streets of Austin, Texas. Has spent his adult life in and out of mental institutions: once after he pushed a woman out of a second-storey window, believing her to be possessed by the devil. His songs are deeply personal, deeply affecting.
12 Frightwig were an all-female San Francisco punk band, similar to Flipper.
13 Goya was a classic Spanish oils painter, masterful user of light, notorious for his ‘Black Paintings’ created at the end of his life and still some of the most disturbing, intense images ever committed to canvas.
14 Murder spelt backwards – a reference to Stephen King’s The Shining.
15 Snippets of ‘Montage Of Heck’ appeared on Bleach and Incesticide .
16 The Vaselines were a minimal and alluring Eighties Scots boy-girl duo heavily influenced by The Pastels and The Velvet Underground – sexually charged where most of their C86 contemporaries paraded their lack of libido almost as a badge of pride. Nirvana famously covered a couple of their songs.
17 The non-profit Lost Music Network ( LMN) published Op. Hence K records: K – LMN – OP.
18 Two brilliant and interlinked British all-female punk bands: The Slits supported The Clash on their 1976 White Riot tour and experimented with heavy dub and reggae sounds, although some purists prefer their earlier all-out sonic noise assaults. The Raincoats matched a scratchy violin to fragile, spaced-out feminist lyrics and a jagged, jarring sound. The bands shared a drummer, Palm Olive – and a mutual mistrust from the bone-headed English audiences of the time.
19 The Marine Girls: an early Eighties school project that spawned two minimal, melodic and charming all-girl pop albums; plus a career in soporific chart music for Tracey Thorn. They split because, as singer Alice Fox put it, “ Tracey wanted to write ballads for estate agents, [songwriter] Jane [Fox] wanted to throw ping-pong balls on to xylophones.”
20 The Shaggs: an early Seventies US troupe, often regarded as primary exponents of Outsider Music in their naïve, fumbling and quite charming attempts at pop music. “They were all sisters,” Kurt told me in 1992, “with their evil uncle making plans for them. I heard this one live song, where they must have been playing a day-care centre, and the screams in the background are louder than the music. The Shaggs are an archetypal K band.”
21 If you’re looking for a band that comes closest to capturing the secret heart of Nirvana’s music, then you should listen to NYC’s Half Japanese.
22 Formed in 1967, Shocking Blue’s ‘Venus’ topped the US singles charts in February 1970 and reached number eight in the UK. They split in 1974.
23 Both the Buttholes and The Meat Puppets disseminated Americana with a warped, wired and explosive psychedelic take on the blues. During the Eighties, Butthole Surfers were seriously out there: full-on acid-fuelled dementia that bubbled over with schizophrenia, backwards tape loops and heavy metal. Frontman Gibby Haynes was like Middle America’s worst nightmare. Thoroughly recommended is 1987’s Locust Abortion Technician.
24 Creedence were a San Francisco-based pop/rock band who mixed rockabilly, R& B and Creole influences on eight fondly remembered US Top 10 singles between ’69 and ’71.
25 Def Leppard: the very definition of poodle rock.
26 SST was one of the US independent labels of the Eighties. Run by Black Flag’s Greg Ginn, it was home to Dinosaur Jr, Minutemen, Black Flag themselves, Screaming Trees, Hüsker Dü, The Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth . . . Calvin and Tobi had the Tuesday night rock show. They’d play cassettes.
27 “Danger Mouse had clever, bent-up lyrics and a wild man lead singer [Kurt Flansberg],” colleague Steve Fisk recalls. Donna also played bass with Screaming Trees, Dinosaur Jr and Team Dresch. One of Olympia’s original Riot Grrrls, she started her own fanzine, Chainsaw, in 1989.
28 Seaweed were a stoner Sub Pop band from Tacoma, big with skater kids and the early emo crowd. First time I met their singer Aaron he was bouncing up and down on Calvin Johnson’s knee. Stauffer, as Spook from Spook And The Zombies, was part of the same Eugene, Oregon crowd that spawned Tobi Vail, Al Larsen and Melvins/ Earth bassist Joe Preston.
29 Pigeonhed were a soulful Seattle duo on Sub Pop who scored a weird early Nineties grunge-dance crossover hit. Steve also produced a couple of Nirvana sessions, and was the man behind many a Beat Happening and Screaming Trees record. Formerly, Fisk was in the riff-driven, psychedelic Pell Mell, signed to SST.
30 Jean Smith: singer with inspirational boy/girl duo, Mecca Normal – one of the original Riot Grrrl bands.
31 Talulah Gosh: another great mid-Eighties English cutie band – blessed with a bouncy Sixties girl group beat and childish songs like ‘The Day I Lost My Pastels Badge’. The Pastels themselves formed in the early Eighties and are still going. The Scots band is instrumental in encouraging groups as diverse as Jesus And Mary Chain, Belle And Sebastian and The Vaselines. Frontman Stephen Pastel works in a record shop: a classic punk rock librarian.
32 X were an early Eighties Los Angeles punk band – Courtney owes a considerable debt to their singer Exene Cervenka’s wired, exhilarating voice. Their 1980 debut Los Angeles is thoroughly recommended.
33 Forced Exposure, Byron Coley’s excellent American fanzine, championing all forms of esoteric music in an esoteric fashion: a forerunner of the UK’s The Wire.
34 Killdozer were a brutal Midwestern band, direct precursors of grunge: known for their ferociously heavy chords, Michael Gerald’s growl and the deadpan, hilarious lyrics. Particularly fine is the cover of ‘American Pie’ from 1989’s all-covers album For Ladies Only.
35 The 2005 BBC documentary Nevermind: Classic Albums.
CHAPTER 5
Here Comes Sickness
“Here come sickness walking down my street/ Shaking her hips like she’s some kind of treat/ All the neighbourhood dogs licking at her feet/ Here comes sickness/ Here comes sickness/ Here comes sickness walking down my street”
– ‘Here Comes Sickness’, Mudhoney, 1988
THIS is where it all started.
People ask me what the attraction of Seattle was. The energy, the insane amount of energy rising up through the boards of that town’s clubs, the musicians with their long greasy hair and unflagging sick humour, the thrill of loud music. Bodies tumbling on top of bodies, faces smiling and grinning and lapping up the pain, any number of grunge bands merging into one sweat-soaked, glorious whole. The parties where I’d be barricaded into bathrooms by junkie models looking to get laid: later I’d race through streets in cars high on delirium and alcohol and the thrill of the chill night air. The skyscrapers, towering into the night like a symphony of neon and rich promise, ringed
by an almost mythical circle of mountains, some of them unseen for years behind the dense cloud and rain. The cheap Mexican beer and endless supply of coffee. The top floor of the Terminal Sales Building where Sub Pop had its offices, world domination promised ridiculously in literature and on the phone, glorious views of the Puget Sound (an inland sea) and the city through every window. The warehouse, wandering through a collector’s delight of coloured vinyl, knowing you could take anything you wanted and that you wanted everything you took.
What was there to be excited about? Oh, so much, so much . . .
The numerous late night transatlantic phone calls, enthusing about this or that, not checking facts – never checking facts – only on the lookout for more outrageous lies, more tales of glory. The live shows filled with noise and surprise and the hum of amplifiers feeding back, the bass too loud, the crowd a hive of wanton activity. Overnight drives spent chatting to friendly dominatrices, strip bars that doubled as discos with the mirror ball turning and Tad’s band thudding, scuzzy joints that threw you on to the street when your drinking slowed down too much. Train rides that lasted for days and ended with me taking Sub Pop’s bosses for all they owned at poker. Soundgarden boasted of lighting farts; Mudhoney talked of ancient scriptures; The Walkabouts1 swung with gentle grace; Nirvana acted young and mischievous.
What was the attraction of Seattle? It was the lilt in Mark Arm’s smile, that knowing smirk as he took another swing at the microphone stand. It was the insane number of friendly faces all looking to make sure your good time was your only time; dorky girls who dragged you to ridiculous places and made up songs when sleep deprivation became too much; conversations that lasted for years.
“I remember coming back from a month-long tour with Skin Yard in November of ’87 and discovering the Melvins had broken up,” begins Seattle producer Jack Endino. “Or so we thought. Green River had broken up. Feast had broken up. Those were three of the biggest bands in the Northwest. We were like, whoa, there’s us, there’s Soundgarden and . . . who else? There was Bundle Of Hiss. Tad hadn’t really gotten going yet.”
Formed in 1985, Skin Yard played a molten psychedelic grind that later became known as grunge. They appeared on the same mid-Eighties Deep Six C/Z compilation as Melvins, Soundgarden, Malfunkshun and Green River. Jack played guitar and Sub Pop sales manager (later C/Z owner) Daniel House played bass. Matt Cameron – later to join Soundgarden and Pearl Jam – was the original drummer.
Future Mudhoney drummer Dan Peters was only 15 when he joined Bundle Of Hiss in 1984: the band also boasted two future members of Tad – guitarist Kurt Danielson and singer Tad Doyle (who actually only joined as second guitarist for the last few months). Bundle Of Hiss were another prototypical grunge outfit, for the way they merged post-punk attitude with classic Black Sabbath riffs. Tad themselves played fierce relentless hard rock, fuelled by a fascination for serial killers, similar to Midwest bands like Killdozer. ‘Wood Goblins’ is an absolute classic of the genre.
“And then in January,” Jack continues, “I found myself in the studio with Mother Love Bone, doing their first demos, with Mudhoney and with Nirvana, all within days of each other. Also, I met my wife-to-be a month before that. So January of ’88 was a very interesting time for me. My band was starting to move upward, Sub Pop was getting their thing together and we’d recorded Soundgarden’s Screaming Life EP a few months earlier.”
Mother Love Bone was Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament’s glam metal post-Green River outfit – widely expected to be the first Seattle band to cross over to the mainstream, leastways until their frontman, the flamboyant Andrew Wood (formerly with Malfunkshun), overdosed on heroin on March 16, 1990. Gossard and Ament briefly formed Temple Of The Dog with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron before reconvening in Pearl Jam. The hipper sections of the Sub Pop crowd always – rightly – ridiculed these bands.
Would you say those three bands (Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney, Nirvana) had something in common?
“No,” the producer states emphatically. “They didn’t have anything in common.”
They had Jack Endino in common.
“. . . And the fact they were all from here, played the same clubs, went to the same Black Flag concerts . . .”
They were part of the same crowd, right?
“Exactly. There was a similar aesthetic. They weren’t playing the same style of music, but there was no one from the bar band scene. They were coming from a ‘write your own songs’ ethos. During the Eighties, the biggest bands in town were the cover bands and the blues bands – the Pioneer Square scene in the tourist/college student part of town. Bands writing their own music didn’t get much support. The only people that had gotten away with that approach were Queensryche and the east side metal bands. The scene was very, very small.
“You had The Vogue on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and [University Of Washington radio station] KCMU would sponsor these weird Tuesday night indie shows at The Rainbow, promoted by Jonathan Poneman. [Future Soundgarden manager] Susan Silver would set some up too. I have a poster that typifies the sort of thing. It reads, ‘Green River + Room 9 + Soundgarden + Skin Yard + Bundle Of Hiss’, all on a Tuesday at The Rainbow for a buck.
“Those three bands were coming from the same place but they were all going somewhere different. It was less obvious back then. Then, they were just guys with noisy guitars and not exactly a surplus of musical skill. None of them were great players. The focus was more about being raw and crazy and putting out emotion and sheer noise. That’s the thing I enjoyed. I have a fondness for bands that are able to create huge sheets of noise. I get impatient with people doing the typewriter thing on the guitar. Music has to be good in spite of the technique, almost.
“Players that were too good back then were viewed with suspicion. Some people say there may have been an anti-intellectual bias to the scene, which I blame on Bruce Pavitt. Bruce is an anti-intellectual intellectual. To him, the more brainless the music the better. Maybe it filled something he needed in his own personality. At the time, however, all this analysis was not happening. We were just making the records . . .”
Back at Krist’s place in Tacoma, Kurt Cobain was stepping up rehearsals: anathema to Burckhard who was there mostly for the beer. “They wanted to practise every night,” he complained to Michael Azerrad. “Every night. I’m like, give me a break.” Aaron was still living in Grays Harbour and unwilling to commit to the band. He felt he had a good chance of becoming a full manager at Burger King.
Frustrated by his drummer’s attitude, Kurt placed an advert in the October 1987 issue of The Rocket: “SERIOUS DRUMMER WANTED. Underground attitude, Black Flag, Melvins, Zeppelin, Scratch Acid, Ethel Merman. Versatile as heck. Kurdt 351-0992.” There were no immediate applicants, so Kurt and Krist practised with Dale Crover over the course of three weekends with a view to making a demo. Kurt picked out Reciprocal Studios in Seattle because he loved the sound on Screaming Life.
“They were excited to work with Jack because he’d done stuff for Soundgarden and Green River,” recalls Slim. “It was cheap and he agreed to do it for lower than his usual fee.”
The studio, in Seattle’s unfashionable Ballard district, was in a brownstone building dating from the Thirties, previously known as the Triangle Grocery. From the mid-Seventies it was known as Triangle Recording – the studio where the punk/New Wave Seattle Syndrome LPs were recorded.2 Reciprocal opened for business on July 1, 1986; a wedge-shaped triangle with the control room at the narrow point, the bathroom at another point and the entrance door at the other. Around the bathroom was a small isolation room, like a cupboard, where you could put one amplifier. And that was it. Doorframes hung loose and it reeked of stale beer and drummers. There was no air conditioning; when it got hot, bands would have to leave the door open and let the exhaust fumes from passing trucks come in.
“It’s a terrible studio!” exclaims Jack. “It’s a terrible room, completely dead, it’s carpet and plasterboard, the control room
is horrible and I can’t believe I ever made a good record there. When I go back there now I walk in and my body starts getting creeped out like, ‘I can’t believe I spent fiiiiiiive yeeeeeears in this buiiiiilding !’ ”
Jack is an easy-going, unassuming, former navy engineer – longhaired with big, deliberate hands and plenty of bracelets. “There was only one person to record with back then,” says Dan Peters. “Jack Endino. If you wanted to get on his good side you’d bring him something sweet, a box of sugary cereal like Cap’n Crunch.”
“ ‘Michael Grungelo’ was our nickname for him, because his whole name is Michael Jack Endino,” laughs Gas Huffer3 drummer Joe Newton. “He’s got these long, spidery arms and this hair hanging down. He would mix those records so fucking loud that you would go into the control room and be like, ‘I’m going back out there.’ Nobody mixes that loud any more. It changes the way a record sounds.”
On January 23, Krist’s friend Dwight Covey drove Nirvana and their equipment to Seattle in his Chevy camper heated by a woodstove. The group recorded and mixed nine-and-a-half songs in six hours: the vocals were recorded in one take while Krist went outside with Covey and got stoned. The tape ran out during ‘Pen Cap Chew’, but the band didn’t want to stump up the extra $40 for another reel so Jack faded the song out. The entire session cost $152.44, which Kurt paid for out of his janitorial earnings. The songs were ‘If You Must’, ‘Downer’, ‘Floyd The Barber’, ‘Paper Cuts’, ‘Spank Thru’, ‘Hairspray Queen’, ‘Aero Zeppelin’, ‘Beeswax’, ‘Mexican Seafood’ and ‘Pen Cap Chew’4 – later played in the exact same order that night at Community World Theater under the name Ted Ed Fred.5
“I’m a sucker for riff rock,” Jack states. “I grew up on Deep Purple and Zeppelin and all that English heavy metal stuff. The music I got into when I was in high school – earlier Blue Cheer and Cream and Hendrix – was as close to indie rock as it got in 1971 over here, the ‘scary, heavy’ stuff that wasn’t played on the radio. That demo was Seventies riff rock with a slightly weird post-punk angularity; Dale was fundamentally a heavy metal drummer, and Kurt wrote songs around interesting guitar riffs. The thing that separated it from anything else was the singing. His voice had a lot of character and he had a weird ear for melody, he wouldn’t be following the guitar riffs like typical idiot riff rock. Right off, I thought Kurt’s got a cool scream. I think that’s what caught Jonathan [ Poneman]’ s attention too.”