I Found My Friends (33 page)

JON GINOLI:
People noticed all right. It was a big middle finger to hard-rock stupidity. Rock stars were not supposed to make fun of themselves and not take their image seriously. They got away with it because they were
huge
. I remember too when they wore dresses for the “In Bloom” video—that was a gesture that had major impact, to so blatantly fuck with gender. It wasn't about rock-star cool … Kurt sang, “God is gay” and “Everyone is gay.” Axl sang “Immigrants and faggots, they make no sense to me,” and that they “spread some fucking disease” … I don't think much pro-gay sentiment was happening in rock until the '90s—punk rock got more macho as times went on. Originally punk could be aggressive without being macho. Part of the homophobia stemmed from the idea that people thought gays weren't making or listening to that kind of music, because almost no one playing it was out of the closet. Part of the reason I formed Pansy Division was that I knew that wasn't true. Our mere presence (along with queer peers like Tribe 8 and Team Dresch) forced the issue out into the open the same way that Bikini Kill did for women and feminism … Someone told me that
Maximum Rocknroll
magazine were afraid to give us bad reviews because they didn't want to look homophobic, but because they were the home of hardcore they were never too enthusiastic, either.

GARY FLOYD:
If I had just been singing about gay issues only, I would have been pegged as more of a “gay singer” than I am. I think I was more “a singer that was gay” than “a gay singer.” My songs were multi-issue … I'm happy Kurt felt gay topics were part of what was going on. I loved him for that. However, most punks could not care less that Bad Brains did some despicable homophobic bullshit … Never apologized … Never said “We are sorry,” anti-“bloodclot faggot,” crap … They do not care a fucking thing; maybe Kurt did … Most so-called punks don't give a shit. I didn't get shit because I didn't take shit.

While Nirvana dedicated time to their political commitments, the whirlwind of attention that had followed
Nevermind
was now lashing the Northwest scene from whence they'd come.

BEAU FREDERICKS:
Things changed a lot for sure. Before, no money. Afterward, big money—in Seattle, at least … Once the money hit, then the Seattle attitudes changed and there wasn't as much of just playing music for fun anymore.

LEIGHTON BEEZER:
We actually had some major label approach my band Stomach Pump … The A&R person told us we would be big stars and would have total creative control. I said our band was totally improvisational, and he held his finger up to his lips and said, “Shhhh. I don't give a shit. You guys are from Seattle and you play loud grunge. You'll sell and become huge. So whaddya say?” I smiled, shook his hand, and said, “Yes!” He told me to get my band into the studio … he would fly us down to L.A. and advance us a bunch of money to make a record. So, I asked the guys from the Thrown Ups: Mark, Steve, and Ed, to join me as a hoot. We showed up at the L.A. studio two weeks later wearing our old flower costumes. The A&R guy called us motherfuckers and kicked us out of the studio, and that was the end of that deal … It did get pretty ugly, but funny at the same time. I remember Mark saying, “But we have a great cover of ‘San Francisco'” while the A&R guy shouted obscenities …

DUANE LANCE BODENHEIMER:
The music scene was great, always something to do every night of the week … Not much attitude—not really. Everyone happy to play, not trying to be famous or doing it to become a rock star; they were just doing what they did—that's what I really appreciated about Seattle. It changed after the whole Nirvana thing; it seemed like this band and that band were just there to try and get a record deal.

ROBIN PERINGER:
People saw Nirvana make it big and wanted that as well. As a result, everyone thought they could achieve it, even the labels. It seemed to me that every little shitty band that got a small blurb in the
Rocket
started to believe that they were hot shit. I don't know, it somehow created a competition that hadn't really been there before.

Thanks to the ludicrous hype surrounding Seattle, what had been a close-knit community of musicians, venues, and labels found itself drowning under a wave of out-of-town wannabes.

RYAN LOISELLE:
Everyone hated the popularity. C/Z Records would get boxes of demo tapes in the mail and I'd hang out with the guys running the label. They had a tape deck and they're on the fifth floor of some building in Seattle and they'd put in a tape and within the first three seconds just: All right. Yoink! Boom! They'd throw it right out the window. Everything. Three seconds—if it wasn't amazing right now they'd throw it right out the window and it'd hit the streets out on the avenue. But there seriously were boxes of tapes being sent to labels in Seattle.

JOHN PURKEY:
I was given the box of demo tapes sent to the Central Tavern—people were sending tapes into clubs—so 1993, they asked, “Anybody want these?” I took it. There were some good demos in there, I went through everything myself and found some good bands … There was a huge number of bands came in, a lot of clubs opening—there were bands moving to the Northwest to try and get a record deal. Two bands from Hawaii lived in Tacoma—they moved
here
? From Hawaii?!

TIM KERR:
When Nirvana “hit” in '91, it broke the dam and you had the industry machine come in full force plastering their template and guidelines for the future generations, through mainstream magazines, to follow so they could be successful in this “new industry.” This, of course, led and always leads to another generation of smaller pockets digging deeper into the real DIY ethic, which still happens to this day … the scene at the time was more a community that was having to deal with a big influx of “fans” now showing up. They all had a great sense of humor and reality about it, which I thought was a healthy attitude and I respected them for it. I still do.

BEN MUNAT:
That's what made the Nirvana happening so extraordinary; the pop commercial world cracked into the “Fuck you we don't need your money” world and there was a crazy period of swirling opportunism and confusion; some people got hurt … With the unexpected smash success of Nirvana, many labels of all stripes swooped down on Portland looking for the next big thing.

DANIEL RIDDLE:
Portland … changed radically once Nirvana broke nationally with a hit record and all of a sudden, like most musical towns at that time, became a hypercompetitive snake pit filled with money-hungry vampires representing the record labels and many so-called musicians who could barely conceal the fact that they were plagiaristic chimps looking to prostitute themselves.

For most bands there was no revolution; the mainstream wasn't buying punk, it was buying a version that didn't need a parental advisory sticker.

RICK SIMS:
The biz didn't change for us. We were still on the same label (Touch and Go) as we'd always been and getting the same push/support as we always had. I kind of doubt we were going to fit into that mainstream punk rock world anyway. We were too crude and our attitude was a little too fuck-you to all of a sudden start dealing with some major-label schmo. I think most bands still had to fight hard, as in having to schlep around in a van for two months playing one-night stands and sleeping on friends' floors.

JOE KEITHLEY:
Punk rock was still an obscure art form that never really got its due—no complaining, but that's the way it was. It was too political, too offensive, and it wasn't safe for kids … The punk rock movement is akin to the hippie movement, but 1 percent of the size because with the hippies you did have bands who were big and were saying stuff—even the Beatles and the Stones, the giants, they got into that culture. You never had those big bands in punk. The biggest was the Dead Kennedys, who might draw a thousand people when the MC5 had been drawing fifteen thousand and preaching revolution.

PETER IRVINE:
The idea of a genre called “alternative” was new, and not yet mainstream. It started as an actual alternative that was not popular. So it was strange and mystifying to watch “alternative” catch on as a genre term, become “Alternative,” and then become mainstream … Touring actually became more difficult after
Nevermind
 … there were suddenly a lot more bands trying to play the same venues, with the result that it became economically more challenging to tour. We were suddenly competing for gigs with bands that had label tour support and booking agents. They weren't necessarily drawing bigger crowds at first, but they were able to get booked places we couldn't. With tour support, those bands could afford to play gigs for little money, while we had to turn more to the folk scene for gigs that would pay enough for us to survive.

KEVIN RUTMANIS:
Grunge as a label and a genre was always repellent to me—that stuff was all so conservative musically. Like nostalgia. I was really hoping music was gonna progress more. It looked good there for a second. Until grunge. We referred to Nirvana as “the
N
word” in the Cows … it just seemed more and more like they were shitting on bands like ours and what we thought we were trying to accomplish. The whole “corporate rock sucks” thing seemed like total BS, as they were behaving exactly how corporate bands always behaved. If they really were against corporate rock, they wouldn't need to say it on the cover of
Rolling Stone
. It looks like they were saying that they themselves sucked, which within that context they did! They had this amazing chance to do something really creative and different. But they just did what everyone does. Played big giant boring arena shows at any price. I have no problem with “corporate” rock. I have a problem with lazy, half-baked complaining, however …

Nirvana's effect wasn't entirely negative: the flood of media attention, record-label attention, new audiences, and sales meant that the dream of surviving solely on music did become reality for many musicians.

DANA HATCH:
All the old musical barriers seemed to collapse … More people developed wide-ranging musical tastes rather than living and dying for one particular genre. Nirvana's success brought indie rock into the mainstream and made it easier for low-budget indie bands to record and tour. Record labels, caught unawares, starting throwing a lot of money around. We got a development deal with Warners that probably wouldn't have happened otherwise. It also gave mainstream rock fans a point of reference for weirder music.

MARIA MABRA:
[It was] literally the biggest music scene in the world, it was awesome being in the middle of it … from one day listening to your fellow musicians playing bars and clubs, then it seemed like overnight they got that one sweet deal and they were gone. That's awesome because that's kind of the dream—as punk as I can be, I don't give a shit what anyone says when something like that is offered to you, a chance to take off, then you're going to do it—I don't care how punk-rock you are. What they did changed music forever, just these Northwest boys … Washington is a huge state, it's largely barren, it's redneck, it's hillbilly, it's got these few big towns they call cities, then other than that it's coal-mining towns. Those guys, Nirvana, were small-town … these small-town boys getting a chance to be huge … And it's awesome. It gave us all a chance, it cleared the playing fields and made us all think, Yes! We can do this! That we could be artists and do great things.

Sub Pop was in the best financial shape it had ever been in, given a percentage from
Nevermind
as well as Warner Bros. Records' buying a stake in the label. This didn't, however, mean a lavish lifestyle just yet.

STEVE MORIARTY:
They tried to have this businesslike facade about how brilliant they were, but they were fans and just about to go out of business when Nirvana signed to DGC and kept them going … They had some strange firings—there was a lot of controversy there for a while, then Bruce quit and Poneman sold part of it to Warner Brothers and now they're living large.

KURT DANIELSON:
It became necessary for us to leave Sub Pop in order to preserve our friendships with Jon and Bruce, as well as to protect our relations with the label as a whole. The situation had become just too untenable in terms of financial security … had we known how soon
Nevermind
was going to go gold and then platinum, saving Sub Pop's fortunes, we would never have left … Considering the circumstances, there were no wrong moves, just moves with unknown consequences. All too soon we would find out what those consequences would be: the most poignant one being how we would miss the intimate, supportive, always-creative contact with Jon and Bruce—something we never found elsewhere.

MARK PICKEREL:
Sub Pop wasn't exactly “broke” at the time … I should know, I was working there. We just mismanaged our money as we tried to manage our passion and appetite for so much music, and with commerce and economics, that can prove to be a difficult juggling act!… You hear about how the band Kiss used to show up to their first shows in a limousine that they would have to wait to pay for till after they collected from ticket sales? That's exactly how Sub Pop appeared on the scene! It's also why they almost went bankrupt right before the success of Nirvana's
Nevermind
. Nirvana's huge breakthrough helped put Sub Pop back on the map with sales of
Bleach
entering the pop charts for the first time. It didn't hurt that Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were having the best sales of their careers at the same time, leading to a new interest in their earlier titles associated with Sub Pop.