Everett True’s guide to the Sub Pop rosta, 18th March 1989.
You can tell the grunge scene is still developing – check those cowboy boots on the crowd surfer! That said nothing would please me more than if someone from the gig photo got in touch.
UPDATE: Thanks to LameStain blog for linking and having plenty more to say about Grunge from a US perspective. This post also discussed with affection on the ILXOR forum
April 16, 2009 at 7:19 pm
This article is how I remember “Grunge” as a genre beginning. Before this article, there was stuff on Touch & Go or SST we’d describe as “grungy guitars”. Or “like The Stooges’ Funhouse”. But we viewed those bands as part of the US Hardcore scene, or the New York noise rock scene. Green River was one of those bands.
Then there was the Sonic Youth/Mudhoney split, and it was like, “Who is this Mudhoney, and how do they know Sonic Youth?” Then Melody Maker published this spread, and it suddenly became a distinct sound. I wanted to hear all these bands, and I connected the dots back to the one’s I’d already heard: Green River, U-Men, Soundgarden.
When I heard “You Got It” with it’s Hendrix lead and blunt catchiness, it seemed ready to rise out of the underground and knock Def Leppard off the US Charts. Didn’t quite happen that way, but close enough.
Funny how this article kicks off describing the Sub Pop bands as “Thrash Metal” ’cause in retrospect, the pigeonholing didn’t work out that way. It’s hard to hear it as metallic now. But at the time, all these acts seemed ready to capture suburban America in a way Husker Du or the Replacements never did.
September 11, 2009 at 6:46 am
[...] Parte esencial de esta escena la tuvo Sub-Pop Records, quienes tenían en su catalogo a los artistas más importantes del grunge como a Nirvana, Mudhoney y Soudgarden, entre muchos otros, tal como lo muestran los archivos de música. [...]
October 31, 2009 at 9:22 pm
[...] external authority such as Life writing about “Mystic Painters of the Northwest“, or Everett True writing about Sub Pop. I for one, was really excited to learn about what was going on, and next year I hope they include [...]