Dammit, that was fun. If I'd known I was having so much fun, I would have appreciated more, but I was too busy having fun to notice. Like the Sub Pop LOSER logo, this loser happily bobbed through the Seattle-scene days humming, "I feel bad and I've felt worse / I'm a creep, yeah, I'm a jerk" while I worked. I moved to Seattle in 1989 and thought I'd already missed it all: Nirvana hadn't even released Bleach, much less their first single, but son-of-a-bitch Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick" was already out the year before! Sub Pop was just getting off the ground, or at least getting the singles out from under co-owner Bruce Pavitt's bed and into an office building.
And we had fun. It was all music and ideas and shows and, okay, some drinking may have been going on -- but Europe had discovered Seattle, and we rode the crest of UK magazines loving bands like Tad and feeling the fake slogans. Already in 1990 it seemed all the hype was overblown. Sub Pop had already gone from making T-shirts that said WORLD DOMINATION to ones saying WHICH PART OF WE HAVE NO MONEY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?
Even as a label, we were totally disconnected from bands having managers and label people. Shit, when a radio guy was hired, we tortured him because he said such catchwords and was so "corporate"; we stole his pencils out of his pencil cups and told people who called him he couldn't come to the phone because he had hemorrhoids and he couldn't sit down.
Nirvana mythologized Sonic Youth's profile. That was the pinnacle of success to them. Kurt loved Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers. He loved really uncool shit, too, like Abba or the Knack. And what's cool is he couldn't give one shit if it was cool. I mean, really, it's hard to be cool while wearing a dress of mine or Susie Tenant's (Nirvana's Geffen rep, my roommate, and a friend who Kurt liked to visit).
I remember in the early days, before even the UK press people came on board and I was doing press for Nirvana's tour after Bleach, many writers/editors couldn't be bothered to even listen to a new band like Nirvana. Within a year, the same people suddenly came back for their dumb "Seattle Scene" stories -- and I'm still holding grudges (I'm talking to you, Marvin Jarrett).
No one could see my eye-rolling through the phone, so I had to tell people that doing a story on the Seattle scene was so unoriginal and not a story: "That scene has sailed; please write about the bands the way Flipside zine does." Okay, so Nirvana sold four million records, but they were all just part of us -- it wasn't different. Now they kept the lights on at Sub Pop instead of Mudhoney, as the Geffen deal took care of Sub Pop with a special arrangement, including $750,000 billion, stretch limos, and a prize-winning goat named Buck Buck. So that's it, what they call a done deal on grunge. Oops.
Oops again. Then blammo right after that, like months, came Pearl Jam'Ten, and all grunge bets were off. But that's also when it really got fun, because Pearl Jam/Alice in Chains weren't really part of the Sub Pop/Nirvana/Tad/Afghan Whigs scene. Seeing the band high-fiving on their album cover was not the kind of stupid that was the genius genesis at Sub Pop à la Nirvana's "Negative Creep," but the kind of stupid that was stupid. But often heard around the offices was, "I hear Eddie's a nice guy."
So, yeah, grunge made the runways, and heroin chic was born. I didn't eye-roll as much because it got so ridiculous, it was hilarious. Everyone was so cleverly deadpan about it. No one pushed an angle for the New York Timesto do a "lexicon of grunge," but boy, when they asked for it, we ran with it, and out of receptionist-at-the-time/vice-president-now Megan Jasper's mouth came, "Catch you on the flippity-flop" and "Okie-Dokie artichokie." It's baffling how Megan could be so funny -- she was my fuck-with-people hero.
Tabitha Soren came to town for MTV. She just wanted to meet the cute, young Seaweed fans, so I took her out to hear Earth. Her ears about exploded and she got mad. She looked past me at one of her three assistants and told them to give me an MTV shirt, then left. In turn, we told everyone that she was kazooed up the woo-woo with a number two Ticonderoga pencil.
The New Yorker came to do an article, The New Motherfucking Yorker. Too bad writer Elizabeth Wurtzel was bonkers, and for some reason only wanted to interview Mark Lanegan over and over. I don't think her story ever even ran.
In just a few years, Seattle went from a handful of underground warriors living in a small bubble to the idea that the world was at our disposal. In retrospect, I know I had the time of my life and I know that grunge look was just not flattering. Oh, and all I'll say about the Hole song "Jennifer's Body" is that I knew it was coming before it got released. It's a pretty good song.
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