In 1988, Seattle was still a few years away from seeing its music community explode into the mainstream. That didn’t mean the city’s musicians weren’t getting noticed by major labels. Here’s a page out of Backlash, a Seattle fanzine aimed at covering the local music community:
(From Backlash, August-September 1988, p. 1)
J.R. Higgins’ article was about the rumors going around Mother Love Bone, a super-group made up of members of Malfunkshun, Green River, and Ten Minute Warning. Jokingly, it quotes frontman Andrew Wood on what would happen to the band after hitting the big time: “we won’t forget Seattle,” he said, “until we come back and we’re all at the Coliseum and we’re like, ‘Hello Portland! How ya doin! and everyone boos.”
Dawn Anderson’s piece was about how a stalwart of the Seattle punk scene left town and started a band in Los Angeles (hint: the group had a name that combined both guns and roses). Anderson playfully included old quotes from the migrant punk rocker, Andrew “Duff” McKagan on the topics of selling-out and community.
This fanzine page offers a glimpse into the Seattle music community in 1988. At the time nobody knew, of course, what would happen three years later. What folks did see was a) local musicians on the threshold of the supposed fame and fortune that comes along with signing a major-label contract and b) a guy that left the community for greener pastures and it had panned out.
Everyone knows that things ended up ok financially for McKagan. Mother Love Bone, unfortunately, ended up with a huge debt when Andrew Wood passed away on the eve of the release of Apple, their debut LP. The surviving band members were fronted a lot of money by their record company, which was now almost impossible to pay back.
Luckily, two of the members of Mother Love Bone, Jeff Ament and Stone Gosssard went on to form Pearl Jam. But the musicians mentioned in Backlash showcases the tension between local music scenes and major labels, and the dangers posed by being drawn further into the depths of the music industry.
In the 1950s, we had beatniks and rebels without a cause.
In the 1960s, we had mods and hippies.
In the 1970s, we had glam rockers and punks.
In the 1980s, we had metal and…other stuff.
In the 1990s, we had flannel and more flannel.
not just for lumberjacks
Then starting in the 2000s, we had…everybody dressing up like their favorite character from the last fifty years. The fashion became the passion, and folks with no connection to the subculture those styles came from regurgitated rather than invented something of their own. Often, these styles drew from music communities that formed around a particular grievance or attitude, – a relationship that can be symbolized by, say, reggae music and dreadlocks. Of course, the foundation for both of those was Rastafarianism, and anybody that knows anything about that branch of Christianity knows how stupid an affluent white person with dreads is. Or at least they should be stupid for not being informed on their stylistic choice, but nowadays there’s no meaning behind the styles – the superficial is all that matters.
This may be the reason why I’m still wearing the same clothes I had in high school. (more…)
So they did it on April 1st so it could be called a joke if they failed, but really they were serious. Today is the anniversary of the day Sub Pop Records officially opened its office doors, way back in 1988. With a knack for self-deprecation, the independent label also had a talent for combining innovation, timing, and marketability – not only for its bands, but for the label itself.
Sub Pop developed a unique image based around hype that became the straw that broke the camel’s back – that is, if you can call the wall that was blocking underground musicians from having mainstream success in the United States a camel – and thereby caused a major shift in American glamour. Nevermind the make-up and leather outfits, here’s the flannel.
“For students entering college this fall, e-mail is too slow, phones have never had cords and Clint Eastwood brings to mind a sensitive film director, not the catchphrase “go ahead, make my day.” These are among the 75 items on this year’s Beloit College Mindset List.”
A lot of American musical heroes have died at the age of 27. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Jim Morrison. Kurt Cobain. Heck, Brian Jones was from England but you can count him too. Superstars dying while still in their prime has become the climatic symbol of rock-star excess and glamor – the ultimate and almost necessary outcome for those who believe it’s better to burn out then to rust.
But there have been other American musicians that have died at age 27. While their deaths have still been incredibly tragic and often taken place under mysterious circumstances, their stories have lacked the excess and glamor of “the Big-Five.”
Way back in 19 and 92, just over a year after Nirvana’s Nevermind was released – “Grunge” was declared a “Success Story” in the New York Times. Thearticle was aptly titled… “Grunge: A Success Story.”
Written by Rick Marin and published on 15 November 1992, the feature story on the style and fashion of grunge traces its beginnings as “a five-letter word meaning dirt, filth, [and] trash” all the way to Seventh Avenue in New York City where it became the focus of Marc Jacobs’ “spring Perry Ellis collection.”
Hence, the “success” can be explained by this mathematical formula:
expensive fashion designer + good-looking models + other people cashing in = SUCCESS
I took a bullet and I looked inside and
Running through my veins
An American masquerade
I still remember Grandma Dixie’s wake
I’d never really known anybody to die before
Red white and blue upon a birthday cake,
My brother he was born on the 4th of the July
Nobody ever had a dream round here
but I don’t really mind that it’s starting to get to me
Rylan Kafara
The Past is Unwritten 
