Dwarves Photos: Charles Peterson …and Everett True is 481. 19 years on from his first Seattle jolly on the Sub Pop account, Plan B’s publisher-at-large jets back to the Pacific Northwest to meet some old friends, exorcise some ghosts and find out what happened after grunge left town. How did we get here? Where are we going? And did the Postal Service really sell that many records? Words: Everett True Transcripts: Natalie Walker “Heavy metal is objectionable. I don’t even know comedy genius, the funniest man I’ve encountered like, ‘I have no idea what you’re doing’. But he where that [comparison] comes from. People will in the Puget Sound8. He cracks me up. No one found trusted the four of us enough to let us go into the say that Motörhead is a metal band and I totally me attractive until I changed my name. The name studio for a weekend and record with Jack. It was disagree, and I disagree that AC/DC is a metal band. slides into meaninglessness. What is the Everett True essentially a demo that became our first single.” To me, those are rock bands. There’s a lot of Chuck brand in 2008? What does Sub Pop stand for, more Berry in Motörhead. It’s really loud and distorted and than 20 years after its inception? Could Sub Pop It’s in the focus. The first time I encountered Sub amplified but it’s there – especially in the earlier have existed without Everett True? Could Everett Pop, I had 24 hours to write up my first cover feature stuff. And AC/DC has an almost blues thing filtered True have existed without Sub Pop? for Melody Maker13. I’d picked up a bug on the through its weird Australian take. When I think of If I’d known that my life would’ve become plane home, broken my typewriter and had to travel heavy metal bands, I think of bands that have these defined by a handful of events and conversations across London in the dead of night to write my story, epic songs that go into these goofy time signatures. over the space of a few short years, would I have throwing up the entire time. More like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest – an operatic behaved any different? Krist Novoselic, back when As soon as I’d arrived in Seattle two weeks singer. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are the roots he quit alcohol for round about the first time (1992, before, I’d made two demands of my host Bruce of this. The bands that followed them were trying to I believe) told his band-mates that he missed the Pavitt: one, point me in the direction of the break the rules…and the bands that copied them spontaneity and creativity that came from being Greyhound Bus Station to Olympia14, and two, set the rules. The same thing happened with punk drunk. Last time I met Krist, we drank $20 shots of introduce me to proto-slacker cartoonist Peter rock. Led Zeppelin bugged me because you’d hear whiskey, and he drove his four-wheeler straight Bagge. I liked Mudhoney and the first Nirvana them all the time, and the singer was kind of through a barrier. single, sure: danced on a table in Melody Maker’s annoying. But their live stuff from ’71? It’s amazing. Who cares what actually happened? All that review room to them – but I was more down with That’s a rock’n’roll band”. – Mark Arm matters is the manner in which it is documented. the cutie kids, the scary Huck Finn/Richard Brautigan How great were Green River? How great were The lyrics and patterns of Beat Happening. Loud music “Sub Pop was the first time I’d encountered big, U-Men? Flipper? The Wipers? The Blackouts? No seemed to have no future. (Ha!) dumb rock2. All the way through punk and past it, one knows. No one of any importance was around The plane landed in a snowstorm so thick I didn’t across the Eighties, I’d been educated to believe that to document them. There was so much great music see the ground till three days later. Mudhoney took it was ‘wrong’ to enjoy it. And often it was: it came hailing from regional hotspots in America in the late me to a café on the corner of Virginia and 1st with so many reprehensible attitudes that made it Eighties…scratch that. There is always so much opposite the Terminal Sales Building15; a scene I can anathema to anyone schooled in the lessons of the great music hailing from whichever regional still picture right there in my mind. They had long “When you hear something that enchants you, life becomes somehow better than before. A series of infatuations keep me going.” – Jonathan Poneman feminists and free-thinkers. But it was so fun! It’s so hotspots wherever. All that changed with Sub Pop hair. I’m not sure I’d ever met any men with long fun to shake your head in bass bins, dribble and was the focus. hair before. drawl like a stoner, dance yourself into oblivion3. There were women around too, even crazier. Sub Pop’s mark of genius was making it OK to like Jack Endino9 says ‘Touch Me I’m Sick’ is basically My fondness for attempting to be ‘cool’ was the big, dumb rock again. Oh, and in centralising ‘The Witch’10. documented cruelly but fairly on the run-off everything in a place (Seattle) that no one from the “It’s basically ‘Happenings 10 Years Time Ago’ by groove of the only Dickless single: “Hey it’s Joey, outside cared for back then4: so that when attention The Yardbirds,” laughs Mudhoney singer Mark Arm. where’s the party?” Americans always misheard came they could claim the area as their own. Oh, “Which is also the fast part of ‘I’m Sick Of You’ by my name, one more reason for sticking with Everett. and in inventing the Slacker Generation and Bart The Stooges. Then there was this local band called I am not one of those Rolling Stone guys who Simpson’s ‘Proud To Be An Underachiever’ outlook Night Kings11 that had a song with a similar riff. It’s rate their own importance. I am not an NME head. I five years ahead of schedule with the ‘LOSER’ T- up for grabs. It’s anybody’s.” am certainly not a hack with delusions of literary shirts5. Oh, and in forging a label identity so strong Did you have any idea you were creating grandeur. I am not a fucking music journalist. I am that two decades on people still assume their best- anything special at the time? Everett True. Read my CV, it tells you right here – known band (Nirvana) come from Seattle6. Oh, and “It just sounded really good to us,” Mark states. “Insurrectionary, tastemaker, loser”. in making it fun to be a fan of music once more…” – “We were trying to put out a single that would be Everett True (unused promotional blurb for Sub Pop something that we would be so jazzed about if we “Bruce and Jon, the Sub Pop guys, said, ‘You 20 Year Anniversary) stumbled across it in a record store. should come down to the office; we have an “We had it really easy from the start,” he adds. English journalist here. He’s a tastemaker; he’s We all have our three weeks in the sun. “We had our friends Bruce [Pavitt, millionaire, come here to tell the world what’s going on. The past doesn’t exist. It never has. As Almost beard] and Jon [Poneman, millionaire, no beard] We had lunch at Mama’s. You were a fun guy Famous7 tells us, you’re never cool, especially when who were starting this label. I was in a band that to talk to.” you think you’re being cool. That’s a fundamental. was already on the label so…we just stepped into I was told you were a lumberjack16. You feel a buzz once, so you try and hang onto that place. I worked with Bruce at Muzak12 and I tried to “That’s that Sub Pop ‘hype’ thing again. The buzz. But it doesn’t keep. I grow a beard years after I play him stuff that we’d played in our practice room closest I came to being a lumberjack was cutting should have. I hang on words of people who have on a boom box. It just sounded like wshsshhhshh. I cord wood out in Stanley, Idaho the year after I never been my friends, and vice versa. Mark Arm is a could distinguish what was going on, but Bruce was graduated from high school.” plan b | 11 Green River Mudhoney You had some of the earliest releases on “No, no, I would actually prefer money. In those grunge” – and if there was ever a word I should Sub Pop. days, fame was a lot harder to come by. We didn’t have copyrighted, down payment on a swank “The first ever recording that was ever have the internet. Nowadays you can just post penthouse apartment in New Farm, it’s right there, released on Sup Pop was my single. I took my something on YouTube, and you’ll be famous for a baby) by Sub Pop, to interview a band who weren’t tax return money to Reciprocal, and did ‘Ritual week. That has nothing to do with Everett True.” even in town18.