This Shimmy Disc compilation, featuring '80s avant rock heroes such as Jad Fair, Kramer, and Eugene Chadbourne, has such a compelling origin story that I'm just going to let the back cover speak for itself.
Steve Fisk, not unlike Jack Endino, is a figure in the Seattle rock universe who has had an enormous influence on the sounds coming out of this city, despite not being a household name to those who don't often peruse album credits. As a producer and engineer he's worked with everyone from Screaming…
I last wrote about founding grungefathers Green River in this space over six years ago, if you can believe that. At the time Seattle was buzzing with gossip that they might be playing the Sub Pop 20th birthday celebrations that summer. I can now tell you that they did indeed play that weekend, and …
It turns out I have previously blogged in this space about a Dead Moon album, but I'm going to do it again, because 1) that was over four years ago, which on the Internet is like a whole nother geological age; 2) they have fourteen albums, I think I can write about two of 'em for crying out loud; 3…
What a happy coincidence! When I began my usual internet research for this week's piece on Northwest heroes Mecca Normal, I fully expected to find the usual nostalgic laments for a great band that was no more. How wrong I was! Not only is the two-piece guitar/voice unit of Jean Smith and David Lest…
There's not much information out there about the '80s Seattle band Mondo Vita. Their leader Eric "Travis" Wilson (who has been working as a musician in Las Vegas for the past decade) claims on his own web site that the band "appeared on every TV station Seattle had to offer. They also populated th…
As you might have noticed, the pictures I gathered on my most recent visit to the KEXP stacks were exclusively from the local section, and I feel like I've been learning a lot of our fair city's history that simply living here for 12+ years has not been enough to absorb. Case in point: Somehow I've…
Room Nine were, it seems, a pretty big deal in Seattle in the late '80s; like Diamond Fist Werny, they were another band doing their own thing — with their own lighting designer! — while it probably seemed like everyone around them was churning out noisy, grungy rock. Room Nine broke up not long af…
Did somebody say Jack Endino? Here's one of those Endino-produced classics I was talking about last week. If Mudhoney needed no introduction by the time they released their self-titled debut LP in 1989, at this point they should be, I don't know, playing on top of the Space Needle or something? Oh,…
In 2018, KEXP celebrated the 30th anniversary of local record label Sub Pop with a four-month retrospective, "counting up" every catalog number in their vast discography of over 1,200 releases. Dig into the archives of our catalog coverage, featuring in-depth coverage on the history of their releases.
