Music History, Part 22: The Early Seattle Years 1989-90

Disclaimer: Memory is a funny thing, and an elusive one. Meaning; I might have some of this wrong, as 1. My memory is not always accurate, like anyone and 2. It is from my perspective only. Any friends  who were there, feel free to correct me or add things I have missed. It helps! Also, no gossip on anyone here, it ain't about that. Personal details are on a surface level, and friends, girlfriends and others are re-named to respect their privacy. People in bands generally put their names out there on albums and in interviews anyway, and are not in the habit of staying anonymous, and therefore are named here. That said, anyone who is in the blog that wishes me not to use their name has only to ask.

Seattle Years Disclaimer: As I enter the Seattle years in this music blog, the above disclaimer goes double, because so much happened and there are so many details to cover in this 14 year period; so many shows, so many bands, so many friends and so much change in my life. As a result of this and the fact that the four of us who formed Treepeople found ourselves in the midst of a scene which attracted the eyes of the world 2 years after our arrival, I am bound to, hell, I will forget something. 

This means two things: I will be coming back to entries and adding things to them over the months following publication, and, that the part of the above disclaimer where I ask for help from people in keeping me honest and in remembering things is crucial to them. I thank anyone ahead of time who was there for helping me, and, I thank those who weren't there who may notice errors in dates or chronology. Yes, I have the Internet, but many bands, scenes and things I will cover did not receive the attention I feel they deserved and thus I will recall them mostly from memory, or rather, memories; mine and those of friends. And friends who were in bands which I do not mention, please don't take it personally, just remind me. I have created a monster in undertaking this blog, one which I am determined to ride until the end!

Lastly, as mentioned, this scene gained national attention, and thus, needless to say and as we all know in hindsight, many bands/people became famous, became rock stars, became admired by millions, etc and etc...This makes another part of my original disclaimer even more important. This memoir is intended to tell my story, from my perspective. I have no intention of creating a place where people can seek gossip about famous people. I write of my impressions of people, bands, and the Seattle scene from the '90s into the early 2000s. People who are my friends I protect fiercely, not because they are known, but because a symptom of being known is frequent intrusion into their lives at a level beyond what I feel is acceptable. Thank you for indulging me this disclaimer. Onward>>>

A band needs a place to practice...

Tad's girlfriend knew the guys in a local Seattle band called Blood Circus who needed another band to share in the costs of their jam space located in a part of town not far from the Boeing Air Field named 'Georgetown', and helped us get into the space by passing our name along. The space was in a narrow building on Airport Way, between some old taverns which seemed like they had been there since the late 1800s, one was called Jules Maes and is still there. At that time the only things located in Georgetown were industrial type businesses and a small neighborhood of homes (also still there). 

Across the street from the jam space was an old building, it looked to have once been a factory of some sort, and the original windows had been bricked up. It turned out that part of the building was merely a facade wall that had been preserved for historic purposes, and the rest of the building was occupied by Rainier Cold Storage & Ice. It turns out that this was once a brewery, Seattle Malting and Brewing Company (where Treepeople would later pose in front of for an article on us published in the local rock rag called 'Backlash' in 1991 - I will post this pic later in the story). 

A former brewery (Seattle Malting and Brewing Company) from the heyday of Georgetown south of Seattle. Much of the building was a facade. Treepeople rehearsed right across the street from this building. Photo retrieved from: 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Seattle_Georgetown_Brewery_10.jpg

Georgetown, when it was a city, was known for its breweries and saloons. It was annexed into Seattle in 1910 and is considered by most to be the oldest neighborhood in Seattle. Since the early 2000s, Georgetown has changed considerably. As the Wikipedia page on Georgetown states; "Georgetown has had a certain degree of a "scene" since the 1990s. In 2001, Industrial Coffee and Stella Pizza were both hosting live musical performances. The former folded, and the latter stopped hosting shows and changed its name to Stellar Pizza. Since that time, however, quite a few new bars and coffeehouses have opened in the neighborhood, plus a record store, a beer store, a barber shop, a bakery, a scooter shop, a "skin sanctuary" (which is to say, a waxing salon), a web design company, and an art gallery/recording studio. Laura Cassidy of the Seattle Weekly described the prevailing aesthetic: "Creatively employing the open, airy brick-walled spaces left behind by industry and manufacturing, and augmenting them with local art and 20th-century detritus, Georgetown's merchants consistently fashion warm, imaginative interiors: places you want to visit and never want to leave. Just walking through the streets you witness post-squat, industrial bohemian chic."  Also, Sub Pop records recently hosted their 'Jubilee' party there, celebrating 25 years (though they have been around a bit longer, it just sounded better and worked with the whole 'Jubilee' concept - typical Sup Pop hype-marketing) which I attended. It was fun but there were way too many people. It was a trip to see how much things had changed in Georgetown.

The rehearsal space was decent, and the Blood Circus guys were really nice to us. In the same building, located above us was a recording studio called 'Electric Eel', owned and operated by a guy named Zach, the bass player of a great pop/punk band called The Purdins, (the name came from some neighbors that a couple members of the band grew up next to). The Purdins quickly became one of our favorite Seattle bands, and is still one of my favorite bands in general. They played catchy, poppy tunes with a slight punk flavor to them. The singer, Tony Driscoll, wrote witty, ironic lyrics involving personal stories of loss and the day to day grind of life, and sang them with an amazing, well-projected voice full of legitimate emotion. The Purdins often performed wearing goofy outfits and put on a great live show. 

The Purdins doing their thing - Photo retrieved from:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/500/37077333/The+Purdins.jpg

 

Blood Circus, Treepeople's jam space roomies in the early '90s in Georgetown - Photo retrieved from:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/610377/Blood+Circus.jpg

 

We weren't as familiar with the Blood Circus guys, for whatever reason, maybe because we were jam space roomies, we didn't bond as much with them as we did with The Purdins. Their music was good; heavy metalish and kind of punk. They were one of the early bands to play the kind of music that would later be called 'grunge', and they definitely influenced later Seattle bands. We mostly saw each other when we showed up to jam during our allotted time as they were ending their rehearsal, and usually it was just Doug we saw (the drummer, a really great guy), who also collected rent from us. Later, the band Kill Sybil rehearsed in the room we were in as well, featuring Patty Schemel, who later drummed in the band Hole.

Jam neighbors/old friends

There were many other bands who practiced in this space. Right next door to us the excellent hardcore band Christ on a Crutch, featuring two of our friends from the Tri-Cities hardcore band Diddly Squat: Eric Akre on drums (who would later play drums in Treepeople after I quit and my replacement quit) and Nate Mendel on bass (later in the Seattle band Sunny Day Real Estate and who currently he plays bass in The Foo Fighters). More on Christ on a Crutch later. Also, our other friends from Tri-Cities, Paula Sen (the aforementioned 'Paula Fallout') and her boyfriend, Doug Pack, practiced in the same room in another excellent hardcore band called Whipped, the drummer of which, Drew Quinlan, would later play drums in a band I played bass in called Violent Green, (a band that will of course appear in the story later). Sadly, Drew passed away this year (cancer).

One thing that stands out in my memory about these Tri-Cities folks and our arrival on the scene in Seattle was that they all knew us as members of the Boise hardcore band State of Confusion, of which they were fans, and when they heard we had morphed into a punk/pop band called Treepeople, they were disappointed. Treepeople grew on them, however, and soon they were fans of this band as well. Paula actually put out our first 12 inch ep, as mentioned earlier.

A negative review
 
In 1989, we 'released' our first seven inch record, Important Things/Handcuffs/In My Head (see Part 20 for more details on this record, as well as scans of the covers). We sent it to various fanzines and rock magazines around the country and some overseas. This included the Seattle rock magazine called 'The Rocket', and by the Seattle rock magazine, I mean the Seattle rock magazine. At that time, getting in The Rocket was a good thing...usually. Not for us, though, at least the first time, unless of course you believe in that adage, 'there's no such thing as bad publicity'.

Grant Alden was the music reviewer for The Rocket and had the task of reviewing our 7 inch. It was a terrible review. Getting terrible reviews happens to the best of bands, we weren't so naive as to expect all our reviews to be shining, but this review wasn't about the music at all. In today's climate of music reviews, this critique may seem silly, but back then, most reviews actually mentioned the music, and used way less weird metaphors and attempts to be clever and make it all about the reviewer than is the way of things today.

One day I was browsing records at a new record shop by where I lived (Rebellious Jukebox) and I recognized Grant Alden doing the same. I introduced myself and struck up a conversation and brought up the review, and I told him I thought that it wasn't a fair assessment of the band in that it really didn't talk as much about the music as the fact that we were an out of town band that moved to Seattle. He had really made it seem like we were just the next band coming to try and capitalize on the music scene there. He had no idea what was coming in a couple short years when bands from Kansas and several friends would move there to 'make it'. And we were from Boise! The Northwest! Seattle was our back yard!

I don't think anyone had ever approached him about a review quite the way I did. I was respectful, I wasn't yelling at him or being unreasonable. I just let him know that I thought the review assumed a lot about the band and didn't really take the music into consideration. Either I made an impression on him, or, he gave the record another listen and wrote another, more positive review later. At the time, I found that very interesting and assumed it was because by the time the second review came out, there was a bit of a buzz about us. Only Grant himself can answer the question as to why he reviewed it again. He didn't seem like an asshole at all.

Adapting to the city

As I mentioned, I have always been a fan of bigger cities. Actually living in one was a whole new experience, and for the most part, I loved it. There were more people everywhere, of course. You had to plan for more time to do things, even grocery shopping, and of course you had to plan for traffic. Where my girlfriend and I, and Doug and his girlfriend lived was on East Thomas street, two blocks off of the main strip of Broadway, a strip where a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops and record stores were/are.

At that time, there wasn't quite the amount of foot traffic that there is today, but there was still quite a bit, and then it was sort of a place to be seen. One saw lots of leather, spikes, punk hair dos of various colors, and lots of men holding hands and kissing, which became normal to me very quickly. I may have mentioned this before in the blog, but even though I had gay friends in Boise, living in Seattle challenged what I previously thought to be an open mind and I became rapidly educated about gay people. In Boise, all of my gay friends were new wavers or punk rockers, and were very flamboyant, very 'out' (which was incredibly brave in Boise in the '80s) and since they were the only gay people I knew, I thought most gay people were that way. Seattle made me realize gay people were just...people. They were laborers and lawyers and doctors and whatever. Their sexuality didn't define them entirely, it was, as it is with heterosexuals, just part of who they were. And for them to come out was a brave thing to do in most of the world, because many people are small-minded, hateful and ignorant. In Seattle, especially on Capitol Hill, it was more of a gay safe-haven. I don't mean to say that gay people weren't discriminated against there, they certainly were, but far less than most US cities I have been in, and there was a higher quotient of out gay business owners. 

I was a tall, skinny, long-haired dude wearing Dickies work pants and a heavy wool flannel jacket I got at a thrift store, wandering around and checking things out. I must have looked scruffy, because panhandlers wouldn't ask me for money and would give me a nod, as if I were one of them. In fact, one time I came upon a group of three homeless guys who seemed to be pretty drunk. The most inebriated of them stuttered while trying to ask me for money, and his friend hit him and said, "Don't panhandle a panhandler!" The gray weather took some getting used to, but Seattle quickly became home. 

Next up: A slight shift backwards in time to a Boise venue that was important to Treepeople and to many other bands in the late '80s, two of which I want to profile in more detail; the Dirt Fishermen and Caustic Resin