Saturday, June 27, 2015

Music History, Part 26: The Early Seattle Years 1990-91: A new producer, 7 inch records and a brief history of my jobs

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 blew up around us and attracted the eyes of the world just 2 years after our arrival, not to mention the 12 years I played music following that, 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, and, those who weren't there who have access to valid info, for helping me to correct 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 that they deserved and thus I will recall them mostly from memory, or rather, memories; mine and those of friends. Also, friends who were in bands which I do not happen to 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, many bands/people became famous, became rock stars, were/are 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, nor is it about 'name-dropping'. I write of my impressions of people, bands, and the Seattle scene from the '90s into the early 2000s. I protect those who are my friends fiercely because a symptom of being known is frequent intrusion into their lives beyond a level that I feel is acceptable. Thank you for indulging me this disclaimer. Onward>>>


Rehearsing at Chris Takino's house and recording at Egg Studio with Steve Fisk

As I mentioned in my last entry, the help that Chris Takino provided to Treepeople (and many other bands) can't be overstated. At some point, we rehearsed in the basement of his house in the Ravenna neighborhood, at his invitation. I can't place exactly when this happened chronologically, but it must have been before we started rehearsing at the space in Georgetown, because we wouldn't have moved away from there and then gone back. So, I think I missed that sequence of events in earlier entries. At any rate, he opened his home to us, and we got to know him a bit better.

Takino was an aficionado of not only music, but film, literature and counterculture. Over the years I knew him he turned me on to directors, actors, musicians and writers I may never have discovered on my own, like John Cassavetes, Al Green, Nina Simone, The Impressions, Gene Chandler, Tim Buckley, Bobbie Gentry and many, many others, all of whom I continue to enjoy to this day. 

Takino introduced Treepeople to a local producer named Steve Fisk, an alumni of Evergreen College who had made a name for himself in the Northwest producing records for the Screaming Trees, Nirvana, and Unwound, among others. He was/is also an excellent sound collage artist, producing music from mixing together found sounds and sampling obscure records long before DJ Shadow did.



 Listen to a song from Steve Fisk's 1987 solo release, '448 Deathless Days'


Fisk came over to watch us rehearse at Takino's place and we booked a session with him at Egg Studios (owned and operated by local producer Conrad Uno). We recorded two songs, 'Cartoon Brew', a driving rock song written and sung by Scott Schmaljohn, and 'Neil's Down', written and sung by Doug Martsch, (and based on a friend of ours who had moved to Seattle with us). In my mind, 'Cartoon Brew' came out much better production-wise, and also, incidentally, is one of my favorite Treepeople songs. We put it on the 'Silence Sampler #1' 7 inch compilation record featuring Boise bands Dirt Fishermen and Caustic Resin (see entry #24 for more info). 'Cartoon Brew' would also be re-recorded later, by a different line-up of the band, on an album called 'Just Kidding'. 'Neil's Down' was put out by Toxic Shock Records on a 7 inch split with the excellent Cedar Falls, Iowa band, House of Large Sizes (whom we toured the west coast with in 1991). This was one of the split 7 inches Toxic Shock called 'Noise from Nowwhere'. This record was Voume 6 of that series.



 Hear the Toxic Shock Treepeople 7 inch split with House of Large Sizes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs3C6aiyBJU


We enjoyed working with Fisk and would work with him in the studio again not long after this for our first LP, 'Guilt, Regret, Embarrassment' (AKA 'GRE', pronounced 'gree', more on this album later). Steve Fisk would soon become, and has remained, one of my closest friends. 

7 Inches rock hard

Aside from the records mentioned above, Treepeople began putting out 7 inch records on our own Silence label from all of the extra material left over from our 'Time Whore' sessions (for more info on this record and the recording session, see entry #25). Songs included 'Makin' the D', 'Pretty Girl', 'Mistake' and others.


 












Both sides of the Treepeople 'Mistake/'Makin' the D' 7 inch, Silence Records. Left and Right: Artwork/Design by Scott Schmaljohn (with finishing design touches by Pat Schmaljohn)


Stories from the City, Stories from the Scene
(Just having a little fun with wordplay on my favorite PJ Harvey album...).

The members of Treepeople were becoming Seattleites, day by day, as we got and lost jobs, played shows in various clubs, and moved in and out of apartments. We were all pretty centrally located on Capitol Hill at the time, all of us living only blocks apart from each other. Scott and Pat and their girlfriends moved into apartments in the same building behind Seattle Central Community College. As I mentioned in a previous entry, my girlfriend and I moved from the Summit Arms apartments to an apartment in a house next to where Doug and his girlfriend were living (an apartment that many successive friends would move into later, and which became known as the '1017 House', based on the address on East Thomas). 

When not rehearsing or playing shows, I spent many an afternoon and evening hanging out at Doug's place. He was unemployed at the time, as was I for awhile, and we would each do our own thing; I would read or draw or write and he would mess around recording songs on his four track recorder (many of which would become Treepeople songs, like the song 'Guilt, Regret, Embarrassment'). We didn't really talk much, we just engaged in our respective activities while in each others' company. It killed the time between shows, recording and touring.

One evening, before heading to rehearsal, we all went to a convenience store around the corner from where I lived called Harry's Grocery to pick up beer and snacks. As we entered, a scruffy old white man with long white hair and a beard greeted us as we walked in. He seemed a bit insane. Possibly we thought that because he was clothed in nothing but a hospital smock. He bummed change from us. No one gave him any except Doug, who handed him 6 cents, as it was the only change he had. As we all paid for our items, Doug came up 6 cents short! The old man gave him the change back. "You need it more'n I do," he growled, and walked out the door. Harry, the owner of the store, told us that the man had escaped from the back of an ambulance (that was taking him to a drunk tank) while it was at a stoplight. Years later, when I worked at the Egyptian Theater up the road a few blocks, I noticed a brown stain on the steps. I asked a colleague what it was from and I was told that years earlier, an old man had escaped from an ambulance on the way to a drunk tank and had sat there and died. Life is strange, yes?

A guy's gotta make a living: A brief history of some of my jobs in Seattle in the early '90s

It was around this time that I stumbled upon a weird little job. On Olive Way, just off of Broadway right near where I lived, this old guy had arranged to set up a rummage sale in the parking lot of a locksmith during the weekends, when the shop was closed. He was an odd man. He had two vans which were unpacked and packed for each sale. He hired me and a couple of other people to show up in the morning and unpack the vans and lay items out on blankets. He was very particular about how that was done, and even more so about how to pack the boxes back up, (which we showed up to do at the end of the day) so that everything would fit back into the vans. He would get very agitated if you did it inefficiently and yell at you. I can't remember how much he paid, it wasn't much, but for a month or so, it was my only income and I was glad for it. It was better than nothing! 

It was also around this time that I put together a cassette tape label called 'Stuck on Stupid' (a name that came from a term an unwanted guest at a neighbor's party used for being stoned). The purpose of the label was to put out 4 track home recordings of people I knew (and of course my own). I sold them at a book store across from where the rummage sales were called Twice Sold Tales (now gone) and once I was able to take my girlfriend out to dinner on the money I made from selling them. It was a little moment of pride for me.

My next real job was as a dishwasher at a hippy health-food restaurant in the Pike Place Market (a market of local vendors of fruit, vegetables and all kinds of stuff that has been there since 1907 and is a popular tourist destination). It was owned by an older, uptight white former hippy and had a fantastic view of the Puget Sound. They served mostly soups and salads. The place was tiny, and my station was cramped, but most of the people I worked with were pretty laid back. But then the owner sold it to an even more uptight man from Pakistan, who brought in his whole family; his wife and his two sons, to work at the restaurant. His previous job was as a manager of Pizza Hut delivery drivers. I mention his ethnicity because cultural differences definitely came into play in what went down. He ran the place as if he were a king. He paid men more than women. One of the women who was on the original staff who made the soups had her hours and pay cut. She was unable to lift the heavy soup pans because of a back injury, so the owner fired her. 



I don't really have a lot of photos that go with this Seattle jobs section, so here is a photo of a cute kitten


After I got back from a tour, he had started taking a portion of the tips from the tip jar for 'improvements for restaurant', as his flier on the wall explained. He really hated that we were getting money that was not his and had no concept of what tips were for. I was upset about this and called him out on it. He asked me to sit and talk at a table in the seating area. I explained that tips were given by customers to the people who served them to show that they thought it was good service. I made sure I said this very loudly and clearly so that the customers could hear, and one woman, bless her, said, "That's why I tip!" My boss looked very uncomfortable. He said, "Maybe you are not happy here and you should not work here." I responded, "Oh, so you are saying that I am fired?" "No, no..." He was being very cautious, because he was about to go to unemployment court. The former cook was taking him there because of how he fired her. I walked out on the job and later was a witness for the former cook at her hearing. When the owner showed, he was talking to the judge as if he would simply grant him what he wanted because he was the owner, and the judge was a powerful male. But he lost. Soon after I was able to collect unemployment with no issues.

This job came a bit later than the timeline of this entry but is worth telling. I got a job through a friend from Boise who lived right next door to us (whom I just learned passed away this year, 2015) through her boyfriend, a great guy who was a construction foreman for a Canadian company that was remodeling buildings in Seattle. They needed a cleaning foreman to run a cleaning crew for a remodel they were doing.  I never knew there was any such thing as a cleaning foreman, but it paid decently and I needed work! The building in question was one on Pine street by the Seattle Convention Center and was chosen because they knew that there were plans to expand the convention center, so they were 'candy coating' an old building in order to jack up the price, flip it and sell it to the city.


The building had quite a history. In the '50s it was where some movie stars and rich folks lived and then over the years it began to run down, and eventually the apartments on the lower floors became shooting galleries for multiple junkies who rented them (I knew one of them, a bass player in a friend's band). In the upper floors were holdouts from the glory days of the building, mostly elderly white women. The range of lifestyles was on full display, from nasty, dirty, junky shooting galleries and obsessive compulsive hoarders with thousands of newspapers in stacks everywhere, to immaculate apartments on the upper floors with expensive antiques and stunning views. It was a trip going into these places. You never knew what you would find behind each door.

My crew was made up of 18 year old white Christian girls from Bremerton. They were very sweet and did a great job. The crew also included various people on work-release from prison (all of the other crews did as well). One of them was a Chinese man who went by 'T'. I had him clean some stairwells once and he broke a bottle and threatened someone with it, so back he went to prison. 

One woman from my crew was a white woman in her late '40s. She had burns over most of her body and she seemed to be mentally ill, but was a good worker, if a bit slow. My American beady eyed coke-head of a boss took me aside and said I had to let her go because she was moving too slow. I tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted. So I did it. 

She had just relocated from Bremerton. I made sure she knew that it was not my decision and that I would not have fired her. She cried but she said, "You're a good person. I know you don't want to do this." It was one of the hardest things I have ever done and I felt awful. Later, I found out that I had no authority to fire people, only my asshole boss did. He tricked me. But I got my revenge. 

The tenants of apartments were being constructively evicted (rents raised to get rid of them) and the apartments were remodeled with tacky white carpets and gold-framed, full length, mirrored, sliding closet doors. In one apartment we were cleaning, the mirror at the base of one of these doors was cracked. My asshole boss blamed one of the young women working for me and she cried. I knew for a fact she hadn't done it, because I saw the cracked mirror when we arrived at the apartment. So I went above my boss's head. His boss made him apologize to my crew. It was one of the sweetest moments of my life.

My boss hired one of his best friends as the detail cleaner who went into apartments after my crew finished cleaning to make sure the grouting was even and clean, etc. He hung himself at his home while his family was there. My asshole boss didn't want anyone to know that he had killed himself, so he asked us to tell people he had died in a drunk driving accident. I couldn't believe it (and I didn't do it). On the subject of suicide, apparently many suicides had happened in that building, according to the super (who was also from Idaho) who had been there over thirty years. Most often, they jumped from the top of the building.

There was also a theme of demons at that place. The aforementioned woman whom I was tricked into firing told me that there were demons in the elevator shafts. One woman, who lived in one of the nicer apartments, claimed that demons cleaned her apartment when she was away (which I thought was about the best kind of interaction you could hope for with demons!). She had been a nude model, had appeared in Penthouse (per the super). When we were cleaning up after some plumbers who were drilling holes in her floor to run pipes through, they stole her portfolio. People are the real demons.

I eventually quit this job, after hating it more and more to the point where I would hide out and listen in on the 2 way radio all the foremen had, so I could look busy if I needed to. Once, I hid out all day, nursing a terrible hangover in one of the empty apartments on the 15th floor, looking at the beautiful view while occasionally puking in the toilet. Soon after I left, I heard from my neighbor's boyfriend that the INS was after the Canadian company for having illegal aliens work there. The IRS was after them for tax evasion. And, the plumbers were suing them for making them work around asbestos without informing them. The building is still there, and with the same stupid name the Canadian company gave it; The Elektra.



The Elektra, formerly the Hubble Tower, where I worked as a cleaning foreman when it was remodeled in the mid '90s. Demons live here, apparently


It seemed like almost every job I got in Seattle in the early '90s ended in some sort of conflict or chaos. Someday, I may write a book about them all.

I hope it is okay that I veered off into talking about my jobs. I thought it may be a nice change of pace and that it would set up how life was for us at the time outside of music, because the truth is, that was a large part of our life; working to pay the bills so that we could do what we loved, because we certainly weren't making a living at it!