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.
A kind of disclaimer
on Violent Green entries...In writing about the band Violent Green, at
this time I am not in contact with Jenny O'lay, so I am not directly
getting input from her, and, one member is no longer alive. In the case
of the former, out of respect to O'lay, I am compelled to keep personal
details at a high level, and in terms of Drew Quinlan (RIP, Brother), I
am not in touch with any of his family to get approval of what I write
about concerning him, as I did with my previously passed bandmate, Pat
Schmaljohn (and thus felt better in writing about Pat) but I do not have
the same access to family in Drew's case, so for that reason, out of
respect for Drew and his family, I will also keep details at a high
level. I won't make it cold and unpersonal, don't misunderstand me. Our
dynamic as people was a huge part of the band. I guess what I am getting
at is there are details that will remain private, to meet with high
standards I strive to meet on this blog, even more so in light of this
lack of input from the former band-mates of which I write. I hope I have
achieved these standards. This also brings up the point I always make,
but it is important to reiterate; this is all from my perspective only,
and of anyone whom I get input from.
Our odd relationships and
their tensions were one with the music, and I think, actually I know,
that was a good thing, a necessary ingredient of this band, a band that
forever reshaped how I thought about music, both listening to it and
making it. I owe that to Drew and Jenny's brilliance and imperfectness,
which made me feel okay about my own imperfections, (only to a degree,
as my inner, self-critical voice was still in full effect) and it helped
me realize that even I held brilliance, in my own way, when I played
with them, warts and all. One thing I can confidently say is; we gave a
fuck about the music. And that was because this was a highly musical
band (most of the people who got what we were doing were musicians
themselves) and thus I will focus much of my energy in terms of the VG
entries talking about that; the music, it's influences and forms, and
how the three of us and what we brought to the band from previous
projects and the music we each loved, created, eventually, a rich
tapestry. It is worth digging into this world O'lay spun with this
bizarre, dark, poppy, goth, folksy punk music from Mars ~*
A silly Steve Fisk disclaimer: Steve Fisk is everywhere in this blog because, as you can/will see, we worked together a lot during this time, and we work together still. Deal with it! (Or, make it into a drinking game).
Violent Green is flown by Up Records to New York City to play the 1995 College Music Journal Festival
Well, turning 50 as a person nearly 10 years ago really wasn't as big a deal as younger me may have thought it would be, but arriving at the 50th entry of this blog means more, a lot more. I started this blog on My Space in the mid 2000s, when I lived in Boston and my time playing music in Boise and Seattle seemed pretty distant, not just in the measure of time, but because I had this whole new life that barely had any music in it in terms of the performing, and my focus was on a tech career and a relationship with someone I had moved there from Seattle with. In time, that life I built, that we built, would fall apart and I would land back in the Pacific Northwest, where I am to this day, in Portland, Oregon, in 2008. Time really is just a lie, innit it? That said, I am forever grateful to all of you who even give a damn enough to read this humble memoir. THANK YOU!
I am jumping back a year here from the current chronology of the blog, as I skipped a pretty big moment for me as a person, and as a musician specifically, and for that of my then current band. I write here of 1995, when Up Records sent Violent Green to play a label showcase at the CMJ (College Music Journal) music festival in New York City (now ended as of 2015). This trip represented a few firsts, the main ones being it was the first time I had ever been to that legendary city, and the first time we as a band had (or any band I had ever had ever played in, for that matter) had trip paid for outside of any reimbursement from tours (which was rare generally, and more truthfully in those cases they were loans, as we usually returned from said tours in debt for the advanced expenses, money and merchandise) and it was paid by a label no less. This trip also illustrated how Chris Takino was such a huge part of my development as a musician/person, and how he played the same role for many other folks in the Pacific Northwest scene.
Off we flew in a jet to NYC to go play an Up Records showcase with Quasi (then also an Up Records band) who were joined by Elliott Smith playing bass (by my memory that was it; just those two bands, more on that show later in this entry). We landed in Newark Airport in New Jersey and took a shuttle van into Manhattan. I will never forget being a bit awed to see New York from the highway. This was a city I had only seen in films, TV shows and most often in Marvel Comics comic books (usually Spider-Man, and the '70s TV shows I grew up on were almost all centric to the 'Big Apple'). I marveled at how huge the World Trade Center Twin Towers looked, even from a distance. And it was all real, which, at the time, was a big deal. Little did I know that within 8 years I would move to Boston for 5 years for a job and go to NYC a few times a month for work and become pretty familiar with certain parts of the city.
NYC in 1995 - Photo posted by Meower500 on Reddit
We stayed at the Gramercy Park Hotel next to the actual Gramercy Park in NYC, one of only 2 private parks in Manhattan, it has a gate and you have to have the key to get in. Local residents of the neighborhood walk their dogs there and just chill out, read and get out of their apartments. Guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel also got keys to the park. It was a decent hotel that had been around a while (and had an interesting history I later found out - Some famous suicides had happened there).
A memory that stands out from not long after we arrived was that we went up to Chris Takino's hotel room and he was really stressed out because he had facilitated a show for Mark Lanegan's band and they had missed their flight. They caught another flight and by chance we were in the room when Mark himself showed up, high as balls and not looking too great. He sat at the end of the bed mumbling and nodding off here and there as Chris laid into him (so weird to think that Chris, Mark and Drew, who were in that room then, are now no longer alive). It was an uncomfortable scene. We took our exit to explore the city a bit.
The Rhythm Section takes in mind-blowing art at MOMA (the Museum of Modern Art)
Jenny had lived in NYC for a short time in the '80s when she dropped off the Some Velvet Sidewalk tour she was playing guitar on and had an adventure, and she had friends in the city, so she took off to visit people.
Drew and I set off on a pilgrimage to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA); Two naive boys trying to navigate the big city on subway trains. At one point we got off at a stop we thought was the one for MOMA, but the minute we got at the top of the stairs and stepped on to the street, it was clear we were in an area we shouldn't have been. We literally saw serious crimes being committed the second we stepped out, and many people gave us hostile looks. So out of place were we that a police officer spotted us and asked us where we were trying to get to. We told him and he instructed us to go back down the stairs to the subway station on the other side of the street and go the other direction, as we had passed the stop (keep in mind that this was 1995; There were no smart phones or google maps).
Once back on the train we met a really nice man who told us what stop we needed. We got off the train, found the museum and, wow. The first thing I saw when I walked in was the most famous of Monet's Water Lillies series of paintings. I had seen it (note I write 'it' as I didn't know it was a triptych) many times in books but was not prepared for the scale of it; It was 3 huge panels that dominate a whole room dedicated to the whole Lillies series (in addition to other, smaller paintings from the series). I had never been a huge Monet fan and didn't then realize his importance (or know all that much about art history). I wandered on through the gallery from there and Drew, who didn't seem very impressed by the Monet art, went his own way.
I ended up in the room where Van Gogh's famous painting Starry Night hung, and I had an opposite experience in terms of scale that I had just had with Monet's paintings. I had of course seen Starry Night in books, mostly in school, and I had always assumed it was fairly large, but it isn't; It's 29 inches in height x 36.26 inches in width. But I was no less wowed. It lives up to all the hype and the song written about it by Don McLean. By itself it is also music, just in visual form. The paint is visibly thick; I studied the brush strokes for a long time, mesmerized to think I was seeing the real deal, and that those strokes were made by Van Gogh himself. A framed poster of this painting now hangs above my bed.
Next to Starry Night was a painting by another artist who was/is important to me, Edvard Munch, called The Storm. I had an art instructor at Boise State University in '88 who became a mentor to me and a big influence on me as an artist and a person who got me interested in Munch for his broad range of astounding work outside of what most people know him for, his famous painting The Scream (if The Scream is all you know of Munch's art, I highly encourage you to seek out his other work, including the amazing woodcut prints he did). This is a painting that is not only among my favorites of the artist, but also of all time. Seeing it in person was an amazing moment for me.
CMJ Shows:
Up! Records Showcase: Violent Green and Quasi at the Westbeth Theater, and shows I attended
My memory of the show we played at CMJ for the Up! Records showcase exists in flashes and thus is somewhat incomplete. I imagine we borrowed Quasi's gear (most likely Jenny brought her guitar, a small, old wooden body Gibson electric). We played at a venue in Greenwich Village called the Westbeth Theater. I had heard that it closed not long after this show, but in looking it up, I see it is still active and has expanded to become the Westbeth Artists Community, the complex hosts many different types of performances.
The members of Violent Green, Chris Takino and Slim Moon (a poet of note in the Olympia, Washington music scene and founder/owner of the infamous record label Kill Rock Stars, then home of Unwound, Bikini Kill and many other NW bands of note) crammed into a cab to head to the show. The cabbie got hopelessly lost, something that some cab drivers in NYC and other tourist locations do to tourists on purpose in order to rack up the fare, but this guy was generally distraught about it and ended up knocking of the extra miles from the final tab.
The room we played in was small and intimate (it was not the main stage of the theater) while the building itself was/is pretty large. The backstage area was pretty roomy. There were lot of people present, people from the Seattle and Olympia music scenes, the members of Quasi and Elliott Smith; This was the first time I had met any of them, I chatted with all of them briefly. My memory of this and the whole show really is comprised of short scenes. My memories of the shows I went to see are more prominent (more on those below).
I do remember that we played well and were well received and that Megan Jasper from Sub Pop Records (and an old friend of Chris Takino's who helped with Up! Records) told me after we played "Wow, I didn't realize how goth you guys are!" I smiled but the compliment hit me weird as I never thought of us as goth at that time (but later, with the lens of time, began to see her point).
Here is a link to the guide to the 1995 CMJ Music Festival (scroll down a bit and you will see the black and white header with the year listed). The truth is, what is out there online in terms of flyers and band listings is limited. If anyone has anything, especially with Violent Green listed, please send it to me at waynerayflower@gmail.com.
Wayne on his own in NYC, Sees Great Live Rock n' Roll
One of the best things about playing these festivals is that you get a pass to get into shows, and there were so many shows. In these times (2025) music festivals are kind of passe, but in 1995 the modern music festival, featuring alternative, indie bands (back then these terms still meant something) was a rare occurrence and CMJ was definitely one of the pioneer festivals of its kind, where shows happen at various venues throughout a city.
So Young Wayne had his pass, and since he was broke and drinks in NYC were expensive, he bought a slim flask of Dewar's whisky that he kept in his coat so he could order a drink at any given club and then feed it the rest of the time he was there. It probably saved him much money (and this marks the point at which I stop referring to myself in the third person. ; ). The first venue I chose was of course the infamous CBGBs, a dive bar where all of my New Wave & Punk heroes had played and come up as young bands. Headlining was Geraldine Fibbers, a band my friend Steve Fisk had produced and introduced me to (musically, not in person). Opening for them was a band I had never heard of who delighted me (especially as I had imbibed a bit of the previously mentioned Dewar's) called Servotron, who dressed and acted like robots. Their performance was wonderfully theatrical and their music was clearly influenced by Devo, who were my heroes.
Geraldine Fibbers were amazing, playing jazz and folk infused indie rock with a stand up bass player who killed it, I mostly watched him the whole time.
Speaking of heroes, I had a moment while peeing in the iconic toilet in the men's room at CBGBs which was raised up a few feet on a kind of dias (the walls around it covered in layers of stickers, flyers and graffiti from over the decades) where I had a random thought; 'Budgie [legendary drummer of Siouxsie and the Banshees] peed here before me.' I am not one who is often 'starstruck,' even during a removed moment such as this, but the feeling was legit. And overall, seeing a show at this mecca of Punk music was a treat I will never forget. RIP CBGBs.
Other shows of note I saw were Blonde Redhead, another band that Steve Fisk had produced and introduced me to musically. I forget the venue I saw them at, but I remember that their performance completely blew me away (I became an instant fan).
I also saw my friends Unwound play in the Meatpacking District at an odd club. In fact, most clubs then in that district were odd in that it was literally an area of the city where there were meat processing facilities, many had gone out of business and were converted into music venues and/or bars, so this venue was located in a cavernous and creepy basement with the smell and feel of death in it. Unwound rose above this with their excellence as a band. It was one of the best performances I had seen by them, or anyone (in truth all of their performances to this day that I have seen have been stellar).
Alas, it was time to go home...
The whole time in NYC went by in a blur, but I posses memories that I will hold until I die, some minor ones include: Seeing some guys aggressively play soccer in a parking lot between two tall buildings at 4 am and being blown away at that, seeing a postman, a large white man, passed out on a subway train and it being scary as it was during a time of a lot of postal workers losing it and shooting people randomly, seeing a Punk kid in the Lower East Side (when it was low income and rough around the edges still) complete with a studded leather jacket and stiff mow-hawk, scrunched into a baby carriage, passed out drunk.
And before you knew it, it was time to check out of the hotel and wait for a shuttle back to the airport. I remember that a hotel clerk unlocked the gate to Grammercy Park so we could wait there until the time of our shuttle's arrival, which was not for a couple hours. We sat on a park bench and read and chatted (no smart phones for distraction, see!) and then we got hungry.
We couldn't leave the park through the gate as we would get locked out, so we devised a scheme to hop the fence to seek out food (My memory of how this went down is foggy, and as I do remember we all went on this journey, and that all of our luggage was in the park, we must have naively asked someone in the park who was hanging out there for a bit to watch our stuff while we were away) [After thinking about this, I think what actually happened was that Jenny and I hopped the fence and Drew stayed behind to watch our stuff]. So we hopped the fence and wandered to a street market where we found a Mexican food truck and got super cheap tacos (I think they were less than a dollar each) and returned to the park, hopped the fence again, and sat on the bench and relished these delicious cheap tacos, marevelling at how you could find such cheap food in such an expensive place. Then it was back to Newark, on to the jet home and back to the grind of our normal lives in Seattle, the whole experience already seeming like a dream.
Sincerely, Wayne Ray Flower II, 9/20/25
