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RICH JENSEN Bruce was at home and launched a surprise attack. I was totally sympathetic to the idea of hacking back at that bloat. They put three quarters of a million dollars behind the Supersuckers, and I thought that was absurd. Similar number for this glam band from L.A., Plexi, that was gone after a year. That was nuts. At the time I was very disappointed in Bruce. I wish that we could’ve had a friendly conversation before he put people in the position of being fired.

NILS BERNSTEIN I was one of the four fired. Around that time, we had written, but not yet sent, a letter to Warner about changes we wanted. I understand why Jonathan did it—we were undermining him.

JONATHAN PONEMAN I may have overreacted, but these people were meddling in my affairs. If this letter would have been sent off, I would have been profoundly humiliated at best.

BRUCE PAVITT When the people were fired, they had to sign gag orders in order to get compensation. So they couldn’t even talk to the press. That was not very punk rock, in my opinion. After that, I didn’t really communicate with Jon, except through attorneys, for seven years.

ANNA WOOLVERTON (Sub Pop Records receptionist) It really felt like a divorce. Everybody was so suspicious of everybody else. There was a lot of crying. I remember during the coup, I just sat at my desk and cried, because I was so bummed out that it had to be like that.

JONATHAN PONEMAN The coup was a wake-up call. I owe everyone in that situation a debt of gratitude, because it set us on a course of restructuring that a lot of record companies are doing now—shrinking and becoming more efficient. I think we’re so successful right now by staying within our budgets, minding our overhead, signing bands that mean something to people, not being overly ambitious, being respectful of the artist.

DANIEL HOUSE C/Z was courted for a really long time by Relativity Entertainment Distribution, RED, part of Sony. We had a really good distribution setup through a number of nonexclusive arrangements. And we sold directly to retail, as well, and we were a profitable company. We weren’t making money hand-over-fist, but we were not laden with debt. RED, in some sort of desperate need for indie cred, kept chasing us and chasing us and said, “We can get your records in places that you’re not being represented,” meaning the chains, big-box stores. Our concern was that our foundation, the mom-and-pop indie stores, didn’t get compromised. And they assured us, “No, no, no, that won’t happen.” So we finally did a deal with them in 1993, and they fucked us sideways and frontways and backwards.

They wanted to use us to go, “See? We have C/Z,” to get other labels to come on board. All of a sudden our records weren’t getting into any of those mom-and-pop stores anymore. So our entire base of where we sold our records was not being served, and we were not allowed to sell directly to them anymore. And RED was loading 300 copies of a CD into one Sam Goody, the kind of store that people who were trying to get our kind of music never went to. In nine months, I went from being debt-free and in the black to laying everybody off, myself included.

About a year later, I got this deal with Zoo Entertainment through BMG, where they gave us money that ultimately allowed me to pay down the rest of the debt that was outstanding. It was a pretty good deal, but unfortunately, it only lasted a year because Volcano did a hostile takeover of Zoo and basically shut Zoo down, and we stopped getting money.

At this point, it just seemed like, This isn’t fun anymore, this is fucked, it’s too much of a fight. What’s the point? I said if I’m gonna do anything else, I’m gonna have it be a hobby, like how I started. And the last record I put out on C/Z was in 2001; it was the Skin Yard odds-and-sods record called Start at the Top. I figured Skin Yard was what got me into the whole thing, so that would be a good way to step away. I haven’t put out a record since.