Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [37]
JACK ENDINO I proposed naming the band Skin Effect because I’m an electrical engineer, and skin effect is a particular electrical phenomenon related to high voltages. Then we discovered there was a band in town called Cause/Effect, so that was out the window. Matt said, “Why don’t we call it Skin Yard?” None of us were particularly happy with it as a band name, but nobody actually vetoed it.
DANIEL HOUSE Our first show was June 7, 1985: the U-Men Leave Home show. The U-Men were the band in underground Seattle. And it was a big deal that they were going on tour.
JACK ENDINO We were the first out of five bands: U-Men, Baba Yaga, Girl Trouble, the F-Holes, and there was a performance artist called Function Disorder. The MC was Slam Hate. It was in a hall called the Odd Fellows Hall. It was a big show by any standard.
Larry Reid put the show on. He tossed us the opening slot just to be nice to us. Well, just to get Daniel to stop calling him. Daniel was very persistent about promoting the band. Probably got on a lot of people’s nerves, but then a lot of things happened that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
JULIANNE ANDERSEN (Supersuckers/Gas Huffer booking agent) Daniel House was a player. A player in a scene that didn’t have players. Daniel House in L.A. makes sense. Daniel House in Seattle did not.
DANIEL HOUSE I’m that guy. I’m the guy who is gonna make the shit happen if everybody else is sitting around with their thumb up their ass. I was the one hustling for gigs. I networked in that scene and knew a lot of people. I was the de facto manager of the band.
I remember being kind of pissed off that we opened that show, which goes back to the arrogance of youth. It’s like, dude, it’s your first show, and it’s a big-deal show.
LARRY REID The U-Men going on tour was another watershed moment, because it was the first local punk-rock band that really went on a legitimate tour.
GILLIAN G. GAAR (journalist/author) I can’t remember who said this first, but he put it well: “It seemed more amazing that the U-Men put a record out and went on tour than it did that Nirvana went to number one.” I mean, how could people get on a record and how did records get out there? It seemed totally unattainable, and you had no idea how to do it. Like nuclear physics or something.
MIKE TUCKER The U-Men toured in a 1963 Chevrolet Viking school bus. It was pink, so it was kind of phallic-looking. And it barely ran. We built plywood boxes in the back for their equipment, and we had a couple sleeping spaces on top of the equipment. When I went with them on their maiden trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and then on to Austin, in the summer of ’85, the whole ceiling of the bus was pasted with pornography; primarily straight, hardcore pornography. We also had all these Uzi posters, which Larry and I had gotten at a gun show that we got kicked out of.
So we get pulled over in Los Angeles, the cop came on board this bus with the pornography and gun posters—and at the time, the band looked like complete freaks—and he just shook his head, like, Just get out of here. I’m not even gonna bother with you.
TOM PRICE The first one was called the Doomed Faggots tour. Because we were doomed—we knew we were gonna be miserable and starve.
JIM TILLMAN In a sense we were doomed because there really weren’t many places to play. And we were discovering that.
JOHN BIGLEY We went down the West Coast, and everything between Los Angeles and El Paso either got canceled or fucked up. We went to the Woodshock festival in Texas, which was our excuse for touring, and wound up staying in Austin for a month. Woodshock was held on this ranch in Dripping Springs. Naked cliff-diving, eatin’ mushrooms, bathtubs full of marinated beef ribs. It was a mind-blower. Made some pretty strong friendships through it, with bands like the Butthole Surfers and Scratch Acid.
DAVID DUET (Cat Butt/Girl Trouble singer; U-Men roadie) The first U-Men