Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [64]
BLAG DAHLIA I would never wear a shirt that said LOSER. I felt like, Hey, I’m reasonably good-looking and cool, why would I label myself a loser? I never really identified with that side of rock and roll—“Oh, I’m such a loser” or “I’m so put upon by the jocks.” That’s sort of the essence of grunge, and part of why I never really identified with that very much. I was like a little Charles Manson in high school; I had girls following me around, I dealt drugs, and I didn’t feel like a big loser.
Ultimately, all the symbols of grunge came to be these cute, young, skinny guys. They didn’t really seem like losers to me, although I guess if they did enough dope it made them losers.
BUZZ OSBORNE Cobain had the wounded-junkie look that for some reason women watching MTV think is really cool. I’ve said this before: If Kurt Cobain looked like Fat Albert—same songs, everything—it wouldn’t have worked. Same with Soundgarden. If Chris Cornell looked like Fat Albert, a 500-pound black guy, nobody would have given a shit.
TRACY SIMMONS Being on Sub Pop would help sometimes. They were getting notoriety, and they definitely had collectors in some towns. And in some places it didn’t help us much at all. Here comes a bunch of long-haired guys from Seattle wearing lime-green Doc Martens and motorcycle jackets, and you get up onstage in front of a bunch of farmers from Omaha, Nebraska, and they’re like, “What in the hell is this?” And they start chanting, “Play ‘Freebird’!”
BLAG DAHLIA I’ve said that being on Sub Pop was like starving to death in a really cool suit. It was fun to be able to say that you were on Sub Pop, and it was nice to show up in Boise, Idaho, and have a little Sub Pop logo in the newspaper next to your name—that was your nice suit—but you just weren’t making any money from the label.
GRANT ALDEN Sub Pop was in your face: WE’RE RIPPING YOU OFF BIG TIME!—that’s what their ad said. This is a record label that managed to finance itself on that Singles Club.
MARK ARM One of the label’s biggest tricks was selling itself so that people would want to get anything on Sub Pop, whether it was good or not, because of the packaging and the label identity. They came up with the Singles Club, getting people to pay [$35 a year] up front without knowing what they were getting. That helped them stay afloat.
THURSTON MOORE The Singles Club was completely brilliant. These guys had a real sense of design, which appealed to the record geek. The singles became almost like trading cards.
ART CHANTRY I have no idea who actually physically designed the black bar with the band’s name and the Sub Pop logo at the top of the singles—probably Lisa Orth or Linda Owens. Bruce liked to change things up periodically, but I talked him into continuing to use the black bar when he wanted to dump it: “This is your identity here. Make sure people know it has that Good Housekeeping Seal of approval.”
JACK ENDINO There was a little bit of weirdness with Sub Pop, because Skin Yard was not a band that they felt was appropriate for the label, and it wasn’t hard to see why—we were a little too metal. But strangely enough, our bass player, Daniel, wound up working for them for a couple years. It used to drive Daniel nuts that he couldn’t get his own band onto the label, but I stayed the hell out of this because I was still recording all the records for Sub Pop.
DANIEL HOUSE When I first started working there, it was Bruce, Jon, and me. Charles Peterson had been there earlier and a couple people would come and go. Bruce seemed to have almost contempt for Skin Yard. He hated Ben’s singing. Too melodramatic. He felt like there