Sub Pop

NICK DWYER

Right now it gives me great pleasure to welcome Carly, Mark and Megan. I’m sure anyone who had television in the late ’80s, early ’90s knows about Sub Pop in general, one label that has immortalized Seattle on the music map.

[applause]

Are you all well?

MEGAN JASPER

We’re psyched to be here and we want to thank you guys very much for having us here.

NICK DWYER

A lot of people in this room have been to Seattle or lived there, but a lot of people in this room might never have been there and have no idea about it. Carly, you weren’t born in Seattle, Mark you’ve lived here for quite a while. What do you like most about Seattle?

MEGAN JASPER

The thing I love most about it is it offers everything you’d want from a city, but it’s small and manageable. We were joking with Nick earlier about how so many of the people who are working here in the city with the Red Bull Music Academy are people we all know, and that’s because there’s so much overlap in the music community here, and that makes what we do far more meaningful and fun. The other thing I love about being here is that you’re right next to nature. You can split and within 30 minutes you can be snowboarding or hiking and just doing so many incredible things that I would not be able to do in other cities, and I appreciate that.

NICK DWYER

Megan, what’s your role in the Sub Pop empire?

MEGAN JASPER

[laughs] I work as a general manager there but half the time I just feel like a mascot.

MARK ARM

Don’t we all?

MEGAN JASPER

The company is a funny place in that it started out, like so many other small businesses, as a very small organization. It became large fairly quickly at one point, then we ended up downsizing. For the past five or six years, we’ve really not grown, we’ve ended up being a medium-sized company of about 25 people. I worked to hire some of those people when we need someone new to come in and just deal with basic operations.

NICK DWYER

Mark, tell us about yourself?

MARK ARM

I play in a band and put records out on Sub Pop. Now I work at Sub Pop and play in a band and put records out on Sub Pop.

NICK DWYER

And the band that you play in?

MARK ARM

Mudhoney.

NICK DWYER

Just to give people an idea of the foundations that Sub Pop was laid on, what was the music scene like in Seattle in the late ’70s and early ’80s? What inspired Sub Pop?

MEGAN JASPER

I think Mark might answer this better than me because when I moved to Seattle, it was in ’89 and I’d never been to Seattle until the late ’80s. So I know what my impression was like, but I think you might be better speaking on that because you were playing music then.

MARK ARM

There were a lot of cover bands playing in bars around town and a handful of people who weren’t into that, and they would rent out halls that would get closed down because people would steal meat from the freezers or fuck up the toilets. Every once in a while someone would open up a club, that might last a year or so. Then the Teen Dance Ordinance came in which shut down all-ages shows. Luckily, the people I was hanging out with had mostly just turned 21 at that time and there were one or two places that would let our bands play on Tuesday or Wednesday nights, you know, the hot nights of the week. [laughter] And that’s kind of what it was like in the mid-’80s.

NICK DWYER

Are you talking about the teen dance laws? Tell us a bit more about this movement.

MARK ARM

There used to be a disco-y place called the Monastery that some of the kids came to, and the older people would feed them MDMA. Some of the kids’ parents were freaked out by this and I guess they had ties to people in the city government. They came down hard and passed these insane laws, that if you wanted to have an all-ages show, you had to have like a million dollars worth of insurance. Making it basically impossible to have an all-ages show, and that drove things further underground, which in a way was really good.

NICK DWYER

What bands were having a major influence for the scene?

MARK ARM

I can’t talk about everyone else, but I was listening to the classic rock sort of stuff that was on the radio, but somewhere along the line I discovered punk rock, and that changed my life. So I was going to see a lot of bands like Black Flag when they came around on tour. But then the hardcore, play-as-fast-as-you-can thing got really boring and I rediscovered music I hadn’t really listened to before, like Black Sabbath and the Stooges, who I knew already. If you were a punk kid, one of the first band you knew about from an earlier era was the Sonics. After a while you just get tired of hearing Minor Threat clones, as good as Minor Threat was.

MEGAN JASPER

Do you mind if I jump in?

MARK ARM

Please do. [laughs]

MEGAN JASPER

The thing that was really amazing to me coming from the East Coast and moving to Seattle was it really felt like two different worlds at the time. On the East Coast, specifically in Massachusetts where I lived, we were coming out of a very good economic time and into a very bad one. It was not uncommon to have construction just lying unfinished in the road. There were people who had lived in Massachusetts for generations who were leaving because there were no opportunities. When I moved to Seattle in 1989 it was totally different because it still felt very isolated, which I’m sure it must have been even earlier than that. Larger bands would skip over Seattle, they’d play in San Francisco, they’d play in LA…

MARK ARM

They’d play Minneapolis, maybe they’d get to Denver.

MEGAN JASPER

So I felt very lucky as a kid because there was a time when I could see those bands. Thank god, when I came here I was 22 so I could see more shows than what underage kids could access and enjoy. It was strange because you had this small city that was in the process of being built up. There was so much construction in Seattle at the time, everyone was working so there were tons of opportunities. At the same time there was a really funny – to me – dark side, which was where a lot of the music was happening. Seattle seemed like a different place by day than by night. People were going out, there was a sense that there was a very lively and thriving scene for musicians and people who loved music.

NICK DWYER

You mention the geographical and musical isolation. Did this have an effect on the sound that was beginning to emerge that was kind of localized?

MEGAN JASPER

It’s funny because I think a lot of people have a tendency to say bands in certain cities sound a certain way. There’s some truth in that, because a lot of people who play in bands play with each other, or sonically they inspire each other, there’s some type of overlap that exists. At the same time, as someone who loved a lot of the bands from Seattle, I never thought Mudhoney sounded like Tad or Tad sounded like Soundgarden. So when people decided they were going to have this lazy shortcut and call it all grunge, most of us thought that was laughable.

MARK ARM

And yet you perpetuated it. [laughter]

MEGAN JASPER

That was the fun part.

NICK DWYER

Where did the term grunge come about?

MEGAN JASPER

That was from Bruce Pavitt. Someone called up to interview him. Bruce had this long cord on his phone…

NICK DWYER

Who is this mystery man?

MEGAN JASPER

Thank you for asking, sorry, I didn’t do the background. Sub Pop was founded by two people, Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman. Jonathan was here earlier and had to split because he was going to New York today. Bruce actually founded Sub Pop and Jonathan joined in, they were working together in the office from early in its history. Bruce is just wonderful and crazy and bright and creative and just out of his mind. Some people would sit in fear because it wasn’t uncommon for him to come up to people and be like, “So what exactly do you do around here?” There were like six or seven employees and everyone knew what everybody else did. But Bruce sometimes forgot. So one day he was on the phone doing an interview and he was asked, “What’s the name of this music you put out?” And he rolled his eyes because it’s the same question again and he said, “Grunge.” Great. And then it became this weird epidemic.

NICK DWYER

At this point should we watch a video, give people some idea of where we’re at at the very beginnings of Sub Pop?

MEGAN JASPER

I would love to break this up and share some stuff. The other thing I’d say is, if there are any questions, we would love to answer them.

MARK ARM

And sit up straight, come on. [laughter]

MEGAN JASPER

So maybe let’s start with one of the videos. Can we have the Dwarves’ “Drugstore” video.

(music: The Dwarves – “Drugstore” / applause)

NICK DWYER

So tell us a bit about the band we just saw.

MEGAN JASPER

The Dwarves were not from the Seattle but they were the second band to sign to the label after the Afghan Whigs.

MARK ARM

The Fluid.

MEGAN JASPER

Oh, the Fluid, that’s right, so they were the second or third band signed. [laughs] The thing that was so great about them was they would write songs that were just seconds long, as you can see. Live they were one of the most exciting bands I ever saw. There was something very raw and scary and maybe even dangerous, almost in a GG Allin-type way. You never knew what you were going to get.

MARK ARM

I think after seeing them a couple of times you knew what you were going to get.

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, maybe there were a few surprises. [laughs] But the thing I loved and really appreciated about them was, even though they came off as really flippant, irreverent and in a great way kind of retarded, they were also some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever worked with. [Singer] Blag is a complete brainiac and will just go off on whatever subject he’s interested in at length and intelligently. They were just really into conceptualizing stuff and really fun to work with. At one point they believed Sub Pop owed them quite a lot of money and they were just, “We’re gonna come up there and trash the fucking joint, you people better run.” [laughs] “We were all like, yeah, OK.” I think maybe one person left – Milo, the kid who worked downstairs – but everyone else stuck around. And when they came up they were total pussycats, like, [weedy voice] “What’s going on?” And they took a can of spray paint and this is how they trashed the joint. I mean, come on, just throw something, but they didn’t. They took a can of spray paint and wrote on the tiled section of the floor, which could be cleaned up, “You owe Dwarves money.” [laughter] That is not trashing, come on! But it made for fun times. I wouldn’t mind playing some music if you guys don’t mind.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What year are we talking about?

MARK ARM

Probably about ’89. I’ve got another Dwarves story. We were playing with them in San Francisco and afterwards the singer of the band, Blag, invited us back to his apartment for a party. We figure this is going to be wild, drugs, girls, everything. We get over there and he keeps telling us to be quiet because the neighbors are complaining. [laughter] So that’s how rad the Dwarves were.

NICK DWYER

Before we go into another track, one of the common themes with guest lecturers is that whenever there’s been a revolution, radio has played a major part. What was the role of the radio in Seattle around this time?

MEGAN JASPER

I would say there was no part as far as radio. None.

MARK ARM

Even KCMU, which is now KEXP, was pretty much an anglophile station at the time, they played a lot of the Cure. In the early days they weren’t playing much local music at all. Jonathan had a local show where he’d play demos by local bands, but not until stuff got noticed outside of the country and in other countries did anyone here really give a shit. And then they really gave a shit, which was annoying.

NICK DWYER

Do you want to play something now?

MEGAN JASPER

I’d love to. I thought one of the songs off Sub Pop 200 and Tad’s “Sex God Missy” might be good, and maybe the Thrown-Ups. [laughter] Or not. You want to pick another one?

MARK ARM

Definitely start with that Tad song. Sub Pop originally started off as a fanzine that Bruce Pavitt did and a couple issues of them were cassette compilations. This is the second comp that originally came out on vinyl. The one before that wasn’t really local bands, it was more national, groups like Big Black, Skinny Puppy, which was weird, and the U-Men were the only local band, I think.

NICK DWYER

What was the major reason Jonathan and Bruce decided to join forces? Bruce, as you said already, had the fanzine and was putting out cassettes and he’d already put out the Green River album, I believe. At what point did they go, “Right, let’s start a label?”

MARK ARM

They were already working together when they did the Green River album. Bruce was really into Green River and Jonathan was really into Soundgarden and they decided to pool their resources, as far as I understand.

MEGAN JASPER

Jon was promoting shows in town and was spending a lot of his time doing that. Bruce was writing and they were two people in a very small group.

MARK ARM

And DJing.

MEGAN JASPER

And DJing, right. I forgot about that. They originally thought Sub Pop would just be a singles-only label and they would release 7"s but their ideas changed quickly and they ended up releasing full albums.

NICK DWYER

Did they originally want to focus on Seattle artists or did they feel there should be no boundaries?

MEGAN JASPER

I think they felt they were around all this great music and there was nobody to put it out. Bruce had already started in some ways with the compilations and they were doing the singles. Finally they realized there was a need for people to hear this music and people wanted to hear it, so they just kept going with it. So we’re going to hear a song by a group called Tad and in my opinion they were one of the most amazing bands in Seattle at that time.

(music: Tad – “Sex God Missy” / applause)

NICK DWYER

Tell us a bit about Tad.

MEGAN JASPER

Did they start in like ’87?

MARK ARM

Probably not until about ’88, they started up after we did.

MEGAN JASPER

The thing I loved about Tad, for any of you who don’t know anything about this band, the lead singer Tad is, shall we say, corpulent, and extremely so. The first time I saw them play was in New York and he had the token “Sub Pop Loser” T-shirt on. Here was this guy who just looked like an obese lumberjack, facial hair. You hear all this shit about Bigfoot and Tad was the closest thing I’d ever seen to maybe really being a Bigfoot.

MARK ARM

I’ll pass that on to him.

MEGAN JASPER

Please do. And then he got up on stage and totally floored me because he played this incredible gritty but amazing music. I was a huge fan.

Nick Dwyer

One thing you mentioned before, you said that when Bruce and Johnathan first started the label they were really just thinking of putting out 7"s. There was this thing, the Sub Pop Singles Club, tell us a little bit about that.

Megan Jasper

The Sub Pop Singles Club was... Those guys loved doing 7"s and there were a lot of people around that time who believed that, really every release should just be a 7", because the idea was that most albums really consisted of two great songs and so much filler in between. That’s not why the Singles Club existed, it existed for a couple of reasons and actually one of the reasons was quite practical, is that the label needed money. They needed money really badly, so they figured if they set up this subscription service with bands that they were really excited about, they would have a constant incoming stream of cash.

The other thing on top of it is when you work at a label, you can't work with every single band that you really, really love, and so one way to reach out to so many of these other bands is to just do a single with them. It sort of worked with their philosophy as well as just a more practical...

Nick Dwyer

How many people around that time were actually on the subscription?

Megan Jasper

There were... I should know this...

Nick Dwyer

Was it overseas as well, or was it just America?

Megan Jasper

It was overseas as well. I believe I remember it at one point being like... Oh my god, I think maybe there were like seven or eight thousand at one point. Then it sort of whittled down by the very end, it was maybe around 1,500.

nick Dwyer

Some of those records are, obviously, worth a lot of money now.

Megan Jasper

Yeah. The weird thing is that there were some singles that Sub Pop did, non-Singles Club singles but regular ones. There was always some bit of limited-edition something, so weird-colored vinyl, or black vinyl that was more rare than the colored stuff, they'd try to switch it up and play around with it. There were some 7"s, back in the day, that they couldn't even give away. They sat and collected dust and...

Nick Dwyer

We're not going to name names or we are?

Megan Jasper

I'm going to name them. One was the Smashing Pumpkins, we couldn't give them away if we tried. We'd use them as coasters, we'd throw them as Frisbees. The other one was a Hole 7". Couldn't give it away. It was unbelievable. Eventually the bands became so huge and they sold out, there were some people that were very happy to get the last couple copies. But I'll tell you, if I never see those covers again, I'll be psyched because I had to look at them for way too long.

NICK DWYER

A lot of people have this warped sense of reality about Sub Pop, that you were extremely successful and it all went boom right away. But the first four years were tough, weren’t they?

MEGAN JASPER

They were extremely tough, and as much fun as they were, it was very stressful. Sub Pop had this hype around it, and that's why people thought it was a very successful place. And there was money coming in through direct sales and through the Singles Club. But the reality was Bruce and Jonathan were huge music fans but not real businessmen, and they learned as they went along how to run a business, but they didn’t realize there might be smart ways to make ends meet, such as, create a budget and work within that budget. They spent money as they needed to spend money and there were many, many times when things were very stressful at work because we didn’t have money and we needed to get the new Tad record out or we needed to make sure a band could get to Europe and their flights were paid for. I’m making it out to sound horrible and there were days that were, but most of the time it was really fun because you were around these incredible, creative people or there were these incredible musicians who’d come in all the time because they needed something or they were downtown and wanted to hang out. There were good times, but it seemed to get steadily worse before it got any better. The reality was many people got laid off. It went from a 25-person operation down to a four- or five-person operation almost overnight. Seattle is, especially at that point, a very small city and so you’re talking about friendships. They were difficult times for both Bruce and Jonathan and it affected them in ways that I believe neither fully recovered from.

NICK DWYER

You were there at that time?

MEGAN JASPER

I was, and I was laid off at that time.

NICK DWYER

One common theme through the last 20, 30 years of music history is that it often takes someone from another country, generally a magazine, to start getting excited about it and then the hype starts building from there. This is what happened with Sub Pop, there was a journalist from the Melody Maker. So tell us about that. This was just the start of what was to become this huge media explosion.

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, there was this kid called Everett True.

MARK ARM

Kid?

MEGAN JASPER

Not really a kid. He always had this old vibe about him, huh. I call everyone a kid. So there was this freakozoid from Melody Maker called Everett True. Everett was really intrigued with the stuff Sub Pop was doing.

MARK ARM

He was also a huge fan of K Records.

MEGAN JASPER

That’s right, he loved Calvin Johnson. He started a record company called K out of Olympia, Washington. He was a in a band called Beat Happening and released many of his own records. We’re leaving some of these CDs with you if you’re at all curious, there’s a Beat Happening song on the Sub Pop 200 compilation. But Everett came over and interviewed people at that time and did this article on Seattle and Sub Pop and that led to one thing, led to another, led to another.

MARK ARM

John Peel was playing some of the singles before Everett came out too.

MEGAN JASPER

So he probably tapped into that. Basically, people overseas were getting into it before many people here got into and realized something pretty cool was happening.

NICK DWYER

Obviously, what followed was a musical media circus of a kind that hasn’t been seen since. For you, being firmly entrenched, at what time did you think this was all getting a bit pear-shaped?

MEGAN JASPER

Really early, actually.

MARK ARM

Probably around ’89, ’90.

MEGAN JASPER

By 1990 it became intolerable.

MARK ARM

And then it got worse.

MEGAN JASPER

That’s exactly what was happening, you’d talk to people and say, “Does this seem crazy?” And people would go, “Yeah, it’s pretty gross.” You’d say, “But it’s probably peaking right now.” Then you couldn’t imagine how it could get worse, yet it did. By getting worse, what was happening was there were A&R men coming in and signing every single band from Seattle.

NICK DWYER

Just because they were from Seattle?

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, and sometimes great bands and sometimes bands who just made you think, “What the fuck is that person even thinking?”

MARK ARM

Candlebox. [laughter]

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, exactly. So that was going on and just when you thought that it had peaked something even weirder happened. One day I was walking to the club Re-bar and this car stopped and pulled up beside me. They had weirdo Marysville hairdos. You probably don’t know what that means, but it’s a suburb hairdo. On the East Coast you make jokes about whatever the local suburb is, that equivalent. And they pulled up and said, “Hey, do you know if Mudhoney or Pearl Jam are playing anywhere tonight?” I was like, “Are you kidding me? No, I don’t think so.” And then they go, “Do you know where…?” And they had this list of venues in Seattle that they thought they might be able to and find some musicians. It was clear there had been this list someone had developed where they’d said, “If you want the grunge experience, do your bangs like this and go to this places. Drink a microbrew, you’re gonna be psyched.” This was fucking gross, for a number of reasons. The obvious, you had to deal with that. But also it took what was at the time a very rich community and forced it to disperse. A lot of the musicians were approached or it projected a lot of shit on them, people thought a certain thing about them. A lot of people just wanted to stay home.

NICK DWYER

What was the response of the community to all these A&R people sniffing around?

MARK ARM

Mostly amusement. For some people it was, “Hey, this is my chance.” We [Mudhoney] signed to a major label. We met a lot of very amusing A&R people and we met with one really cool one.

NICK DWYER

I hate to bring this up, but you’ll be immortalized forever in Google searches as the mastermind behind the whole grunge hoax, the grunge-speak thing. You’ve probably told this story a million times, but it’s the epitome of the extreme of how bad things got.

MEGAN JASPER

I actually haven’t told it in a while. This was in ’92 and Jonathan called me and said you won’t believe this, there’s a reporter from the New York Times…

MARK ARM

Judith Miller.

MEGAN JASPER

No, no.

MARK ARM

Just roll with it. [laughter]

MEGAN JASPER

OK, Judith Miller, you may have heard of her. No, I can’t remember the real kid’s name right now but he was curious in getting a lexicon of grunge. He believed in every culture there’s a way people speak and code words for things, and he wanted to tap into the grunge world and learn how to communicate properly with Seattle musicians. So Jonathan said he couldn’t answer his questions at all and thought I might have fun with it. So literally a minute later the phone rings and this kid is asking me if I’ll share the lexicon of grunge with him. I said, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He said, “No, no, we’re doing a grunge piece and we’re including a lot of fashion.” So I said, “Give me the word and I’ll give you the grunge equivalent.” So he’s shooting out, “Girlfriend.” I think I said, “Tuna melt,” just giving him these horrible and obvious lies. I kept thinking at any minute he’s going to go, “OK, joke’s over.” But he didn’t. He didn’t print them all, he left out the ones that were a little too spicy.

NICK DWYER

Just to give you an example of how blatantly obvious they were, there was “swinging on flippety flop,” “bound and haggard” and “lamestain.”

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, that was just when someone’s being a loser, you call them a lamestain. He asked, “What do you say when you call your buddy up to go out tonight?” “We call it swinging on the flippety flop.” And all I can hear is this [types on keyboard], he’s typing everything verbatim. And they printed it. And when they printed it, I was psyched! I just thought, “I’m done, nothing this good is ever going to happen to me again. I’m done.” I couldn’t believe no one questioned it. Two or three months later this publication called The Baffler, done by this kid called Tom Frank, who now does The Nation and lot of NPR stuff, he called up and said, “I know this is bullshit, I kind of want to pretend I’m breaking this big story.” Shortly after the editor of the New York Times phoned me up screaming because I’d lied about the grunge lexicon. I said, “Do you not have fact checkers? Because if you look at that it’s obviously not true.” Then they told me they knew it was a joke. So I said, “Then why are you yelling at me?” They couldn’t answer that one so we agreed to disagree.

NICK DWYER

Should we play something else, maybe another video?

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, it was a time when you put the city under the spotlight. I keep saying it’s a drag and a bummer and everything, because as a music lover I could see a lot of stuff that I loved going away and that was upsetting to me. But there were many good things that came from it in the long run. It also forced Seattle to in time really reinvent itself and not just have second-rate Mudhoneys come up. Instead, you had Mudhoney and all these wonderful bands that came afterwards, like Built to Spill come from that, and Modest Mouse. So many bands that didn’t follow in the footsteps so much. For all the things I was saying were a bogus-ity, there was a pressure for them to do their own thing and find a way to do it really well. It felt gross at the time but things didn’t get old the way they could have. [discussion of which tracks to play] You want the Nirvana one? Why don’t we have those back to back.

(music: Nirvana – “In Bloom” / applause)

NICK DWYER

Before we go to the next video, tell us a bit about Nirvana. Any media hype needs an icon, a focus. I read an interview with Jonathan who refers to Nirvana and Kurt [Cobain] in particular as the perfect storm.

MEGAN JASPER

You might want to jump into this one.

MARK ARM

Or not. [laughs]

MEGAN JASPER

This is where it gets difficult. [pause] Let me start by sharing a conversation. So much time passes and I still don’t know where to begin addressing this, so forgive me if I sound like a dunderhead. But when something becomes incredibly hyped – and it wasn’t just hype, there was true substance, that music touched people in a way that was transcendent – but when one person becomes the embodiment of a generation or a movement or a belief system, everything that any one person wants or desires or wishes are projected onto that one person. For years and years that’s almost what Nirvana were to me as it was with everyone else because that’s what you’re inundated with every day. That’s what you see on television and in magazines or whatever. Working with Nirvana was the same as any other band. These were great guys, funny guys, irresponsible guys, sometimes quiet, sometimes not quiet. They were like anybody else in that sense. Not to be irreverent about Kurt or Nirvana, but they were no more special than any of the other people or bands. It’s just that timing had a way of figuring out how to catapult them into this place that was almost unfathomable for anybody.

MARK ARM

But it wasn’t just him, you know, it was also Eddie Vedder at the time. It was pretty much the two of them and if it had been the other way around, if Eddie Vedder had killed himself instead of Kurt, it would’ve been his face on T-shirts around the world. [pause] It didn’t happen for that guy in Material Issue though. [laughs]

MEGAN JASPER

But working with them was really fun and they were a great band and undeniably Kurt was an incredible songwriter. When Jonathan talks about that perfect storm reference, he meant every element was in place for it to happen. The timing was right, the music being played on commercial radio was in desperate need of some actual fresh blood, something new and exciting.

MARK ARM

It always seems to be like that though. I mean, a year later commercial radio was like, what, Bush?

MEGAN JASPER

And now you can turn on commercial radio and sometimes you can hear the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Death Cab for Cutie, or Modest Mouse, just because the timing is right and there’s a need for something new. That’s what was happening at that time for bands like Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I’m 27 now so this is my generation. I still remember the moment that Soundgarden and Nirvana were hitting our hearts, in one way we saw it happening. In the beginning there was this new music for us and it was very fresh, then there was this hype, then there was this icon. I saw it growing. Can you tell us something about it, because you were closer? Did you have the same idea? What happened?

MEGAN JASPER

It’s interesting for me listening to you because for any of us in Seattle, we were so close to everything that was happening that it was hard to see in a linear way. It partly felt surreal and then it partly felt like you were trying to measure what was happening so you could understand it and attempt to function within it. So when you say you’re aware of those stages and its growth, that’s amazing to me, because I was unable to do that. For people like me there were tons of us who just had jobs and were trying to do things day to day. It’s difficult because you’re trying to guess what’s going to happen next and you don’t quite know. I always feel like a dunderhead when I talk about it even though I’m supposed to be able to shed some insight, it’s difficult because you’re really just doing what you love to do and find a way to participate, in your job and the city you live in and not to get swallowed up in it and think it’s something that is going to last. This was something that came quickly and was going to go quickly, so you just kinda waited for the burn-out to happen. That’s what it was like for me, rather than seeing true growth.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

You said it was gross to see everything exploding, but I grew up in Israel and only after Nirvana exploded did we get into the sound and start exploring Sub Pop and the singles and Mudhoney and the Melvins and L7, the Tads. That was all because we got exposed to the Nirvana explosion.

MEGAN JASPER

I think I keep sounding like I’m super negative, and I have to apologize for that. But maybe a better way for me to describe it is, you know when you find a band that not many people know about but you really love? You can’t stop listening and you hang on every lyric. I felt like that with the music that I was around. I really felt that I was around a number of exciting and brilliant musicians and creative minds, like Jonathan and Bruce and my friend Erica, Charles Peterson, who was a photographer. I felt like I had totally lucked out and fallen into this situation that blew me away. But suddenly the band you love starts to become more popular and there are people you think you could never have related to are wearing the T-shirts and singing the songs. When you get older you realize that’s a good thing, the more people are listening to wonderful music is a reflection of a better world. That’s an optimistic way of looking at it. But for me at the time I felt this community that was so rich and thriving, I could see elements coming in that I did not think were positive elements, and pulling it apart and diluting it. At the time I felt somewhat resentful. That’s me, just as a goofy kid with a job. If you were making music and were closer to it in an artistic sense, there must have been more of that push and pull.

NICK DWYER

What did Sub Pop do as a label? Did they try distancing themselves from that? By then a lot of those groups had signed with major labels, so did they try to go in the opposite direction?

MEGAN JASPER

They actually decided to head three hours south to Portland and sign a ton of those bands. So they remained in Seattle but they were like, “Oh my God, there’s this thing called I-5 South and if you stay on it for three hours you can see these bands the majors don’t know about.” So within what seemed like 40 seconds, they signed Pond, Sprinkler, Hazel, another band that I forgot the name of, the Spinanes. It’s almost like they took complete ownership of Portland. Seattle’s this big [makes small ‘O’ shape], Portland’s this big [makes tinier ‘O’ shape], so once they signed up all those bands they went, “Hmm, the East Coast doesn’t look so bad.” So they signed Six Finger Satellite, Green Magnet School and a number of other East Coast bands. What they realized was that they needed to branch out and that’s what was happening.

NICK DWYER

A lot of people don’t realize that Nirvana and Soundgarden were signed to Sub Pop, then Mr. Geffen comes along and does his thing. But Sub Pop still did alright out of that. Is that what definitely happened? When they got signed there was still something in it for the label?

MEGAN JASPER

Absolutely. For a long time Sub Pop saw itself as a launching pad, so you come to the small label that does artist development, release one, two or three records and then you should have your choice of whatever label you choose to work with. To some degree, that was true and Sub Pop could benefit in that if Geffen or Warner Bros. or whoever took this band and did right by them and expand what they already have, then Sub Pop benefits because Sub Pop has catalog and you can see their sales increasing. So there was money coming in, and who doesn’t want some extra operating money? It worked out well for everybody.

MARK ARM

And if the band sticks around for long enough, eventually they come back. [laughter]

MEGAN JASPER

It actually makes us really, really proud that we’re releasing Mudhoney records, not just because it’s nice to have a band come home, which is how it felt to us and hopefully for you guys, too. [laughs] But it makes for a great story and it means something. As much as people think of Sub Pop and think of Nirvana – or now young kids don’t, they think of the Shins or the Postal Service or Iron and Wine – but at that time it was Mudhoney. When we did tours, we described Sub Pop as the house that Mudhoney built. Before Nevermind came out and Sub Pop was in such a severe financial crisis, it was the release of Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge that Sub Pop belived would pull it out of the slump and get it back on its feet. So it’s great to have a band like that come back and release records.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Do you still release vinyl or have you moved onto mp3?

MARK ARM

We’re talking about releasing records on vinyl and getting a code, which lets you download stuff for free, so you can own the vinyl and still have it on your iPod or whatever it is you have.

NICK DWYER

Do you still want to go to the video?

MEGAN JASPER

Do you guys want to see the Beat Happening video?

(music: Beat Happening – “Hot Chocolate Boy” / applause)

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I heard a story about Jack Endino recording a lot of the early stuff for like 600 bucks or something like that. Did he record any of the Mudhoney stuff as well?

MARK ARM

Yeah.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

What’s he doing now?

MARK ARM

He just released a record.

NICK DWYER

Can you tell us a bit about Jack because he was the producer for that whole era?

MARK ARM

He was like the house producer. What do you want to know [laughs]?

MEGAN JASPER

He worked with everybody and what a lot of people don’t know is that he was a musician himself. Back in the ’80s he worked in a band called Skin Yard and they were on tour a lot, but he’s always been a musician as well as a producer. Is Phil Ek still here?

MARK ARM

Phil Ek, who’s that?

MEGAN JASPER

Phil is a producer who’s lived in Seattle all his life and was Jack Endino’s intern, his only intern and assistant. I just wanted to point that out.

MARK ARM

We should bring him up to tell some Jack Endino stories.

MEGAN JASPER

Do you have any? [inaudible response] Jack worked in this small recording space called Reciprocal. It still exists today, it’s owned by Chris Walla and Josh Rosenfeld. Chris is in Death Cab for Cutie and Josh has Barsuk Records. But it’s a tiny, tiny space and that’s where so many of those records from that time were recorded.

MARK ARM

I think Chris is trying to go for that real grunge-y sound. [laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER

[inaudible question]

MARK ARM

You know what I thought of it: I thought it was an overproduced pile of poop. I much prefer the sound of Bleach to the sound of Nevermind, but then I prefer the Stooges over Gwen Stefani.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

[inaudible question]

MARK ARM

That was Jack Endino and that was Chad Channing, not the original drummer, but the one who played with them for a few years.

MEGAN JASPER

Nevermind was ready to go as a Sub Pop record for a long time. We had to wait to put it out and by the time we were going to, they were already well into conversations with Geffen. And when they were signed to Geffen, they were first drumming with Dan from Mudhoney, then Dave Grohl came in after that. But they re-recorded the entire record for the major label release.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Just for that major label, “you’ve got to do it again” kind of thing?

MEGAN JASPER

Partly that, partly because musicians always want to do things differently if they get the chance. But they wanted Dave on that record.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Is the original around?

MEGAN JASPER

You could probably find it somewhere if you really looked. I don’t know where it is but I have a cassette of it somewhere at home. There were a lot of cassette copies that were passed around because it was a finished record at the people and people were hoping to get it ready for release.

NICK DWYER

When the grunge term disappeared from view I think a lot of people felt the Sub Pop label went with it into grunge obscurity. But the reality was Sub Pop was still growing. It wasn’t the best of years; the second wave was coming later. What was going on during these middle years?

MEGAN JASPER

One thing that happened is internationally it totally disappeared. When Sub Pop did a deal with Time Warner, they were supposed to be releasing a lot of the records internationally. They passed on many of them, so the only option was finding another label to license stuff. It was too much work, too messy, so there were many, releases that came about during the mid-’90s that never saw the light of day overseas. In some cases that’s probably a good thing.

NICK DWYER

Any names?

MARK ARM

Oh, there’s a list.

MEGAN JASPER

That’s the thing, where to begin [laughs]? But there were some great records that came out then – I thought Sebadoh made great records – but for every Sebadoh record there were a million [from other bands] that were just like, “Oh my god, what were people thinking?”

NICK DWYER

Were you working there at that time?

MEGAN JASPER

No, thank God.

MARK ARM

Just wanted to clear that up.

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah thanks for that. [laughter]

NICK DWYER

Something that did happen at this time, the man with the biggest beard I’ve ever seen, Bruce Pavitt, at what point did he leave and why did he leave?

MEGAN JASPER

A number of reasons. First off, once I was with him in Portland, post-Nevermind, it had been out for five or six months, and he said, “Where do you go from here? What next?” You could tell there was this pressure that he was feeling from someone or something to do it again and find a band that would be the perfect band at the perfect time and I don’t think he was excited about that pressure. On top of that, there were changes at Sub Pop, it was growing and transforming into a small version of a major label, and that grossed him out. When he started doing Sub Pop he never wanted that corporate feel or the static, gross comfort that comes with it. He felt an ongoing disconnect.

Nick Dwyer

How was it to Johnathan kind of taking the reigns by himself at this period?

Megan Jasper

It was really difficult because at the same time Johnathan's dad was dying of Alzheimer's, so Johnathan was at a point where he was slowly starting to check out just so he could emotionally cope with his family stuff as well. He's left with this obese organization that needs to streamline quite a bit and go on a big employee diet. I think he was feeling ill-equipped to deal with that because emotionally he just wasn't there, and he was by himself.

Nick Dwyer

A former fired employee came back, I do believe.

Megan Jasper

Oh yeah. I'd like to take full credit for all of the success.

Nick Dwyer

What stage did you come back in and what was your role when you came back into the company?

Megan Jasper

I came back in in 1998 and I came in as the head of the marketing departments. I believe that Johnathan brought me back, not because I was super qualified and there weren’t a million people who could have done a better job, because, to be honest with you, there are. But I think he trusted me and we were good friends and I understood the spirit of the company, I think he wanted to bring some of that back in but not make it an old Sub Pop, he wanted to sort of recreate it. I think I was lucky because I could be considered some new life and I was old life as well. I was very fortunate and lucky in that.

Nick Dwyer

If I may ask, what is Bruce doing now? And how long is the beard?

Megan Jasper

He trimmed the beard and he...

Mark Arm

It's gone.

Megan Jasper

Yeah, there was just stubble the last time he was around. It was kind of weird. So if anyone was hoping to have a little snack from 1989, not living in his beard anymore. We used to call him a pinata because you could smack his beard and crumbs from like two weeks ago would fly out. Anyway, probably don't want to know that.

Right now he is... He switches between living in [inaudible] and living in Seattle. He's a dad, he has two kids. He'll always love music, but he listens to lots of different types of music and just follows his passion, whatever that is.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I would like to go back a little. At the moment the hype was so big, when everyone was talking abut the marriage of Kurt Cobain rather than the music, I was getting interested in dance music, because I just wanted to hear something else, just a stupid reaction. Was there a similar thing in Seattle, that people were playing, like, techno?

MEGAN JASPER

I’m glad you brought that up. In the mid-’90s in Seattle, there was a huge and growing number of people into dance music. There were new record shops popping up every other day it seemed on Capital Hill. People will argue that it was Seattle that broke bands like the Prodigy. There was such support at the time. Sub Pop wasn’t really doing it at the time, they released records by Pigeonhed but never really delved into that genre. But there were communities in the city that totally embraced that.

NICK DWYER

As a backlash to the hype around the music they loved so much?

MEGAN JASPER

Probably just as a need for something new. It wasn’t grunge, it was exciting and new and young and it was thriving here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Is that where the sound of Postal Service, for instance, came from?

MEGAN JASPER

The Postal Service consists of Ben Gibbard from Death Cab For Cutie and Jimmy Tamborello, who does more electronic-type music in LA. I think that’s something that just happened through their collaboration. I know for a fact that they didn’t set out to do this fucking kick-ass dance record, their sensibilities just melded in a way that created that record. They’re both so smart in different ways, but it was something unintentional and truly natural that happened and made the record what it was.

NICK DWYER

Tell us about Sub Pop when you rejoined. What artists were you going for when you came back in 1998? Was there a particular kind of sound?

MEGAN JASPER

We were going for younger bands who required smaller budgets. Let’s work with younger bands that don’t have a whole lot of the baggage that Sub Pop created [laughs] and let’s not do contracts. Let’s not work with bands who want five-record deals. Let’s work with bands who want one-, two- or three-record deals so there’s a constant shift and rotation, new life in the label’s roster. So it was more of a philosophical thing that was happening.

NICK DWYER

Have you got any music from that era?

MEGAN JASPER

You know, I was going to bring some but then I just thought that was an ugly time. [laughter]

NICK DWYER

Why was it an ugly time?

MEGAN JASPER

Well, not an ugly time, I’m being [inaudible]. That time was truly about a shift in the label’s practice and philosophies. What that means in the real sense when you implement those philosophies and make some change is the phasing out of some bands and the bringing in of some new ones. I almost grabbed stuff, but as far as some bands go, it almost feels like a death, so I just tried to stay away from it. There are some great aspects to some of those bands and some great music that a lot of those bands made, so in a twisted attempt to be respectful I walked past that part of the catalog.

NICK DWYER

Was there a particular record after this ugly period when you felt you were onto something again that could bring back the vibrancy of the earlier period?

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, it was short-lived but it was Looper, which was Stuart David from Belle and Sebastian and he did a record called Up a Tree and it was new, it was not like anything Sub Pop did at the time. They didn’t need a big budget and it felt exciting at the time. Shortly after that we worked with a band called the Beachwood Sparks and after that the Shins, none of these were bands that many people had heard of. So it was a gradual change to try finding younger, newer, smaller bands.

MARK ARM

Was Zen Guerrilla about that time?

MEGAN JASPER

I loved Zen Guerrilla, that was about that time. They’d released records, they were from San Francisco, and they had played maybe one of the best live sets compared to any other bands. I mean, mind-blowingly incredible live band.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

Afghan Whigs would be a good example of that process of changing, because they had that punk rock background, but they brought that Sonics sound, they had the soul and gospel thing, so it was an evolution. I mean, they did a Barry White cover.

MEGAN JASPER

The bands I was thinking of who had to be phased out were bands like Combustible Edison and even the Spinanes at the time, as much as I really loved stuff they were doing. We also started working with the Jesus and Mary Chain, which was exciting, but maybe not the smartest signing for Sub Pop, as big a fan as I am.

NICK DWYER

This is many years after [their most famous releases].

MEGAN JASPER

Many years. But it was more those other bands, Friends of Dean Martinez…

MARK ARM

The Cocktail Revolution.

MEGAN JASPER

Yeah, a lot of that stuff needed to come to a screaming halt.

NICK DWYER

Shall we watch the video of Afghan Whigs?

(music: Afghan Whigs – “Her Against Me” / applause)

The bands we were talking about just before the video bring us to the present day. So where do Sub Pop see themselves now in the greater musical universe? Tell us about the Sub Pop of 2005.

MEGAN JASPER

It’s hard to know what’s to come because so much depends on a company’s mindset and from there you find things that work and fit those ideas. We love releasing music but what’s changing for us is the distribution of that music. We do far more digital sales than we did before.

NICK DWYER

Jonathan says you guys are into the internet and he talks about a digital meritocracy. How has internet sales affected your business?

MEGAN JASPER

People believed mp3s, and even just releasing them, was negatively affecting sales. But there’s no way around people sharing music, so if something is taking its natural course and you can’t control it, you have to work with it. So we tried to embrace that and make it part of our marketing, but what we’ve found is – I belive it has something to do with the fact we did it, but also because we’re working with great bands who are making great music – is our sales started to increase. When bands are fighting for radio time, just outlets so that people can hear what the band’s music sounds like, it’s easier to give them a listening station in whatever form works. We saw our sales increase digitally and physically. But our philosophy is, this is becoming the norm, it’s the way people are buying and listening to and sharing music. We have to find a way to work with that and not against it. Being a small company and having the possibility to change quickly and react quickly is a true luxury. So we try not to fight those things, we try to embrace them and redefine what Sub Pop is.

nick Dwyer

Can you tell us a little bit about the roster now in particular, and for the three of you, what artists are you particularly or albums are you really, really into? What are the artists that you're happy to be working with?

Megan Jasper

I love working with a bunch of artists but sometimes for a very different reason. Sometimes people are just so extraordinary that you just... It's just fun to be with them. There's music that I love, more than even just talking about... At least for me, the bands that I love that Sub Pop is working with, I think I love even more the fact that we can work with a band like Wolf Eyes or Comets on Fire, and at the same time work with a band like Iron and Wine and have truly two ends of the spectrum. And music that, I feel, is truly transcendent for different reasons.

Nick Dwyer

Also, something else that's quite interesting on the label is a man named David Cross.

Megan Jasper

Yeah.

Megan Jasper

It's not just music that Sub Pop releases. Tell us a little bit about... And I do believe it's not the first album of that kind that Sub Pop does.

Megan Jasper

A while ago Tony Kiewel, who's one of our A&R people, said, "I want to work with this comedian David Cross." He does the Mr. Show with this guy Bob Odenkirk and a lot of people are fans. Some people didn't know what Mr. Show was, but the people who knew were really excited and Tony literally found David Cross’ phone number, called him up and said, “Hey, would you ever think of doing a record?” And David said, “I’ve actually been dying to do a record and I would love to do one, so let’s make it happen.” The decision was made really quickly. David Cross has made Sub Pop proud for so many reasons, not just because he’s sharp and quick and on his feet all the time, but even more so that he has the balls to really talk about the things that are happening in the world in a very honest way and to call attention to George Bush or the Catholic church, many of the things that are true issues. He doesn’t gloss over for fear that it might negatively affect his career, he says, “Fuck it, these are issues that need to be addressed.” And he does it in a way that makes you laugh. For that we feel very proud to work with him.

NICK DWYER

Do you guys get a lot of demos?

MEGAN JASPER

Oh god, you have no idea. Yeah, more than we could ever make our way through. We try to listen to them sometimes, if we’re making a trip to Portland we’ll put one in after the next. After three hours we’re just like, “Uhhhhh!” Actually, we bring music that we all agree on just so you can take a break and go “Phew,” listen to two songs before you go back to the demos. Sometimes you’ll find things, sometimes there’s just one song that’s amazing and the rest is eesh. I think there are only a couple of bands that Sub Pop have worked with through listening to demos, and the last one is Hot Hot Heat.

NICK DWYER

What exactly are you looking for?

MEGAN JASPER

Whatever it is would have to be something that felt truly relevant, and not just of the moment, or not just timeless, but truly relevant. That can mean so many different things. That can mean David Cross, Sam Beam, that can mean Wolf Eyes. Something that needs to be out there, we believe, for a number of different reasons.

NICK DWYER

We’re coming up to 20 years now that Sub Pop has been around. What are the biggest lessons that the label has learned over those years?

MEGAN JASPER

The biggest one we talk about all the time is that it’s really hard to be so good at what you do. Nah, just kidding [laughter]. The biggest lesson is that you take the lessons that you learn to heart. You’re always going to fuck up, you’re always going to make mistakes, so as long as you’re making new mistakes and learning new lessons, that’s the most important thing. There are things we’ve done as a label that we’d never do again, the amount of money spent on a band, things like that. But also, you can never say never, and you have to be open, flexible and fluid, open to change, ready to change. If you think you truly understand the music industry, how it works and how to make a band successful, then you’ve dated yourself and it’s over. You always have to be learning and understand that you never know exactly how things work because you don’t.

NICK DWYER

We’ll wrap things up pretty soon, but tell us about your staff. Sub Pop seems – sorry if this sounds cheesy – like a great big happy family.

MEGAN JASPER

I actually love talking about this and I know I’ll come off like some weirdo cheerleader who you want to smack in the head. I would just please ask you not to. But I cannot believe I work with the people I work with. I think this group would appreciate it because I think there’s a similar environment here. There’s a structure, but it’s a loose structure. You can switch things up if it needs to be switched up. There are normal boundaries, but it’s a very loose structure. We don’t sit there and look at the watch when every employee comes in in the morning. There are two people who suffer from chronic tardiness and it drives people nuts, but for the most part, people come in, they do their job, they do it well. The people we have are so frigging good at their jobs. We try to promote from within and provide an environment… These guys are feeling embarrassed.

MARK ARM

I’m just trying to figure out who the other one is. We’ve determined one.

MEGAN JASPER

I’ll tell you later. [laughter] Now my mind is wandering. There are other people who had the same problem but they fixed it. We create an environment where people can put their best foot forward and develop their own strengths, determine their own job description. It can be frustrating for someone who comes in expecting a clear job description, line by line by line, but we don’t like doing that. We believe it’s better when someone comes in and though they know what’s expected, how they execute that job is up to them. They have to develop the smarts and figure out how to do what is best. When you bring in a band – and this week we had the Elected come in, talking about their new record – and you listen to people tell you what they expect from the marketing staff, and I swear I sit there and just can’t fucking believe that these people are here because they’re amazing and they understand and they get it. I feel they are talented, fun people to work with.

NICK DWYER

Lastly, what’s exciting about Sub Pop for the future?

MEGAN JASPER

I think the thing most people are excited about right now is that our boss has decided to splurge in the biggest way he ever has and he’s taking us all to New Zealand.

NICK DWYER

How many staff is that?

MEGAN JASPER

Twenty-five people. We’re just so excited, we have some people who’ve never left the country before. Alyssa never has, she’s just this incredible woman and she promised herself that by the time she turned 30 she’d make it out of the country and she’s a year out and she’s been told she’s going to New Zealand. She’s super happy, everybody is, we’re all excited. But not just about us, but the bands [laughs], there are a lot of exciting things happening now. Phil has been helping out with the new Shins record that’s coming out next year. Sam Beam, who’s incredibly prolific, is finishing up a tour, then he’s putting out a new record. There’s a new Wolf Eyes record coming soon, lots of great things happening. And you know the Flight of the Conchords. We signed them and the Brunettes, two bands from New Zealand, and we’re really excited to bring them into the Sub Pop family.

NICK DWYER

Megan, Mark and Carly, thank you very much for joining us.

[applause]