Seattle Music News

PART ONE: "Drunkeness and Desperation" (1983-1990)

"Mine's a tale that can't be told...My freedom, I hold dear...Of year's ago, and days of old, where magic filled the air..."
(Led Zeppelin- "Ramble On" from Led Zeppelin II)

...Or, where beer and puke filled the air. Maybe a parking lot outside of an all-ages club like Washington Hall in the Central District was the scene, or something like that, I can't remember. All I can remember is that some independent towing guy put a wheel-lock on my new used car. Out of all of the cars in the parking lot parked illegally, he had to pick on mine. I was drunk, seventeen, and was supposed to be inside in 5 minutes to play with my band at the time, Last Gasp. My drunk girlfriend, who was also, beknownst to me, cheating on me with the ex-guitar player of the band that I replaced him in, started yelling at the guy and threw her 40 ouncer his way, only to shatter in the parking lot, so no one would be able to drive outta there without getting a flat tire anyway. Some big toothless lug/door bouncer/drug dealer named Orin came over, and threatened the dude who locked my tire, was able to talk him down to half of the price to release it, and I payed the guy all the drinking money that I had left...and went in and played the show- drunk off of my ass, and throwing up in a garbage bag by my amp. Typical everyday shit.

Yeah, those were the days. The local sleazebag punk rock scene in Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia started around the early-to-mid 80s. Once the whole SST thing filtered up from California, along with issues of Maximum RockNRoll, Flipside, and those shitty Doug Moody Mystic compilations, if it was the kind of rock culture that made you jump out of your skin like it did for me, then you were done for and you never looked back. It was an abrupt branch-off from what became the basis of the burgeoning popular-and-publicized Seattle Scene of the late 80s-early 90s. When you got tired of Ozzy and Judas Priest singing ballads on their new albums, you looked towards chaos...and you got more than you bargained for.

I was in middle school when I saw this whole thing take shape. I wanted to be a musician, and with my sense of humor, I was naturally attracted to the dark side. All it took was one viewing of "Decline of the Western Civilization" at the Neptune Theatre, and I was fucked for life. Those were also the days when you could take one trip down to Second Time Around on the 'Ave' (University Ave.), and you could buy yourself a $100 piece-of-shit guitar, a warped vinyl copy of some second-pressing punk record (DI, Circle Jerks, Butthole Surfers, Dead Hippie, etc.), a used leather jacket that some idiot sold for dope money, and maybe a Black Flag bumpersticker. One stop shopping. Pretty cool, eh? Down the street, you had Cellophane Square. We avoided Tower most of the time, unless you wanted to buy an Iron Maiden record or something. There was Time Travelers downtown, and Fallout Records near Broadway.

You had a few different factions in the Seattle music scene, one of which was what KCMU FM (now KEXP), KYYX FM, KJET AM, and the local publication THE ROCKET were promoting at the time- including bands like The Young Fresh Fellows, The Allies, Mondo Vita, The Green Pajamas, The New age Urban Squirrels, etc. (there's so many, so little time). This constituted what was kind of a psychedelic college vibe...or basically, just good time rock and roll made by people who were influenced by the best and weirdest parts of pop-rock culture from the last two decades. You also had the experimental rock crowd, influenced by Big Black, Killing Joke, Captain Beefheart, and the like. Many people in that crowd fused all of that with rock, punk and/or metal, and went on to make what most outsiders know as 'The Seattle Sound'. There was also the local creditable hip hop scene, with Sir Mix-A-Lot, Kid Sensation, etc. There was the mostly-suburban metal scene (Band names have been omitted to protect the innocent...ok, ok, props to Jeff Gilbert on KCMU's 'BRAINPAIN' show, ask him about the northwest metal scene sometime). Hell, there was probably a revolution of a music scene going on in the underground tunnels of Seattle's Chinatown for all I know...but if THE ROCKET didn't cover it, nobody knew. I liked all of it, but would soon shun most of it for one brand of filth and hate.

Sometime around 1982/'83/'84, many Northwest kids who were already into metal like I was started seeing the possibility of fast hardcore punk being worthy of a listen. Punk Rock awareness first happened to me, when a twisted family member gave me a recorded cassette copy of "In God We Trust, Inc." by The Dead Kennedys...but it really happened to me in the fall of '84. I started skating, and was introduced to Fallout Records and Skateboards. Here is where I bought my copies of the "Not So Quiet On The Western Front" compilation on Alternative Tentacles Records, and also the "P.E.A.C.E." compilation, put out by MDC's record label 'R Radical Records'. I bought "World Full Of Hate" by The Fartz there too. Fallout is where I discovered Black Flag, and along with that, every other SST Records band that the label had to offer. SST seemed sort of like a punk rock Microsoft because they pretty much monopolized my and many other kid's record collections at that time. The Minutemen infuenced me personally to no end. Pretty soon, skateboading started to seem ridiculous, and that is when I realized that most of my friends were jocks disguised as punk pock wanna-bes on wheels. Most of these kids went on to play sports in high school. I became a bonafide and proud punk rock nerd. Sell the skateboard...buy more records!!

Around the same time Kurt Cobain was in Aberdeen smoking pot, getting arrested and sleeping under bridges and stuff (and listening to bands like Millions of Dead Cops , thank God), the teenagers of Seattle were wreaking havoc on Seattle's city streets and breaking ordinances, either at all-ages teen clubs like 'Skoochie's', or at punk rock shows. Most shows around '84 and '85 seemed to be put on at legion halls, where small-time promoters would rent the hall, and invite about 5 bands, and no one would get paid. These shows were often shut down by the fire department, like in many towns, etc. There was a club in Chinatown that ran under the monikers of Gorilla Gardens, Omni Room and Rock Theatre, overseen by a sleazebag slumlord dude named Tony Chu. Bands were never payed very good there. The club would get shut down and reopened as often as every day. Tony Chu eventually moved the club to the Fremont district, which was the site of the Circle Jerks riot in the winter of '86. The fire marshall shut the show down about three songs into the Circle Jerks set, when they were playing "Killing For Jesus". Most of the showgoers did not like this very much, and they started throwing bottles. Cops came running into the entrance (there was one way in, one way out) and starting smashing punker's heads with billy clubs. A full-scale riot started, with people smashing things, starting fires in garbage dumpsters. The climax was when about 20 people tipped a cop car over into a bonfire. I was still too young to go to this and it was on a school night. My parents watched it all on the news that night, special report-style. I wanted to run out of the house, and go down and see it live!

That's when I decided that I needed to play in a punk rock band, because I was missing too many good shows that older people told me about...shows at places like Community World Theater in Tacoma and the short-lived UCT Hall in Seattle. I was going and seeing shows at the Hub Ballroom. I saw The Meat Puppets there once. I saw Husker Du play their last show in Seattle there. But these weren't the dangerous shows that I wanted to see...I wanted to see people SLAMDANCE!!!

Local bands like The Dehuminizers (straight from the "Kill Lou Guzzo" controversey) and The Accused were out on tours, playing fast, belligerent punk rock with stuttered beats, inspired by bands like D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles). I put an ad in the Rocket as "Punk guitar player wants to form a band...". Back then, Seattle was still a much-smaller music community, and people were much more friendlier too. I must of had about 30 people call me in the first week. One of them was Steve Roy, brother of Shannon McConnell of The Fallouts. I jammed with Steve, a phenomenal drummer, for a couple of years, mostly husker Du and Clash covers. We used to watch The Fallouts practice in their basement near their house in Wallingford. We also were lucky enough to watch them record their first EP at Reciprocal Studios in Ballard, with a pre-grunge Jack Endino at the board. That was killer to see.

Another person who answered my ad was a guy named Erik Erickson, not the Eric Erickson of 'New Age Urban Squirrels' fame, but the one who drew the cover of the first Dehuminizers 7 inch. He played with me for a while, but then dumped me because I was too young, as he explained it...and I was too young...but it was young kids like me that constituted the future of Seattle hardcore punk rock...poor, lower middle-class kids from fucked-up backgrounds, raised on MTV, drugs, alcohol, and peer pressure. There was more than this out there somewhere. We just had to grow up to find it, and part of the punk rock code is that you're not supposed to grow up.

There was a church in Ballard on 24th Ave. NW, near my friend and future bandmate Chris Tretton's house. There was a hardly-functional multitrack studio in this place, and it also served as a rehearsal studio for bands. I formed a short-lived band called Nuns In Bondage in the winter of 1986. We practiced until one of the guys who ran it, Walter, would come and kick us out so Crisis Party could practice. We used to come down with 40 ouncers of Mickey's and watch Crisis Party practice. Their drummer at the time was Erik Erickson, the guy from the Rocket ad. The other guy who ran this place with Walter was Gordon Raphael, a really nice guy, who went on to produce the first two Strokes records. They also used to throw parties, and bands like The Accused would play. These would get shut down by the cops very quick. Someone set fire to the church a couple of years later.

Meanwhile, the center for punk-loving street trash was The Ave, which was the whole strip of University Avenue. Characters with names like Jimbo, Leggo, Chuck, would walk up and down the street, whispering, "Acid? Acid? Acid? Acid?..." to passers-by. Fake skinhead idiots who wouldn't know a real skinhead from Telly Savalas terrorized many of the street punks. These were kids who were either authentic runaways from fucked-up households, or suburban transplants who wanted to run away from their rich daddy and mommy's estates, and be poor. They were affectionately known as 'Ave Rats'. After my friend Chris ran away from home in 1988, he became an Ave Rat, and I spent most of my time hanging out down there with him, until my curfew was up. This is where I became aware of local punk bands much scarier, filthier, and drunker/druggier than the ones I was used to. Many people in these bands who either lived near the Ave in real apartments or were living on the street would congregate at a church up the street every Friday night for "Teen Feed". It was a volunteer program put on by the church to help the homeless kids on the Ave, since the staggering number of Ave Rats was obviously a real problem. The food wasn't bad, and we would eat for free so that we'd have beer money for later. 1988 and 1989 were two years full of parties, underage drinking, and Teen Feed.

Around this era, I saw Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Tad at The Moore Theater. At the time, I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. I thought that Mudhoney were a MC5 Stooges rip-off (never occured to me that they were actually just paying tribute to the bands that they liked), watched Tad eat an egg salad sandwich that someone threw up on stage, and watched as Kurt Cobain suffered through obvious electrical difficulties in his guitar circuitry. I had a flash in the middle of their set, where I was actually drawn in, and I had a feeling that they were probably going to be as famous as Husker Du. Didn't matter! I decided then and there that I was going to denounce everything that SubPop stood for...a dumb-ass stupid fucking hype machine. Also, there had been a show on local televsion called Bombshelter Videos that played mostly SubPop and SST videos, and that just about made me sick. I knew that Soundgarden was good, but I just 'didn't want to know'. I had a punk rock code to live by. I would eventually meet most of these local rock characters in a non-brown nosing fashion. All of this envy for one of Seattle's greatest times in music history would eventually subside into respect and admiration, but for now- I needed to FUCK SHIT UP!

There was the Jesters House nearby in Wallingford, where we would party and hang out with our friends in The Jesters of Chaos (Kenny, Jeffro, Theo, and Tyler, with homage to Matt and other ex-members). They had a 7 inch out, and had been together for the last five years or so. They were gods. It was through this scene that I joined my first real gigging band Last Gasp, with my friend Chris (later known as Diamond C from 'The Midnight Idols'), John Bort (later known as Johnny Abortion from 'Sick And Wrong'), and our insanely energetic frontman Ajax Wood (later known as Ajax Wood in many noisecore configurations). We started playing a lot of shows.

We played our first show at The Party Hall in the CD, which eventually turned into the first version of The Twilight Exit (now closed but reopened down the street). This was in the summer of 1989, and I was still in high school with a mouth full of braces. The lineup was us, Subvert (from Tacoma), and The Accused. At the time, The Accused were gods to us, and frankly, they still are. Sometimes I kick myself when I have a conversation with Alex, Tommy, or Blaine. Subvert were Tacoma's gutterpunk darlings, with Eric singing, Shawn on guitar, Jerry on bass, and John on drums. They were one of the first D.I.Y. hardcore punk bands from the Northwest besides The Accused that put out a 12 inch vinyl record in Europe, and that was the big time to us. We even considered it big time if we were able to put out a 7 inch EP. This is when major labels were still mostly putting out vinyl. As for The Party Hall, we saw the Treepeople there. We watched bald straight edge boys bounce on trampolines and shoot each other with baby powder. How nice. We saw bands like Whipped. Paula, singer/bass player of Whipped put on most of these shows under the moniker 'Milkbone Productions'.

Natasha's out in Bremerton, notorious for the GBH ferry riot show, was one of the places that we played regularly on weekends. These bills usually paired us with bands like The Jesters of Chaos, 13 Hellacopters, and many others. It was a rentable hall, and cops would usually show up and fuck eveything up. I saw and played so many shows there, but I was so drunk on Lucky stubbies that I cannot remember most of them. I remember getting on the ferry, but I would never remember coming back. We played there one time, on a Sunday night, opening up for Agnostic Front and The Derelicts, also friends of ours (briefly on SubPop). Lori of Spooky Voodoo Productions (later starting Infinite Productions) put the show on. She paid us $10.00 and a half rack of Henry Weinhard's Light...IN CANS!!! Back then, we were pissed off, but nowadays, after playing so many shows like this, I realize that it was probably due to the fact that there was not a very good turnout, and Agnostic Front probably had a pretty big guarantee.

We also started playing at the forementioned Washington Hall. They had a foldable stage that was usually pretty steady, but one of the first shows that I saw there was Poison Idea. The stage creaked and moaned under their combined weight. Pig Champion at one point had to sit down because his side was teetering so bad that it was about to collapse. What a fucking blast these times were. You could walk out to Poison Idea's touring band and drink beer with them. They were nice guys with IQs way higher than you would expect. Washington Hall also was ready to kick skinhead ass if necessary. Orin and his buddies stacked about thirty 2X4s against the door, in case any neo-baldies wanted to fuck with us dirtbags. I saw Neurosis play at Washington Hall before they became morose dreadlocked hippies seeking nourishment in the sun.

A notable ex-Tri-Cities band in this scene that we played with in Seattle more times than I could count, was Aspirin Feast. Mike, their insane lead singer, was probably about the scariest front man besides David Yow that I have ever seen. Tim, their guitarist, was one of my first local guitar idols. Jim on bass was a complete nutcase, and Joe the drummer was famous for being the crazy looking mohawked guy on a long-running Washington State Lottery commercial. Through them, we met one of the coolest hardcore punk bands of all time, Christ On A Crutch, who originally hailed from DC, then came to the Tri-Cities (also previous home to Aspirin Feast and many others), then moved to Tacoma, and finally Seattle. We played so many shows and parties with them. Their guitarist/singer, Jerry Brady, became my mentor on everything guitar. He introduced me to Thin Lizzy, and made me think twice about how much good music there is out there besides hardcore punk. Their singer Glen could drink more whiskey than anybody I've ever seen. Their bass player Nate Mendel eventually went onto play with Sunny Day Real Estate, and finally found fortune with the Foo Fighters. Eric Akre was their amazing drummer (still is), who hailed from the Tri-Cities, along with his talented sister and vocalist Carrie Akre (Hammerbox, Goodness). C.O.A.C. would probably go down in history for coining the punkest album title that anyone had ever come up with in my opinion: "Crime Pays When Pigs Die".

Ron from a straightedge band called Brotherhood put out our first 7 inch, called "Drunkeness and Desperation". We felt like rock stars. We took a little road trip with Christ On A Crutch down to the Tri-Cites (Richland, Kennewick, Pasco WA) right about this time. We crashed in a hotel room that Orin (the forementioned crazy lug) and Jerry from Subvert were sharing. At the show, Orin broke the padlock on the legion hall's liquor storage cabinet. He loaded all of the bottles of booze into the C.O.A.C. van (AKA the "Christburger"). We took off afterwards, and went to some party at some girl's house, while her parents were out of town. Our bass player somehow broke the toilet, cut his hand in the process, and bled all over the bathroom until it looked like a scene out of "Helter Skelter" We were kicked out of the party, and somehow got back to the hotel. Sometime in the night, our drummer and Jerry from Subvert threw beer bottles into the pool (shallow end) and ruined anyone's chances of swimming. The next day, the manager knocked on the door, came in and saw that about 10 people were crashing on the floor, and that one wall by Orin's bed was covered in green and red loogies. She said "You have thirty minutes to get out of here, or I am calling the cops." Someone also took a dump in the bathtub, which we found out a couple of days later. We made the Tri-Cities Herald. That was probably the best press that Last Gasp ever got, besides the negative review in Maximum RockNRoll.

Things were starting to get really weird in Seattle, what with this new yarl-filled rock coming out of long-haired bands with shirtless lead singers. I saw it coming, and I started running. Us punk rock fuckups never wanted to famous, but we never wanted to be buried by hair and meat. Yarl yarl yarl. The worst was yet to come. We ignored it by consuming copious amounts of shitty beer, and screaming at the top of our lungs. Soon, however, even our scene would change. The music would slow down, people starting getting all tribal and dreadlocky, and the simple aesthetic of D.I.Y. hardcore punk would be infected by a virus called 'grunge'. The only cure for the infection would be death.

(PART TWO: 1990-1995 Coming soon)