by Phil West
by
Charles Peterson
HarperCollins West/SubPop $35, hard Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story
by Clark Humphrey
Feral House, $16.95, paper
Charles Peterson’sScreaming Life or Clark Humphrey’s Loser would
both look great on a coffee table. They’re big, glossy, immensely attractive,
enjoyable, easy browses — which is sort of ironic, because they’re also both
about punk rock. Specifically, they document the Seattle music scene which
spawned Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, and Pearl Jam, among others, in the
mid- to late-Eighties. The bands that, for some reason, all got lumped together
as “grunge.” “Grunge” has since become a period term like disco or new wave, and the
still-active bands best known for the sound have evolved (or devolved) into fun
garage punk, full-on metal, or ponderous Neil Young territory. The alternative
“revolution” reluctantly spearheaded by Nirvana ended even before Hootie &
the Blowfish hit number one. Alternative and mainstream have definitively
transposed themselves into oblivion.
The books come at a good time, then, for rediscovering and reaffirming faith
in what Seattle’s grunge-era bands have given to rock music. Peterson’s
light-streaked, in-the-moment photos and Humphrey’s comprehensive yet sharp and
witty text are full of the same kind of humor, passion, and energy that many
fans found in the bands themselves. (Peterson’s book also includes a Sub Pop CD
compilation featuring some of his favorite bands.) The books enthusiastically,
empathetically remind you that “making it big” was never a priority when these
bands started getting attention.
I was lucky enough to see it firsthand. Like many of the band members in the
books, I grew up in the Seattle suburbs, on a steady diet of AC/DC, Van Halen,
and Black Sabbath, before stumbling upon punk rock. When metal and punk were
melded by the early Sub Pop Records’ bands into “grunge,” it surprised the
indie rock community, but to Seattleites, it was merely a natural alchemy. At
27, I’ve already fallen in love with scores of bands, and have seen literally
hundreds, if not thousands, of bands, yet I can still say no musical experience
I’ve had was more transcendently joyful than the Seattle of ’88 and ’89.
Peterson’s Screaming Life is the most immediate testament of the two
books to what it felt like to be a witness at the revolution. His photos
(ranging from 1983-94, the bulk taken during the scene’s salad days) are
familiar to anyone familiar with Sub Pop — his energetic live shots are on
most of the label’s early albums and played a huge role in their masterful
marketing scheme. Sub Pop co-executive Bruce Pavitt, in Michael Azerrad’s
introduction, says “Hearing the music on college radio was one thing, but those
photos turned everybody into a star.” Peterson comes closer than any other rock
photographer to capturing what a band sounds like on film. Part of that owes to
his friendships with many of the bands he shoots, but a lot of it has to do
with his involvement with the music. He puts himself directly in the fray of
things, has the good sense to know when to snap, and knows which images speak
the loudest.
Most of the photos are live, but do more than place bands on the altar to be
worshipped. Peterson’s shots of the Fastbacks’ Kurt Bloch performing in Japan
are both touching and funny because of his nuzzling interactions with the
crowd. Peterson’s favorite Mudhoney photo foregrounds the band’s hair
gymnastics with an audience member carefully placing a can of Schmidt Beer
(“the beer that grew with the Great Northwest” — think Pearl, or worse) on the
stage. The photo, perhaps better than any essay could, defines the summer of
1988.
If Peterson’s book is a photo essay, then Humphrey’s is a thorough
encyclopedia, complete with photos, flyer art, and crude photocopied
miscellanea. Starting with the founding of Seattle in 1850, he quickly winds
through 108 years of “prehistory” before getting down to the story of rock in
Seattle. To say that it’s a comprehensive guide to rock music in Seattle,
however, cheapens it and excludes non-Seattle audiences from caring. On a
larger level, it’s the story of Austin and a hundred other American cities,
with only the names changed. There are lean times, times to remember, and times
when the rock & roll community is at complete and total odds with the
authorities.
Although he rarely positions his voice in the first person, Humphrey’s droll
wit and ear for detail come through in many places. Humphrey, who writes a pop
culture column for Seattle weekly The Stranger, has the best
ear-to-the-ground hearing of any writer in Seattle today, and this book’s best
moments come from Humphrey picking just the right bits of information and
coloring them with just the right amount of commentary. For instance, Humphrey
pegs an early-Eighties new wave radio station as “so pretentious, its weather
reports were in metric,” and skewers L.A. Times critic Robert
Hilburn (for praising Soundgarden’s arena-rock and pin-up potential in 1990) as
“liking Soundgarden for all the wrong reasons.”
Making the jump to coffee-table books is kind of like jumping from an indie
label to a major label, and Peterson and Humphrey have managed it with the
dignity and integrity of a Nirvana or Mudhoney. It should bother me, at least a
little bit, to see my college days, my very adolescence, in
retrospective books. The books should make me feel old. Instead, I feel
proud. Peterson and Humphrey have crafted books worthy of an era worth
remembering. n
This article appears in December 8 • 1995 and December 8 • 1995 (Cover).