In May, a wonderous event occurred, informally known as Grunge Summit 2008. On a cloudy Seattle evening, Jack Endino, Bruce Pavitt, Jonathan Poneman, Megan Jasper, Mark Arm, Susan Silver, Chad Channing, Charles Peterson, Tad Doyle, Jeff Ament, and Kim Thayil all convened at the Sub Pop headquarters for the purpose of a MOJO interview, the result of which will be featured in the August issue on newsstands in early July. With so many grunge greats in one room, we decided to make use of the opportunity by handing out questionnaires and making them take photobooth pictures. In subsequent weeks, expect Grunge Summit 2008: Parts II through V.
What Jack Endino Had To Say
- * What is your current occupation?*
Noisemaker (professional)
- * Do people ever come up to you and ask for your autograph?*
Yes, if rarely.
- * What do you think of the current state of music?*
It seems to be plentiful.
- * Name five albums you’ve been listening to lately.*
What are albums?
- * When you meet new people, do you find that all they want to do is talk with you about grunge? Are you tired of talking about grunge?*
Yes and yes.
What Bruce Pavitt Had To Say
- * What is your current occupation?*
unemployed
- * Do people ever come up to you and ask for your autograph?*
various bill collectors
- * What do you think of the current state of music?*
lacking social engagement
- * Name five albums you’ve been listening to lately.*
- Mudhoney Superfuzz Bigmuff
- Bassnectar Underground Communication
- Goddess Alchemy Project demos
- Shimshai live demos
- Band of Horses (various albums)
- Midnite (various)
- * When you meet new people, do you find that all they want to do is talk with you about grunge? Are you tired of talking about grunge?*
No. Yes.
Heart drawing by Bruce Pavitt. Music note by Jack Endino.
Posted by Sasha Morgan
Emily Khong of Vancouver couldn’t think of any “profound words of wisdom” for Sub Pop on it’s 20th birthday, so she enlisted the help of some 1st and 2nd grade kids. She gave them the assignment to redesign some of our band logos (is she trying to say that our art department isn’t good enough?). Anyway, I’m going to assume that it wasn’t Emily’s fault that a Death Cab For Cutie drawing was included in the package. I’ll let it slide if it was the simple mistake of a 1st or 2nd grader. Regardless, the birthday drawings made my mail-sorting task a little more interesting. Keep those cards coming!
Posted by Sasha Morgan
From age 5 to about 10, my birthday parties were pretty much the same. We ate cake in the shape of whatever I was interested in that year (one year it was my favorite stuffed animal, a Puffalump) and we played the standard party games in my backyard. My parents were kind enough to give away prizes to all the kids who came, to ensure that no one cried while I opened my presents. As you know, it is Sub Pop’s 20th birthday this year, and like my parents, Sub Pop gave away free copies of our annual compilation Terminal Sales Vol. 3 Happy Birthday To Me so that you wouldn’t leave the party crying. We even included a free SP20 sticker AND, the best part, a birthday card for you folks to send back to us. For those of you who still have the card, maybe stashed away in the midst of mountain of CDs, here is your inspiration to send them in! In addition to perpetuating the gift-giving cycle, your drawings could be famous. (See slideshow above!)
Posted by Sasha Morgan
As part of the series of events that we keep going on and on about surrounding our 20th anniversary this summer, we are having a comedy show at The Moore Theatre on Friday, July 11th. Patton Oswalt, Eugene Mirman, and Todd Barry are all scheduled to perform, and it will undoubtedly be a whole hell of a lot of fun.
But, you know all that already.
What you didn’t know, at least not until you read the headline/title of this particular newspiece/blog posting, is the following:
David Cross has been added to the line-up for the evening!
AND
Kristen Schaal (who plays Mel on the Flight of the Conchords cable television program) will be hosting!
We are terribly excited about the both of these things and hope that you will be too.
Lucky for you, tickets for the SP20 Comedy show are still available…
Buy tickets to the SP20 Comedy show through the Sub Pop website
Buy tickets to the SP20 Comedy Show through TicketMaster
Posted by Chris Jacobs
As you may have read already elsewhere (here and here, say), we’ve announced a couple of additions to the line-up for our 20th anniversary festival out at Marymoor. Like so:
The Vaselines and Eric’s Trip have been added to Saturday. And Les Thugs have been added to Sunday.
We’re pretty excited about all three.
Gentle reminder: tickets for SP20 through TicketMaster go up to $35 per day and $60 for a 2-day pass tomorrow, Saturday May 10th. And we’re nearly out of the 2-day passes we have for sale here on the Sub Pop site.
Also! The Gutter Twins and Brothers of the Sonic Cloth (feat. Tad “Tad” Doyle) will be playing at The Showbox on Saturday, July 12th. This is a separate (though related) event and you will need to buy tickets for this show on its own, apart from the festival at Marymoor.
Posted by Chris Jacobs
May has arrived and here at HQ we are all ready for the best summer we’ve ever known, what with all the good records coming out and the hot shit SP20 Festival right around the corner. In fact, the SP20 Fest was voted Best Summer Music Fest in an informal poll I quietly held here at my desk. Want more info? Read this, bub.
The highly anticipated new No Age record Nouns comes out May 6th and will be available on CD and LP and MP3 and maybe even Blueray and/or Cassette if I finally get my way around this fucking place! Seriously though, if you order this fantastical album from subpop.com we’ll throw in a cool poster designed by a Mr. Templeton. A Mr. Ed Templeton. (Google it.) We’re throwing in something else but I want to save my dignity and not type the phrase “buttons and stickers” ever again, so… Wait, I just… Dammit! The No Age dudes just shot their first video (for “Eraser”) and although it’s still in post-production it looks really amazing—there are balloons, a giant skull, the LA River, and…Dean Spunt and Randy Randall from No Age! See? That’s them up above. Please keep an eye out for it—it would be the right thing to do. Click here to get the record. Click here to find out more about No Age.
On May 20th Mudhoney will be releasing their 37th full-length album, The Lucky Ones. Mark Arm sits out on guitar on this one, presumably so he can dance more at their shows. He is a re-mark-able dancer. (Get it?) The Lucky Ones LP will come stuffed with a 7” single of Mudhoney covering Pere Ubu’s “Street Waves” and “Gonna Make You Mine” by the Troggs. We’ll have 200 of these 7”s to give away with pre-orders of the CD so you better hurry. They’re going to try to sign some stuff as well but don’t hold your breath. (I suggested that they might want to go ahead and let their wives/girlfriends sign this one just to mix it up a bit but I was met with a stony silence so I doubt that’s happening.) On the 20th we will also release the first in what will presumably be a not un-long line of reissues for Sub Pop’s 20th, Superfuzz Bigmuff Deluxe_! This is a remastered double-CD with an expanded booklet and a ton of live tracks and way too much stuff for me to type so read (then order!) this hereedition. You don’t get anything extra with this because it is full of extras and when did you start expecting so much stuff anyway?
We’re all pretty puffed up around here (chuffed?) about how well this Flight of the Conchords thing is going. We just followed-up their (ahem…) FUCKING GRAMMY-AWARD-WINNING EP, The Distant Future with their self-titled debut full-length, and man, is that thing ever shifting units. So much so that none other than Yahoo! (Google it.) was prompted to comment: “Ashlee Simpson’s new album sold so poorly, it was beaten by a comedy album." Our comedy album! (Hat Tip to good ol’ Matt “Epsonality/Domino’s Pizza” Olsen for this one.) Flight of the Conchords and many other Sub Pop bands are on tour right now so make sure you use our new and improved tour-search-filter to see if someone’s coming to your town.
So, yeah, this 20th Anniversary thing is really starting to happen! We’re not to a point where we feel comfortable announcing too much more (read: we don’t know yet) but we guarantee at least one to one-and-a-half more great things are on the way. We at Sub Pop value your opinion, even if we don’t always agree with it. So, if you were The Deciderer, what would you do to celebrate?
Posted by Lacey Swain
