|
Bill's note title "Sup Pop Rock City" is a reference to one of many
Sup Pop compilations. This particular one I believe was a German
release on Glitterhouse.
A couple months ago the U.S. music collector rag Goldmine had a good
story on the history of Sub Pop. In short for now (other references
such as HYDRA::RADIO_RADIO...) the C/Z label also out Seattle began
in 1985 with a compilation release that featured Green River, the
Melvins, Soundgarden, Skinyard, etc.
Sup Pop 100 then followed in 1986 with a various artist release LP
where as other released were fanzine only dating back to '79 as
described below. A few years later Sup Pop 200, a 3LP was released
as well as a CD which soon wen out of print and has since been
re-issued. A follow on to this is Grunge Years which may have been
the first introduction for many listeners. In between all these
compilations there were many individual band releases by Soundgarden,
Mudhoney, Tad, Fluid, etc. Later on bands such as L7 released
their EP "Smell the Magic", Hole, etc,. and it seems ever since the
label has moved considerably from its often narrowly characterized
description of "Sup Pop Sound". I think it's much broader than many
describe it to be so I'm not going to even attempt to further
characterize the sound of any of these bands.
If anything, at least initially the sound had more to do with style,
attitude, geographic commonalty, possibly similar rooted music
appreciation which must have touched upon everything from early 60's
beat sound, to 70's hard rock sound, to blues, to punk, etc.
The sound to develop from all of this was termed by the above phrase
Seattle sound which I do think may have been a fair description
initially. Later such bands as Codeine, one of the first that
I can think of that were a so-called non-characteristc Sup Pop
band with slow, softer almost melancholic music. Soon after (jumping
ahead) another side of Sub Pop developed which I include Beat Happening,
Love Battery which while still guitar oriented in my opinion left the
feed back and distortion behind in favor of a some what more distinctly
defined guitar playing, in the later case they still with very strong
vocal as with some of the earlier bands...At the present time
it's hardly geographic anymore or a one-sided sound at all, such
bands as the Afghan Whigs (Cincinnati), Boston's Come and Green Magnet
School, Six Finger Satellite, are all hardly characteristic and pigeon
hole material from the early days.
Getting back to the fanzine and how the name Sup Pop came about, Jim
C's personal name is some what of a coincidence ("Subterranean
Dharma Bum"). The label name was shortened from Subterranean Pop,
a fanzine of Bruce Pavitt's started in '79. He was later writing
for Rocket, a Seattle based music paper, (I don;t recall the author's
name right now but he's also the author of the recent "Heaven and
Hell" book on Led Zeppelin) a column called "Sup Pop: A Guide to U.S.
Independent" which then became the label name when he and Jonathan
Poneman became partners.
- Jim
|
|
The June 20th edition of NME (New Music Express) had a fairly good
Sup Pop discography. The main difference between it and others such
as Goldmine, April 17 is that it included details regarding issue
quantity and format.
In some cases quantities were quite limited which along with
relatively poor distribution it's no wonder that some discs were
hard to come by even early on.
It didn't include UK's Tupelo, Australia's Waterfront, Germany's
Glitterhouse or Japan's Sony releases. A recent Record Collector
did include a partial UK disco.
- Jim
|