Even though there were an increasing number of Seattle-and-thereabouts bands that had started to make a home on major labels in the early 1990s, it was the explosive one-two of Nirvana’s and Pearl Jam’s rise to fame from fall 1991 onward that fully turned the spotlight onto what was happening in the Washington state city and its environs. It wasn’t, of course, that there had been no music of note from the city before – anything but: besides famously being Jimi Hendrix’s hometown and where Quincy Jones began honing his musical skills, acts of note from the area in earlier decades included 60s garage rock legends such as Tacoma’s Sonics and the Bellevue-born classic rock stalwarts Heart. That band found a new commercial wave in the 80s even as another Bellevue act with metal leanings, Queensrÿche, also made its name. Later in the decade another local legend, Sir Mix-a-Lot, became the city’s first major hip-hop icon, while Duff McKagan, who had played in a number of Seattle bands, ended up in LA powerhouse Guns N’ Roses.
But while all that was happening in the 1980s, a series of overlapping bands and scenes were making their names under the radar, supported by a thriving local atmosphere of enthusiastic club audiences, an increasing number of independent record labels and some press and college radio support, all factors that would play out in the rest of the US and beyond over those ten years. Generally speaking, punk was the ground zero of that new scene, initially showcased in compilations like Engram Records’s Seattle Syndrome Volume One in 1981. As histories of the time and place such as Stephen Tow’s The Strangest Tribe and Mark Yarm’s Everybody Loves Our Town observed in further detail, punk was in ways more of a starting point than a specific code to follow in Seattle, with everything from random art weirdness to obsessive rhythm experiments to garage and psych rock revivals and more comedically-inclined work all emerging over the decade. (This doesn’t even include any number of other scenes and acts emerging elsewhere in the state, most notably Olympia and the Calvin Johnson-founded K label; Aberdeen, where Metal Church, the Melvins and Nirvana came from; and Ellensburg, birthplace of Screaming Trees and where Steve Fisk began his production career.) The real irony in the end was that far from being a triumph of the city’s many sounds, the 90s commercial grunge explosion was an ultimately frustrating simplification and rewritten history of a deeper reality.
Among the bands of lasting note who debuted on Seattle Syndrome were the Fastbacks, whose energetically bright pop/punk remains a lot better than many later bands with that tag, and the darker post-punk leaning Blackouts, featuring the earliest recorded work by future drum legend Bill Rieflin. Another act on the compilation, the Pudz, only ever released one single, the nervy clip of “Take Me To Your Leader,” but its leader Rob Morgan soon formed another legendary act, the Squirrels, who he once described as “Frank Zappa leading a prom band.” A further key early band, the U-Men, built up a high enough profile through the decade to be a touchstone for others who would follow in their wake; another act, Bam Bam, gained retrospective attention for Tina Bell’s role fronting the group as well as being one of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam stalwart Matt Cameron’s earliest drumming gigs.
Meantime, Engram Records only made it to 1983, but by then numerous other labels were starting to emerge in their own right or would soon do so. The famed Sub Pop grew out of compilation tapes included with the original Subterranean Pop fanzine run by Bruce Pavitt, but they were far from alone; in particular there was PopLlama, initially founded by local production icon and inspiration Conrad Uno to give a recorded home to what would be an equally venerated act, the Young Fresh Fellows, itself sharing a member with the Fastbacks in the form of Kurt Bloch. There was also the first run of Green Monkey Records, providing a home for a number of acts with inclinations to catchy garage/psych sounds like the Green Pajamas and the Queen Annes; C/Z Records, whose 1985 debut compilation Deep Six, featuring acts like Soundgarden, Melvins, the U-Men and the Andrew Wood-fronted Malfunkshun, has been retrospectively claimed as grunge’s start point, and numerous other imprints.
Besides Uno, other local producers such as Jack Endino, himself a member of C/Z flagship act Skin Yard, began to make their names throughout the decade, while bands from outside the city either relocated to make a more solid go at things, such as the Walla Walla-originated Walkabouts, or began to use Seattle as a recording and performing base. Increasingly a number of performers who had started off in various earlier bands, such as Cameron, Wood, Mark Arm and many more, began forming or joining new ones that would either keep together over time or be ground zero for any number of groups – most famously Green River, whose existence and then breakup would eventually lead to bands such as Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog and Pearl Jam. But besides the eventual grunge gods, the scrappier and quirkier side of things was just as important, with bands embracing everything from pure garage rock stomp to power-pop sweetness along with purveyors of sonic sludge like Tad and Blood Circus.
By 1989, many of these groups had begun to gain more steady attention worldwide via touring and more indie-label releases while an increasingly growing number of them were making a leap to the bigger imprints. Soundgarden ended up on A&M and Mother Love Bone on Polydor, to name just two; Screaming Trees would follow them in the near future on Epic after a quick Sub Pop detour while Alice in Chains had already signed to Columbia and begun planning its own debut release. Meanwhile acts like the Squirrels, the Young Fresh Fellows and the Fastbacks were keeping on being their sharp and entertaining selves. Nirvana were just happy to have a debut album out on Sub Pop in Bleach delivering their own blasting sounds, all while even newer acts were making their first tentative stabs at getting together and playing out. When 1989 ended nobody had any real idea what the next few years would result in, but any observer should have felt that there was plenty of evidence that the decade had truly created a rich new scene in Seattle worth celebrating in its own right. Decades later, remembering that scene to the fullest is the best way to honor it.