Category Archives: City Heat

SOS: Sounds of Seattle [City Heat – April 1991]

 1991 04 CityHeat Sounds Of Seattle

 

The infamous “Seattle Sound”. The term itself is sinking…don’t go down with the ship.

 

City Heat is sending out an S.O.S.

While planning the April issue it was decided amongst our staff that we didn’t want to play favorites by featuring an unsigned band on the cover. So we thought it would be safe running with a recorded band signed to a major.

We had a couple of ideas going and then senior writer Shay McGraw had a flash of powerful insight. What if we presented a forum for the widely diversified Seattle bands to voice some opinions about the term, “Seattle Sound”?

What is it?

Why is it?

Is the term still relevant?

Was it ever?

What we came up with is an interesting collage of bands and an interesting collage of opinions.

We have accumulated here those opinions from the voices of Seattle, presenting them to you now as the Sounds of Seattle.

We asked each of the groups we interviewed to first describe their sound, whether they considered themselves part of the “Seattle Sound” and finally, if currently, the term “Seattle Sound” is more descriptive of a musical style or an attitude shared amongst musicians in the city?

  1. Describe your musical sound.
  2. Do you consider yourselves part of the “Seattle Sound”?
  3. When you hear the term “Seattle Sound” does it more aptly describe a particular musical style or an attitude shared amongst the city’s musical tribe?

They replied:

1991_04_CityHeat_SOS2

Red Platinum

 

“Very upbeat, very energetic, but yet very heavy. We have a very funky bottom end, so to speak. We try to utilize some finesse and dynamics in our music. As compared to other bands, we’d be a hard one to pigeon hole. It’s pocket rock. It’s rock and roll with a groove.”

“Yeah, I’d say we’re part of the Seattle Sound because we’re doing something of our own. We’re original, you know? I believe the Seattle Sound is whatever anybody in Seattle is doing that’s different than anybody else in the country. You have bands like Soundgarden and Chains and Mudhoney which originally were considered the Seattle Sound, but I believe there are a lot of bands who consist of the Seattle Sound because everybody does their own thing and they don’t worry about what the next guy’s doing, you know? They just play their music. When somebody creates something [personal] it just makes everybody else more into what they’re doing because they realize that, originality pays up here.”

“It’s more of an attitude than a musical style. It originally started out as a musical style, don’t get me wrong, but I believe it’s evolved into an attitude because everybody just does their own thing. It’s unbarred rock and roll. It’s not censored. It doesn’t matter what you are doing, you can play in any club and do whatever you want because you are in Seattle and that’s what it’s about. It’s not being pigeon holed or stuck in one thing or cliche, you can basically just rip and do what you do, there is always going to be an audience and nobody’s going to care what you’re doing because that’s just the attitude, you know? Seattle is kind of like ‘Free For All’!”


Joe Superfisky – Guitar, Vocals

 

Bitter End

“Fast, hard, loud, brutal, thoughtful, high energy. Fusion of classic heavy metal and speed metal.”

“In as much as that we live and work and play here, yes. There are so many different components of the Seattle Sound, so many different bands. I refuse to lump a lot of bands together [stylistically] due to geography or something. But [stylistically] no, we sound like a heavy metal band. We don’t sound like we’re from anywhere [in particular].

“Kind of both. Seattle bands, for the most part, have a Seattle attitude which is that most people [here] want to have their own kind of sound. Also, there’s a level of cooperation that’s not necessarily there in the larger markets. We fall into the Seattle attitude although [ours is] not necessarily a stereotypical Seattle Sound.”


Matt Fox – Lead Vocals, Guitar

 

Pistol Moon

 

“It’s versatile, raw, funky, original, trashy rock. Everybody writes and everybody cuts their own style that’s unique. So it’s a really good unit.”

“I would say so. We’ve got a lot of sounds that seem to be influenced by what is going on right now and that are really grassroots and I think we fit right in with what’s happening today.”

“I suppose it’s both and the style I think was influenced from the 60’s movement; peace, paisley, freedom and everything. And the attitude’s that of ‘do what you feel, don’t sell out and just have fun and relaxxx’. I think that had something to do with it.”


Rick Hopkins – Lead Guitar

 

Kristen Barry

“I guess it would be categorized as pop rock, but it’s not really like typical pop rock. It’s not straightforward rock. I guess people call it alternative, that’s what the record companies have classified it as, even if I don’t think it is all that alternative. I get a lot of my influence from the old jazz and blues singers. It’s more mainstream than a lot of stuff out there. It’s like accessible alternative, I guess you can say.”

“Actually, probably not. I don’t think so.”

“Well I’m having a hard time with that one right now because the Seattle Sound doesn’t mean, like, one thing anymore. It used to mean predominantly that grunge kind of thing but I think it is growing. What used to be called the Seattle Sound I think is still a major part but now there is a lot more beyond that too. A lot of different styles are coming out again. Some of the attitude of the region definitely contributes to the music because I think this region is really individualistic and the people up here are really artistic with their music. I think it’s expanding so the term doesn’t even fit any more. That was a term for two years ago. It’s outdated and I think it’s time for people to start looking at what that spawned. So let’s move on and find another term, shall we?


Kristen Barry – Vocalist

1991_04_CityHeat_SOS3 

Paisley Sin

“I’d consider it traditional rock in the true sense of the phrase because it varies a little bit, but it all is rock and roll. Like if you listen to an old Zeppelin or Stones album the music will vary quite a bit. The feeling of each song is totally different from song to song. I think that we are kind of like that in a lot of ways. Most other bands have a style and a lot of their stuff is really similar. We’ve heard some people say that it’s what they call ‘lack of focus’ in the music industry now days. I consider it just playing what feels right. There was a guy in Vancouver at the Club Soda who said that all Seattle bands sound the same. I think that is absolute bullshit. I don’t think that all Seattle bands sound the same, at all.”

“In some cases, yes, and in some cases, no. It’s a really hard question because I think that our music could have been made in Cleveland or Chicago or Portland but probably not in Canada or L.A.”

“It’s a lot more, we’re not playing, not pushing one thing. Or one sound.”

Robert Middleton – Drums

 

Love Brother Nine

 

“Paranoid, neo-hippy dark funk is basically what we are. Another superego primadonna with delusions of paranoia. It’s kind of groovy dark funk stuff. It’s pretty heavy.”

“Considering we have a sound and we’re from Seattle. Yeah! But definitely we are no Soundgarden wannabes or anything like that. We’ve got our own sound. It’s heavy and raw which I guess is the trademark for Seattle.”

“I’d say it’s a style of music that comes from a desperate attitude. Rain and no money.”


Tony – Vocals

 

Reckless X

 

“Well, it’s a mixture of rock, funk and folk, pretty much. Did you want me to use one word describing it? It’s just diverse.”

Davis Chastain – Vocals, Bass

“I think the Seattle Sound has a distinctive grunge flavor to it that I think we, at the most, occasionally brush across. Bands that recently have made some commotion, there is a grunge there, and I don’t think we have that.”

“We’re part of the Seattle Sound because we’re from Seattle but we’re not a SubPop band. I think that the Seattle Sound is a lot broader than they portray it.”

“It depends on what you categorize the Seattle Sound as being. I would say yes, just in the sense that we’re striving to be the most unique that we can be.”

Mark Bushbeck – Guitar

Davis Chastain – Vocals, Bass

Duff Drew – Drums

“I would say that it’s probably a combination of both. It’s the way you play your instrument and it’s possibly the style of music that you are trying to emulate or create. It’s definitely a tone or tempo range in a sense, but it’s also an attitude. It’s the way you shake your head to something. It’s the way something dirges along. It’s also the way something comes together.”

“The Seattle Sound started with who? I mean with Jimi or with The Sonics or with Ann and Nancy or who? The [true] Seattle Sound is just progressively original music no matter what style you’re into.”

Duff Drew – Drums (previously of seminal My Eye)

Sanctuary



(Laughter) “I don’t know, I think that the music we make is kind of an expression of a lot of our inner anger about what is going on today (and our next record is going to be very angry). Yet, serene at the same time. Serenity and anger, that’s how I would describe it.”

“No. I don’t believe in the Seattle Sound myself. I understand what [people think] it is, but no, we don’t consider ourselves any part of it.”

“I think it’s a combination of both of those.”

Warrell Dane – Lead Vocals

 

Metal Church







“It’s probably a thinking man’s metal, I guess. I wouldn’t really call it death metal, although some of our songs’ve had some gloomy moods to them, it’s only because that’s what we felt at the time. I can’t really [over] classify it because it’s just kind of metal to me.”

“I’m not really clear as to what the Seattle Sound is. I think that we definitely are a Seattle band, whether we are from Kent or Aberdeen, but I’m not really sure how we would fit into that because we don’t sound like anybody else around here.”

“I’m not sure to tell you the truth, just because I don’t know exactly what it is. I think some people get called that because they are the bands that the inner-city people like them and they term their friends in bands the Seattle Sound. I’m not sure.”

Craig Wells – Guitar

 

My Sister’s Machine



“The official term I guess we have been stuck using is alternative hard rock. Alternative, I guess, because it’s not your ‘normal’ approach, what we do.”

“Tough one. Basically yes, but I would say it’s not really a Seattle Sound. I would like to rephrase that to more like a Seattle attitude.”

“It’s both actually. The original Seattle Sound that people were talking about was most exemplified by bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana, Mudhoney and probably Green River. That’s where the real Seattle Sound thing came from but now I would call it a Seattle attitude because, loosely put, I still feel that The Posies have the Seattle Sound. The Accused have the Seattle Sound. I say that now because even The Posies, for instance, are not cliché pop. Not your ‘normal’ pop. It’s still got that Seattle feel to it – Seattle attitude. They are taking a different angle towards what they are doing. Whether it’s The Accused or anything like that, the attitude, the approach they are taking at whatever they write, whether it’s pop, grunge or garage, it’s still a little bit of a different angle than other bands [elsewhere] that are doing [the same genre]. I think that’s why the labels still think there is some promise in acts in Seattle. It’s still the band’s [originality] – not just because they are from Seattle.”

Chris Gohde – Bass

 

Queensryche

 

“Sonic portraits.”

“In as much as we are from Seattle, yes.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s an oblique reference to the large body of water located west of First Avenue.”

Chris DeGarmo – Lead Guitar

 

Sedated Souls

 

“I’d describe our music as alternative, heavy, commercial and kind of gloomy. Even tho I play it, I don’t know how to describe it. I guess I would call it ‘feelings put to music’.”

Junior – Guitar

“I guess so, in a way and I guess in a way, no.”

Jeff Burns – Guitar

“I don’t know, I think the Seattle Sound [category] is a great thing, but I don’t think that since we live in a certain place that we have to play [a certain] kind of music to be successful.”

Junior – Guitar

 

Rhino Humpers

 

“Hip-hop, funk rock, groove.”

“We’re ’91 disco on drugs!”

Jeff Rouse –

Danny –

“No, because I think that the Seattle Sound is identified as grunge and we are not a grunge band.”

“The attitude is the sound and the sound is grunge.”

Brian Coloff –

 

Dirt Love Injection

 

“Love music straight from the dirt.”

“Grab the ball and beat your feet to the schizo-cosmic bittersweet and leave the driver in the back seat rock ‘n’ roll.”

Chris Selleck –

Don Carter –

“Yes, I consider us a Seattle band but I don’t know what the Seattle Sound is.”

“The attitude is what inspires the sound and the music from Seattle is motivated by emotion rather than teenyboppers’ allowances.”

Don Carter –

1991_04_CityHeat_SOS4 

The Posies

 

“I don’t know. It’s funny, we always just say it’s rock and roll music, you know? Which is true because if there is one thing that all bands are sick of, it’s typecasting or being categorized or being compared to another band. But I suppose it’s inevitable ultimately. We always just say, ‘Just rock and roll’.”

“Sure, absolutely. As to what that means to somebody else, I may be totally wrong, but you know, in our vision, sure!”

“I don’t think the attitude amongst Seattle musicians really has anything to do with it or really ever did. That’s the funny part. But I guess everybody kind of inspired each other about the same time. All of a sudden there was this big flood of bands, new bands cropping up everywhere and I think everybody would agree now, that’s kind of over. That big rush that got all the hype around the world. So it’s funny now when people say the Seattle Sound, it’s like it’s just reaching some parts [globally]. It’s just not like it was or anything. I think it’s also just a term described in the press and especially to people outside of Seattle. You know, I never really thought there was like a Seattle Sound, but there certainly was one in the minds of journalists in other parts of the country who were looking for the heavy stuff and, I don’t know, that’s what it became obviously. No, there isn’t really a Seattle Sound at all. There is more of a reputation that I think just about every band would be sick of having to live up to. I know we certainly are.”

Rick Roberts – Bass

 

Pearl Jam

 

“What kind of music do we make? We make some good music. I don’t know, we make our own music. We make whatever all our combined influences make, and we make rock and roll I guess.”

“Well yeah, we’re from Seattle. Definitely.”

“I think it’s a little bit of both. The grunge factor of it is definitely prevalent, but there is also The Posies, who are totally pop sounding and great and what we are doing is definitely not grunge but it’s a Seattle Sound because we are from Seattle.”

Mike McCready – Lead Guitar

 

Ministry Of Love

 

“The kind of music we play is kind of art rock-based with very rich harmonic structures. No power chords, but a lot of stuff going on harmonically and arrangement-wise. It’s kind of a rock with a lot of fusion and psychedelic and classical influences thrown in.”

“With the Seattle Sound relating to grunge and SubPop and stuff like that; we are diametrically opposed to it. I think the Seattle Sound is changing actually.”

“I think it’s both. There is the attitude of ‘here we are and we’re just doing our own thing’, I also think the Seattle Sound is changing. And what it’s changing to is something that requires a little more attention from the listener’s perspective. I think it is changing to things that are more experimental in terms of dynamics. People that are not afraid to play quietly as well as playing loud. I think people are going to explore more, different kinds of ideas.”

Ken Sorenson – Lead Guitar

 

Sweet Water

 

“It’s hard ‘rawk’. I would say it’s rock but I would also say it’s got a lot of hooks in it. It’s meant to be a clean sound so that you can hear everything and it’s catchy. I don’t want to call it pop because we’re not aiming for that. But it’s like, when I hear a song I’d like to have something hook in my head. There’s a lot of bands out there who get these cheap kind of sayings, that just mean nothing. But when I’m writing lyrics I think I’m trying to go for something that sticks in your head but won’t be cheesy. You know what I mean? It’s a fine line.”

“I wouldn’t consider ourselves to be part of the Seattle Sound necessarily. When we started out, we used to be Shot Gun Mama. Now we got a new guitarist and he added a whole other dimension to the sound. He knows a lot about music and we sort of fell we’re playing what we’ve always wanted to play. At least what I’ve always wanted to play since high school. No, I wouldn’t consider us part of the Seattle Sound because, ‘what is the Seattle Sound?’ It’s just kind of like a SubPop, grungy, one riff played over and over again. It’s great live and everything but I don’t listen to that kind of music all the time. You know what I mean?”

  1. “I think the attitude is where it’s at because…definitely…every band in Seattle I’ve been around, it’s like everyone kind of helps each other out. Which I think is pretty rare for a city, you know what I mean? It’s still competitive, but in a good way. Everyone just tries to better themselves and you kind of feed off each other. There is a lot of things happening in Seattle and I feel the music is a little bit more real up here than in other places like L.A. or something,”

Adam Cziesler – Vocals

I think we’d all have to agree with that.

Thank you, musicians of Seattle.

All of you!

 

 

 

 

Bad Company & Damn Yankees at Seattle Center Coliseum
Precious Metal at Parkers
Posies, Bathtub Gin & Sweetwater at The Backstage
Aurora – On The Edge
Flesh Cafe – Demo
Bob Rivers – Industry Profile

Heart: “Everything Is Connected” [City Heat – December 1990]

City Heat - Heart

“Like Chief Seattle said. ‘Everything is connected.’ If you think that you can just be a consumer inside your own little world and not affect the world outside you, you’re nuts. All the new people moving up who don’t have envi­ronmental consciousness are acting like flood waters eroding the area. I’m not trying to be anti-California or new people at all. What we are trying to do is just educate everybody that we have a great area. When you move into the area, slow down, take a look around, recycle and change your way of thinking.”

Many other Washingtonians share the sentiments of the Wil­son sisters and are actively involved in this education process. Even if you fancy your­self to be more of the ‘inactive’ type, you’re helping out just by attending Heart’s benefit concert on the 8th. Since we all know who Heart are, I’ll keep the history to a minimum.

Way back in the late 60′ s. Ann Wilson was in love with a draft evader named Michael Fisher. His brother Roger and Steve Fossen had a band called The Army (somewhat ironic, eh?). Ann joined and they called it Hocus Pocus. When they ran to Canada they re-named it Heart. Nancy had been playing coffee houses in college and when she came in the line-up included Howard Leese and Michael DeRosier circa ’75. Around the turn of the decade Ann, Nancy and Howard enlisted the talents of Mark Andes on bass and Denny Carmassi on drums, and that’s been Heart ever since.

CH: “Let’s talk about the benefit. Who came up with the idea?

Ann: “Actually we’ve been trying to do this for a few years. We got to thinking what could we possibly do for our area. We have been all over the world and we always come back to Seattle. There is something about it that is so different and so sweet, fresh, and special to us that we wanted to make a gesture and so we thought what we can do is just not blow through town like usual and take the money and run. How about if we give our services. Do what we do best. Make the money and turn around and put it back into the hands of the city, but for a certain purpose which is clean­ing the water, cleaning the air. the wetlands especially. Puget Sound is only the front yard. The mountains and the forests are the backyards so what we’re do­ing is trying to get the whole area, keeping it stable by putting all this money into various groups that know what to do with it. Nancy and 1 first came up with the idea about four years ago and tried to get it together in Seattle then and we couldn’t even make anyone bat an eyelash then be­cause it wasn’t hip.”

CH: “And probably the need hadn’t been realized.”

Ann: “Right. It was before the big influx of people from Cali­fornia and all that kind of stuff. And so now we just kept on push­ing and we finally were able to get some business people around town to put in some money and get the whole thing moving and also our other sister Lynn is mar­ried to Ted Pankosky, who is the president of the Washington En­vironmental Council and so all of a sudden it is like a family thrust, you know. So it’s also about now that it’s sold out in the round and it’s going to be quite an exciting night.”

CH: “So who will this benefit and in what ways?”

Ann: “It’s a push to make money for local environmental groups, especially the Washington Council and at the concert there is going to be literature ga­lore specifying exactly where all the money is going.  We plan to raise probably $50,000 that night, purely for the environment. If people are curious as to where it is going, they can read this from Nancy and I saying how people, what they do inside their own home. Not a big scary govern­mental finger shaking thing. Just like, tips that normal people can do in normal ways in their homes, to make a difference. It’s just like a very middle class kind of idea. It’s not aimed at anything except every man.”

CH: “Almost at the grass roots level. OK, how about the show itself?”

Ann: “what people can ex­pect to see, really is Heart at its peak, at it’s stride in 1990. What began in the Moore Theatre way back in March is now like a big monster. We took the Moore for two weeks to get the show to­gether and like rehearsed every­thing and get used to being on stage and stuff. So what you are going to see is the latest genera­tion of lighting technology that is not technology any more. It’s more like art. It’s just like the* colors we are using in the air right now are rich, thick jewel colors and it’s -almost like the music is only half of the beauty. It’s something to see and it’s something to hear. Nancy is back playing acoustic guitars along with electric gui­tars. We are doing a couple of ‘ songs that aren’t even on a record.”

CH: “Cool Covers? Or are they unreleased originals?”

Ann: “One of them is called You’re the Voice, which we have released in Russia only so far. The rest I want to be a surprise. I don’t want to wreck the whole thing.”

CH: “After the benefit you only have a couple of stops left on the tour, right?”

Ann: “Then we are going to come home and be people and have Christmas with our fami­lies. After that, we’re going to just be people for a while and then start writing songs. Nancy and I are going to write, songs for the next Heart record. We’re also very excited about doing a dual solo album. Only Ann and Nancy. I mean not to the break up of the band or anything but just two of us doing what we like to do that’s not appropriate for Heart. Which is more acoustic stuff, more deeper lyrical content, bluesy stuff.”

CH: “As though there were room for anymore, what else ya got going?”

Ann: “When we get back to Seattle after Christmas, we’ll be way into that. We are going to build a world class studio in Se­attle at last.”

CH: “Now, will that be some­thing that’s in your homes or is it going to be available to local mu­sicians that have money to rent it?”

Ann: It will be for everybody to use but it will be to our speci­fications. Seattle so far has been very backward when it comes to state of the art, up to the minute, recording studios. We are so sick of having to always go away to L.A. to record and living in that place down there. We feel like it actually infringes on our edges as musicians. So that’s why we are making the studio in Seattle fi­nally.”

CH: “Best city ever.”

Ann: “”Capital Hill is really an amazing area. It’s full of art­ists and full of rock people. That’s where I live when I’m not on the road. Our drummer lives in San Francisco and our bass player lives in L.A. but the core of the band Howard, Nancy and I still live in Seattle. People in Seattle have always coexisted with us and let us just be ourselves and not made our lives miserable. Like, there is always a few kids hanging around my gate but they are loving people, they are not nutso or weirdos. necessarily. It’s where we were raised and where we intend to be with our fami­lies.”

Speaking of families, you may have heard something a while back about Ann pursuing an adoption. Seems the rumor’s true and she may be a mother as soon as February. Yet another good reason to make Seattle home. We’re glad that they’re proud of their home and we’d like to thank them for their efforts that will benefit everyone. We’d also like to wish Heart (and everyone else) a happy holiday season and a rippin’ nineteen ninety-one.

CH: “How long do you see Heart going on? You’ve just re­newed your Capitol contract for five more albums.”

Ann: “That’s impossible to say. Heart will exist as long as it’s meaningful to do it. As long as it’s appropriate. If it turns into a nightmare, we’ll knock it on the head. But, if it keeps on being cool, then…”

CH: “Is that Nancy laughing in the background?”

Ann: “Yeah, Nancy’s laugh­ing. She thought that was a funny way to put it. Like Nancy says, ‘we’ll knock it on the head, we’ll clean it, cook it and eat it.'”

CH: “Alright some fisher woman.”

Ann: “Yeah, fisher woman, fisher folk. Fish wives. But any­way, so I think we’ve got a few more years left in us, you know?”

CH: “We agree.”

City Heat - Heart Continued...

 

Billy Idol & Faith No More at Seattle Center Coliseum [City Heat – December 1990]

Hot Flashes – In ConcertDec 1990 City Heat InConcert: Billy Idol Faith No More
Billy Idol
Faith No More

This was  a Halloween not soon forgotten and a concert equally memorable. 18,000 crazed goblins, pregnant nuns, ghoulish beings and just plain night owls gathered to spend All Hallow’s Eve with kindred spirits. Pre-show I asked Faith No More’s Jim Martin if his festive self was dressing up for the occasion. An enthused, “Of course!” was followed by, “I’m planning to change my t-shirt.”

Tho visibly road-weary, FNM smashed open pumpkin night with “From Out Of Nowhere”, marshaling all the tenacity and power that makes their stage show a must-see. Center stage, sporting gorilla fur pants, red flannel shirt (no doubt an ode to our fair city) and a Doris Day wig, Michael Patton went immediately into his flinging, flailing, stomping routine that I overheard one truly un-PC mother describe as a “good imitation of a retarded person”.

Next up was their most current cool cut, “Falling To Pieces”. They crammed “Underwater Love”, “Surprise, You’re Dead”, (my favorite) “The Real Thing” and (the only number from a previous album) “We Care A Lot” into their formidable opening set – highlighted by joyously cheeky renditions of the Nestle’s Alpine White jingle and “The Edge Of The World”.

This being the dangerous combination of both Halloween and the last date of FNM’s stint on the Charmed Life tour, we were in for some surprises. In the midst of thumping out their “Epic” hit, Mr. Idol’s road crew thumped the band with a huge amount of smelt from the lighting rig in an overkill MTV reprise of their iconic video star. After flinging fish into the crowd and taking their bows, FNM returned to the stage for a cover of The Commodores’ “Easy (Like Sunday Morning)” with the help of three bath-robed housewives singing backup and opening their robes to flash mammoth false breasts. An un-false mooning from the girls accompanied the curtain call and there was still more fun in store.

As soon as Idol hit the stage with “Cradle Of Love”, it began. A gorilla (looking suspiciously similar in stature to Patton) came dancing around stage right, surprising the beautiful duo singing backups. Then it joined along with their choreographed dance steps, all the while Billy Idol rocking the chuckling crowd, oblivious to the show stealing going on behind him.

Mr. Idol gave an energetic performance that seemed little affected by his recent lameness. A slight limp barely noticeable, he posed and sneered and swaggered as if in top form.

He rattled off his long list of hits, from the latest back to Gen X days for “The Untouchables”. Songs from an MTV generation: “Eyes Without A Face”, “White Wedding”, “Rebel Yell” and “Flesh For Fantasy” which featured a pretty neat-o robotic, chest-baring dance move from the Idol one.

The real kicker, however, came in the midst of his encore, “To Be A Lover”. Heads covered with masks, paper bags and towels, five guys (quite rightly assumed to be FNM) circled Idol, dancing around him butt-naked. Pretty damn scary!

Seattle Times Tempo Section: Word by Patrick McDonald

Remembered in RIPAndrew Wood of Mother Love Bone

November 2, 1992 Tempo Seattle Post-Intelligencer

November 2, 1990 Seattle Times Tempo Section: Word column by Patrick McDonald

is remembered in an interview in the December issue of Rip Magazine. Conducted by writer Michael Browning, the interview took place last March 15, one day before Wood was found unconscious from a heroin overdose. He died four days later when taken off life support systems.

Wood is open about his drug problems, saying “I’m lucky to be sitting here.”He talks about getting out of rehab and insists he is clean. “I was a druggy until I went into treatment,” he says, “I’m not doing it anymore.” He’s upbeat and positive about MLB’s future.

A companion piece includes an interview with Xana La Fuente, Wood’s girrIfriend, who found him unconscious. “It’s really cool and weird, ’cause he wrote so much religious stuff in the weeks prior to his death,” she is quoted as saying. “All these songs about heaven and dying.” Incidentally, the Seattle Times Tempo Word Patrick McDonald 11.2.90same issue has articles on Queensryche and Alice in Chains.

Word by Patrick McDonald

Soundgarden: “Meet Ben Shepherd” [City Heat – August 1990]

August 1990 CityHeat Cover

August 1990 CityHeat Cover

Soundgarden. Yeah! City Heat’s got ’em. Had to travel for it tho. You think these guys would make it easy for Seattle’s Music Magazine by granting an interview in Seattle? No way! So we motored down to Portland for their show with Alice In Chains at the Melody Lane Ballroom on July 25th. Okay, truth is we were stoked for the road trip and the killer double bill!

Getting dinner and a photo shoot behind them, we sat down with Kim, Chris and Ben to get the exclusive poop. What’s that? Ben who? you say? On their records you know Hiro Yamamoto was playing bass. Then after the release of Louder Than Love you heard about Jason Everman dropping six in Nirvana to play four in Soundgarden. Now, who’s this Ben chap of which we speak?

Briefly, 21 year old Ben Shepherd has lived and played on Bainbridge Island for the past 18 years. Some of you relics out there may remember him from the days of Gorilla Gardens and The Metropolis when he was in, what he termed, a melodic punk rock band called March Of Crimes. Laying low, he’s since sang, played nad wrote for a band (who shall remain nameless) that played a very few shows in island towns before its swift demise.
Then from out of his relative obscurity, he is suddenly an integral cog in the critically acclaimed machine that is Soundgarden. We asked Ben to tell us the whole story of his transformation into SG’s ‘politically correct’ bassist.

Soundgarden

Soundgarden

Ben Shepherd: “Well, I’ve known Kim for a while, so he hunted me down and asked me to try out.”
City Heat: “Then what?”
BS: “Then they, ah………they fucked up (laughter all around).”
CH: “Like how?”
BS: “They took the wrong bass player.”
Chris Cornell: “Actually I had a dream, Ben. Did I tell you that? I had a dream I was in a room with your brother, apologizing to him for not choosing you in the first place. [Again addressing me] That was after we’d already chosen him.”

After Louder Than Love came out they held auditions for bass players. When Hiro decided to travel a different path it left the band in a lurch with not-a-lot of time to spend deliberating over a replacement.
BS: “I practiced or jammed with them a couple of times, I didn’t even know their songs worth a crap tho at all. But it was totally fun jamming with them. I hadn’t jammed with anyone for a while and it was flattering as fuck.”
CH: “Then what happened? You came in, jammed about a week….”
BS: “Not even a week, twice. Then Jason knew the songs better and they were in a really awkward bind at that time. They had the record out and needed to tour immediately, so they had to make a quick choice. So they chose Jason and the chemistry didn’t work.”
By the end of the tour they’d made up their minds to give the job to Ben.
CC: “We made the decision to play with Ben simultaneously with deciding that Jason wasn’t the right guy.”
Although both players had auditioned at the same time last year, member replacement is seldom easy and far from an exact science.
CC: “You can’t predict from a few meetings exactly what someone’s gonna be like and how they’re going to interact with the band. Mainly musically, but in most ways, we just didn’t click. It wasn’t anything necessarily ‘wrong’ with Jason. Band chemistry is really fragile so you can’t just make a choice and be one hundred percent correct.
CH: “So they got home and Kim called you up?” What did he say to you, ‘you’re on the team’?”
BS: “Actually Chris asked me. We were all looking at his little dog, hanging out at Chris’ place and he said, ‘Well, we were wondering what you’d think about playing with us?’. I just looked at my shoes real quick, ‘Fuck yeah!'”
So they had a few days to practice and after playing a couple opening numbers for Alice at the Lake City Concert Hall, were whisked off to Europe. The opening date of that tour happened to be the festival in Roskilde, Denmark.
CC: “His first actual show with us was in front of about 5,000 people.”
Karen Mason: “Was that a rush, first time going out?”
BS: “Well it was definitely a rush knowing my bass was plugged into a direct recording thing. That tripped me out ’cause the could hear every little sound.”
CC: “We were being recorded for broadcast by some radio station over there.”
After playing another big festival and a few more club dates, they’re back stateside and working up new material together. The band as a whole seems to gel well and all are contributing to the new songs. They’ve got a song on the soundtrack fro an upcoming movie and for those fortunate (intelligent?) enough to be members of Sub Pop’s Single of the Month Club, a tasty surprise.
The seven inch featuring H.I.V. Baby (produced by their sound man, Stuart Hallerman) will be available only to those elite peoples. But that’s not to say you may never find the tunes on a future full-length. Cornell likens Sheperd’s contribution (“H.I.V. Baby”) to a 90’s feeling “My Generation”.
CH: “What’s on the B-side?”
Kim Thayil: “Room A Thousand Years Wide.”
CH: “So you wrote H.I.V. Baby and play on both tracks?”
BS: “Yeah.”
CC: “Actually we were deciding between three songs that were his, but we have trouble with that kind of thing. If somebody writes for a movie or a single or something, a lot of times the songs will end up better than we’d expected and we want to save it for a record. So we kept juggling all these songs and couldn’t decide what to use.”
Next up is another (another? yes, another) U.S. leg supporting their Louder Than Love tour. Once the tour is finally over, they’ll be thinking about a new album which will be recorded either here in Seattle, Vancouver, B.C. or San Francisco. Just about anywhere but Los Angeles which, they all agree and inform me, is ‘completely uninspiring’.

Ben Shepherd onstage at Melody Lane Ballroom, Portland, OR.

Ben Shepherd onstage at Melody Lane Ballroom, Portland, OR, July 25, 1990.

Shots from this photo shoot are available directly from Karen Mason-Blair.
http://karenmasonblair.com/

 

 

Paisley Sin: Hot Flashes [City Heat – July 1990]

Paisley SinJuly 1990 City Heat Cover
It’s Not Just A Hobby… It’s A Hassle
Inde Demo Tape

Listening to Z-Rock the other day, I was somewhat surprised to hear The Secret on  that station. Then it occurred to me that the song rocks plenty for their format.

Which brought me back to, ‘Why was I surprised’?
I’ve had this tape for about a year now and I guess I just finally realized how versatile Paisley Sin is. From the denying Ain’t Nothin‘ to the starry night feel of Tribute to the funky, tongue-in-cheek This Is The Life, back to the heavy Out & Down.

This bass-driven collection of tunes runs the gamut. As such, it proves to be a good reference point but still nothing compared to the live Sin. However, it is a must for Seattle aficionados.

Looking forward, now more than ever, to their next release!