Grunge: Then and now

Bob Whitaker was slouched over his beater car at a West Seattle gas station when an unlikely guru -- a "slob-rocker in a lowered, total hot-rod truck" -- enlightened him about just how huge Nirvana was about to become.

On that late summer day 10 years ago, Whitaker -- one of Sub Pop's original employees who would go on to manage Mudhoney and now pays his bills as REM's road manager -- heard the unmistakable sound of the band only he and a few other Northwest scenesters had followed since its early shows in Olympia.


	Jason Finn Now: Finn was a drummer for such bands as Skin Yard, Love Battery and the Presidents. These days, he doesn't have to work. Meryl Schenker/P-I

"This guy was just cranking 'Teen Spirit,'" Whitaker said recently, recalling his shock at realizing the music that had been safe underground had been commandeered into the mainstream. "I just remember thinking to myself, 'Oh my God, how horrifying.'"

And right about then, an insular scene exploded from the garages, dive bars and house parties along Interstate 5 into arenas and stadiums all over the world -- an unlikely fate for the diverse group of Northwest musicians and their fans who had been united in their rejection of the slick, "corporate" rock that dominated the airwaves in the late 1980s.

With the sudden impact of a well-executed power chord, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and other "grunge" bands blew arena rockers like Motley Crue and Poison off the charts.

The outsiders were suddenly in.

Some of those people who lived through it got rich or famous; some just survived -- and others did not.

But few could explain what happened better than those who were here before grunge broke and stayed to watch it blast off, explode and fall back to earth. These are some of their stories.

Something special was happening

If Seattle bands overthrew the music establishment, record producer and engineer Jack Endino helped lead the charge. He recorded Nirvana's first album, "Bleach," for Sub Pop in 1989, and has worked with Soundgarden, Mudhoney and dozens of other bands.


	Jason Finn Then: An image of the popularly elected president showed up in a photo of the popular Presidents of the United States of America (from left, Jason Finn, Chris Bellew, Bill Clinton and Dave Dederer).

"It was exactly and very consciously that (a revolt). The bands here were specifically wanting to get back to a classic, honest kind of rock 'n' roll music," Endino said. "And whether is was heavy rock or punk rock, or garage rock or whatever, the idea was let's do something that's very honest and genuine and not think about it too hard."

Endino said from the beginning, local musicians realized something special was happening.

"Everybody had this unspoken awareness ... If only the world could find out about this because we've got some great bands here."

And although they were operating underground, many were ready to take a grab at the big money.

"You get ripped off by enough indie labels and you do enough starving tours in a van sleeping on people's floors that after a while, the big sellout doesn't seem so bad."

And so the world found out about Seattle's secret. By the mid-1990s, MTV and radio playlists were littered with bands trying to mimic the Seattle sound, with varying degrees of success. For Endino, the imitators signaled the end.

"Those (original Seattle) bands are copied as much as the classic bands of before," he said. "The novelty has worn off."


	Matt Dresdner Now: Dresdner works as a graphic designer and focuses on family. Meryl Schenker/P-I

While the novelty of the early grunge years has faded, Endino's love of music certainly hasn't. He has recorded about 150 records and recently returned from Brazil, where he was in the studio with a rock group called The Titans.

"I'm always up for a new experience," he said. "I've produced records in 10 countries right now. I've gotten to go places nobody goes."

But for all his travels, Endino doubts the chemistry, talent and timing that made the Seattle scene grab the world's attention will occur again. Not that what's going on in the local music scene these days is lacking, he said. "It's just all over the map.

"Which isn't bad; it's not good as far as the world being able to understand it and put it in a box."

"A music scene'

Years before grunge was even a smudge on the map, a young artist with an unbelievable voice sang in coffee shops and at open-mic nights around Antioch University in Ohio. Filled with hope and on a mission to make music, Mia Zapata and three others formed the Gits and moved to Seattle. They would become symbols of the violent end of the scene's innocence.


	Matt Dresdner Then: "Seattle sounded pretty good; we heard there was a music scene," said bass guitarist Matt Dresdner. The Gits, from left, were: Steve Moriarty, Matt Dresdner, Joe Spleen and Mia Zapata.

"I had a bass guitar and could barely play it," Matt Dresdner recalled. "Seattle sounded pretty good; we heard there was a music scene. So we came out to set up camp and see how things would go."

Dresdner got a job as a brewer with Hales Ales and he and his bandmates began playing. One of the people in the audience at the first show was Sub Pop owner Jonathan Poneman, who no doubt was impressed by the group's fiery lead singer.

"He promptly booked us to play our second show at the Hub Ballroom with Nirvana and Tad," Dresdner said. "That was scary."

"It was huge show, but we never really felt like we fit in with the rest of the music that was becoming so popular around here -- and that became pretty clear when we weren't asked to do any more big shows," Dresdner said. But to a band on a mission, it was of little concern.

Dresdner remembers well the sense of community between bands and fans that made Seattle special before the big labels came to town.

"The bands would come from practice, hang out at The Comet and everyone would share pitchers of Rainier," he said. "And hand out fliers to each other and staple them to the poles before Mark Sidran put a stop to that. And even if it was a guy or a woman you didn't know and they said, 'We're playing down at Squid Row tomorrow,' half the people would go show up and check them out. It felt like people were supportive."

The Gits never headlined arenas, but they witnessed the weirdness that was the corporate and media craze for all things Seattle after Nirvana's initial success. The band was actually half a world away playing small clubs in Europe on a self-booked tour when the hype began.

"The major labels started a signing frenzy for anything that they could say 'alternative' with quotes on it. They were grabbing them like half-done pasta, throwing it at the wall to see what would stick," Dresdner said. "If they ended up with one decent radio hit, they would invest more money in that band. Those that didn't come up with the radio hit were dropped like hot rocks but were still under contract. It was a career-ruining boom."

Of course that didn't stop bands from trying. People who previously would have moved to Los Angeles or New York to break into the music world packed their vans and headed for the Pacific Northwest.

Suddenly, those cozy drinking sessions at The Comet Tavern between a few local bands and their friends seemed very crowded.

In July 1993, as an ever-increasing number of groups struggled for attention, a horrific crime shocked the community. The Gits' 27-year-old Zapata was murdered, a crime that remains unsolved.

"The purity of the scene, the innocence, was lost on that day," Dresdner said. "It wasn't all fun and games anymore. I can't even begin to describe the sense of loss. One of my dearest, best friends, part of my family, part of a collective mission was just brutally stolen from us."

These days, Dresdner works as a graphic designer, and his life no longer revolves around the next show. "My mission is much simpler. Home life and my wife. That's what gives me joy."

Hail to the chiefs

By the mid-1990s, Seattle's music community, saturated by too many bands and reeling from the tragic deaths of Kurt Cobain, Zapata and others, was in need of some laughter.

Enter the Presidents of the United States of America, with a chicken for every pot -- a peach for every can. The power trio's distinctive sound, and humor, set them apart from their more dour contemporaries.

Jason Finn, who drummed in Endino's band Skin Yard in the late 1980s before becoming part of Love Battery, another guitar-driven Seattle band, was looking for something to do just after completing that band's best record -- "Straight Freak Ticket" -- when he got involved with the Presidents.

Months later, he made one of the hardest decisions in his career, and quit Love Battery.

"I realized I couldn't do both," Finn said. "Everybody in town said you're crazy. Except for (Soundgarden guitarist) Kim Thayil, who said, 'Good call.'"

The two musicians could apparently see that people were ready for another big change. And looking back you could see it everywhere.

"Seattle had gone from being an extremely responsive crowd with slam dancing to a kind of just standing there crowd," Finn said.

But when the Presidents fired off groovy jams like "Lump" -- an anthem for a character that sat emotionless in a marsh with a beating heart -- crowds went wild.

"Journalists were telling us, OK, you guys are the response to grunge in Seattle, you are the embodiment of people being sick of it or just wanting something else," he added. "We, of course, thought it was total garbage from where we were sitting. But maybe that did have something to do with how people responded to us."

These days Finn, who hasn't held a job outside music since quitting his bartending gig to tour with the Presidents, can often be found riding his bicycle around town or trying to grease the skids to make sure he's at every Mariners post-season game. Like many former presidents, Finn is set for life.

A place to play

Steve Freeborn and Tia Matthews opened the OK Hotel in 1988 behind a plywood sheet, but the place grew into the venue for bands that not only nurtured the kinds of alternative music that the industry devoured insatiably, but -- at considerable personal expense -- stayed open for under-aged fans.

Among those who played the venue before they made it to magazine covers were Nirvana, Mother Love Bone and the Presidents as well as a slough of alternative, punk and jazz bands.

"It was hard to believe that our friends were making it big, but they're not rock stars; they're not the guy that you think is the rock-star guy," Freeborn said.

The venue didn't start making money until they opened up a bar in the front.

"At the time we got liquor, our booking agent thought that it would be a disaster," she said. "He thought nobody would respect us any more. It turned out to be completely untrue."

But sadly, after more than a decade of rolling with rock, the OK Hotel literally crumbled out of existence after last Feb. 28's earthquake; Matthews and Freeborn decided to close the damaged venue and plan to open an alternative movie house in Belltown.

The Midas touch

Ed Fotheringham was an illustrator who turned his friendship with the guys from Mudhoney into steady, lucrative work.

After graduating from college in 1986, Fotheringham and friends Mark Arm and Steve Turner of Mudhoney formed the Thrown Ups.

"We were so bad that we figured we could only play for about 15 minutes," he said. "It was an adventure in drinking and making a mess of myself and others."

When Mudhoney began to enjoy commercial success, they turned to their old friend for art work.

"I got a pretty good chunk of change for (the Mudhoney album "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge") and decided to quit my day job."

He went into the New Yorker magazine in 1992 with his portfolio, and two days later was offered a job. "Being from Seattle in 1992 was golden, especially having anything to do with alternative music or grunge."

From his humble start, Fotheringham took his skills also to The Wall Street Journal, Honda ads and Neiman Marcus.

From there, he was able to buy a house. "The job gave me a nest egg."

Rock on.