"Sub Pop is so incredibly good, it's irresistible."
Each month, Jivewired Radio and Jivewired.com will feature one indie record label and dedicate a block of music each Saturday showcasing the artists on the featured label. The featured indie label for January and February 2012 is Sub Pop Records.
Sub Pop and Jivewired have an interesting intermingling, historically speaking. Our first listener poll ranked "Ruminant Band" by Fruit Bats as the number one song for the month of November 2009 (back when we were still called SonicJive Radio). I believe we got the song for free from a distribution site that is no longer in existence called Amie Street and it was an instant fan favorite.
But I digress.
We will air our Sub Pop Records segment every Saturday throughout the month of January and February. The show will air each Saturday from Noon to Midnight CDT on Jivewired Radio powered by Live365.
To listen, just press play on the radio widget to the right or use this link to open in a new window that will allow you to listen when you navigate away from this page:
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About Sub Pop Records:
Sub Pop Records
Sub Pop Records is based in Seattle, WA.
Sub Pop Records patrols the depths of the music world. One of the best-known independent rock record labels in the United States, Sub Pop promotes a roster of artists bubbling under the surface of mainstream success, including Jennifer Gentle, Low, The Postal Service, The Shins, Sleater-Kinney, and The Thermals. The company distributes CDs as well as digital audio and video media, but it also continues to distribute vinyl LPs and 12" singles. President Jonathan Poneman and partner Bruce Pavitt started Sub Pop in 1988.
The origins of Sub Pop can be traced back to the early 1980s when Bruce Pavitt started a fanzine called Subterranean Pop that focused exclusively on American independent record labels. By the fourth issue, Pavitt had shortened the name to Sub Pop and began alternating issues with compilation tapes of underground rock bands. The Sub Pop #5 cassette, released in 1982, sold two thousand copies.
In November 1988 Sub Pop released "Love Buzz", the debut single by Nirvana, as the first entry in the Sub Pop Singles Club, a subscription service that would allow subscribers to receive singles by the label on a monthly basis by mail. The club made Sub Pop a powerful force in the Seattle scene, and effectively made the label's name synonymous with the music of the Seattle area—much in the same way Motown Records was to Detroit—and helped to secure the label's cash flow.
It was Soundgarden that brought Sub Pop label chiefs Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman together in Seattle in 1987.
Poneman, a music promoter and DJ on public radio station KCMU, was a quiet observer, thoughtful, analytical, Pavitt says. By contrast, Pavitt wore his passion for Northwest rock and punk on his sleeve. “There was always something on the tip of his tongue that he was enthusiastic about,” according to Mark Arm, singer and guitarist for the Sub Pop bands Mudhoney, Green River and The Monkeywrench.
At that point, Pavitt had already been using the name Sub Pop for various projects: a fanzine and cassette series, his own radio show on KCMU, and a column in the local music paper The Rocket. He’d also released an album called Sub Pop 100 that included indie groups like Sonic Youth as well as Northwest punk bands the Wipers and the U-Men. Poneman offered to finance Screaming Life by hard rockers Soundgarden, and he and Pavitt became partners in Sub Pop. They quit their day jobs, and on April 1, 1988 they moved into a tiny office in Seattle's Terminal Sales Building. They stacked boxes of records around the toilet.
From their earliest days together, the pair spoke publicly about “world domination.” Of course it was largely a goof. Sub Pop, after all, hailed from Seattle. In the late 1980s, Microsoft had yet to conquer the world’s computers, and Starbucks had not yet opened on every corner. Seattle was the rain-soaked backwater to most of the country, and to the music industry in particular.
That said, Pavitt and Poneman were serious about creating a brand for the label that would rival classics like Motown or Blue Note. Many of their early releases featured a uniform look: a black bar across the top, with the band’s name in all capital letters, followed by the release name, all in a sans-serif font. Many of those early records also featured the iconic, action-packed rock photography of Charles Peterson.
Credits for the albums and singles often listed only Peterson and producer Jack Endino. Paring down the text, Pavitt says, pumped up the visceral connection to the records, added a sense of mystery, and branded Peterson and Endino as Sub Pop’s house photographer and producer.
And then there was the logo. “That logo was a large reason of why I wanted to work with Bruce,” Poneman says. Evolving over time through use in Pavitt’s Rocket column and on Sub Pop 100, the mark was another key ingredient in creating an image for the label. Stark, simple, with a white-on-black “SUB” stacked above the black-on-white “POP,” the logo lent itself to reproduction on the tiniest CD spine to the largest poster. In the early days, shirts with the logo outsold Sub Pop’s records.
“We learned early on that probably the best way we could spend promotional money was to make a profit having other people wear our logo,” Pavitt says.
Indeed, relentless branding was the Sub Pop approach. At the time, 7-inch vinyl singles were the hip currency in punk. Issuing them in limited runs made them instantly coveted, and encouraged word-of-mouth interest in Sub Pop. But it also bred frustration when fans found the singles immediately sold out at record shops. From this conundrum came the Sub Pop Singles Club: fans subscribed to a series of monthly, limited-release 7-inches. The label got paid up front, fans got rare vinyl by mail, and excitement moved through the underground about that label from Seattle.
While courting devoted fans, Sub Pop also courted the press, and the British music press in particular. UK outlets such as Melody Maker and the New Music Express were given to hyperbolic fawning, which suited Sub Pop’s own exaggerated marketing. In March 1989, the label paid to put Melody Maker’s Everett True on a Seattle-bound plane to come soak up the scene. His excited report back, “Seattle: Rock City” whet European appetites for all things Northwest, including Seattle’s pared-down punk and metal hybrid known as grunge rock.
Three months later, Sub Pop released Bleach, the first album by Nirvana. Although the album was not an immediate hit, it generated big buzz in American indie circles. Tastemaker Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth offered props to both Nirvana and Mudhoney in interviews. Bands that once drew 100 hipsters to Seattle clubs were now selling out the city’s Moore Theater. Meanwhile, Sub Pop released records by heavy rockers Tad, the universally offensive Dwarves, and feminist badasses L7, among scores of others.
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This month we will be featuring the following songs and artists that are a part of the Sub Pop Records current and back catalog.
01. Love Buzz by Nirvana
02. The Ruminant Band by Fruit Bats
03. Overblown by Mudhoney
04. Before by Washed Out
05. He Gets Me High by Dum Dum Girls
06. Rebirth Of The Cool by Afghan Whigs
07. Strictly Rule by Vetiver
08. Runaround by Arlo
09. Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam by The Vaselines
10. On Your Way by The Album Leaf
11. How Come? by Avi Buffalo
12. I Play Music by Rosie Thomas
13. Lose That Girl by Saint Etienne
14. Bones by Male Bonding
15. Norway by Beach House
16. Dragon's Song by Blitzen Trapper
17. Breaking The Yearlings by Shearwater
18. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight by The Postal Service
19. New Slang by The Shins
20. American Society by L7
21. Mykonos by Fleet Foxes
22. A Bit Of Wind by Fruit Bats
23. Ladies Of The World by Flight Of The Conchords
24. Miami by Foals
25. Tallahassee by Earth
26. Careful by Sebadoh
27. Take Care Of My Baby by Dum Dum Girls
28. Phantom Limb by The Shins
29. Dark Road by Daniel Martin Moore
30. Hatched Upon The Age by Comets On Fire
31. Nearly Lost You by Screaming Trees
32. Negative Creep by Nirvana
33. Cracking Up by The Jesus & Mary Chain
34. The Extremists by Frausdots
35. Punching Goodbye Out Front by Kinski
36. The Dukes Of Hazzard by Patton Oswalt
37. I Can't Get Beer In Me by Davis Cross
38. Gauze by Red Red Meat
39. Amor Fati by Washed Out
40. Learning How To Live by Mike Ireland & Holler
41. Cigarettes, Wedding Bands by Band Of Horses
42. Scoff by Nirvana
43. Touch Me I'm Sick by Mudhoney
44. Deep Marsh by 5ive Style
45. Laru Beya by Aurelio
46. Going Back Song by The Baptist Generals
47. Pulling A Train by Six Finger Satellite
48. Blood Bleeds by The Helio Sequence
49. Everyday by Vetiver
50. Wolves (Song Of The Shepherd's Dog) by Iron & Wine
51. Dust On The Window by Low
52. Willow Tree by Chad VanGaalen
53. Love You More by Heather Duby
54. Lost In My Mind by The Head & The Heart
55. You Can Get High by The Go
56. Jumpers by Sleater-Kinney
57. You Got It by Mudhoney
58. About A Girl by Nirvana
59. Hide It Away by Retribution Gospel Choir
60. Such Great Heights by The Postal Service
61. Get In Or Get Out by Hot Hot Heat
62. This Town by Green River
63. Noel, Jonah And Me by The Spinanes
64. In The Cool Of The Day by Daniel Martin Moore
65. Friend Island by Godheadsilo
66. Cloudy Shoes by Damien Jurado
67. Grown Ocean by Fleet Foxes
68. Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenocerous by Flight Of The Conchords
69. Culture by Arlo
70. Bandages by Hot Hot Heat
71. Mysterious Friends by The Grifters
72. Sonic Infusion by Mudhoney
73. Mother Nature by Kelley Stoltz
74. Young Pilgrims by The Shins
75. Seven by Sunny Day Real Estate
76. On This Side by Tiny Vipers
77. Small Town Crew by The Brunettes
78. Love In Fear by The Constantines
79. Soft by Washed Out
80. Wonder Why by Vetiver
81. Jail La La by Dum Dum Girls
82. Rock My Boat by Dntel
83. 'Til The Wheels Fall Off by L7
84. Chuckanut Overdrive by Godheadsilo
85. A Pillar Of Salt by The Thermals
86. Tangie And Ray by Fruit Bats
87. Caring Is Creepy by The Shins
88. You're Too Weird by Fruit Bats
89. Eyes Be Closed by Washed Out
90. Know Your Onion! by The Shins
91. Kenya Dig It? by The Ruby Suns
92. Jesus The Mexican Boy by Iron & Wine
93. Entertain by Sleater-Kinney
94. What Jail Is Like by Afghan Whigs
95. Love The Way You Walk Away by Blitzen Trapper
96. Fopp by Soundgarden
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