Sub pop

Sub pop
Logo of the label
Active years	since 1986
founder	Bruce Pavitt, Jonathan Poneman
Seat	Seattle
Website	http://subpop.com
distribution	Alternative Distribution Alliance
Genre (s)	Alternative rock , grunge , dream pop

Sub Pop is an American music label based in Seattle , Washington . It is famous for being the first record company to sign Nirvana , Soundgarden and other bands from the local scene. The label is considered to be the trailblazer for the success of grunge music.

history

Beginnings

Sub Pop began in 1980 as a fanzine published by Bruce Pavitt under the name Subterranean Pop . (Starting with the second edition, the title was Sub Pop .) Inspired by the cassette fanzine Fast Forward , Sub Pop began to publish every second edition as a cassette. At these, pieces by American - occasionally also foreign - bands were presented in order to familiarize the student target group in Seattle with alternative rock sounds. A total of nine issues of Sub Pop , six booklets and three cassettes (issues 5, 7 and 9) were published. After issue 9, only the cassette format was followed. The covers were designed by Charles Burns and Peter Bagge . The project ultimately failed due to the great amount of work, but was continued for a few years as a column in the free weekly newspaper The Rocket .

Kim Thayil of Soundgarden brought Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman together, which decided in 1986 to start a record label. In 1988 both moved into an office in the Seattle Terminal Sales Building, which was made possible by the success of Sub Pop . Initially, bands from the local scene in particular were signed in order to bring the music from Seattle closer to the rest of the USA. Any advertisement for the music was also an advertisement for their label. The first step was the Sub Pop Singles Club , a kind of subscription to monthly singles whose first release was Nirvana's "Love Buzz" / "Big Cheese" single. The club had around 7,000 subscribers in its heyday and existed from November 1988 to December 1993. Between April 1998 and February 2002 there was a second singles club with new releases.

Sub Pop became the main address for publications on the local scene. In order to further promote the popularity of grunge music, a journalist from the British Melody Maker was brought to Seattle in March 1989 to write an article on the local scene which was published under the heading "Seattle: Rock City". Pavitt and Poneman, however, were accused by some grunge fans of being based on greed rather than enthusiasm for the music.

The German independent label Glitterhouse was the European branch of Sub Pop in the early days.

Commercial win

Nirvana switched to Geffen Records shortly before the release of their breakthrough album " Nevermind " , but Sub Pop continued to share in the band's revenues as Nirvana's bassist Krist Novoselić had insisted on a further connection with the label.

In 1995, 49 percent of the label was sold to the Warner Music Group . In 1996 Pavitt withdrew from the current business. However, he returned to Sub Pop in an advisory capacity in the early 1990s.

After a temporary crisis at the end of the nineties, publications by The Postal Service and The Shins were again very successful and ensured the continued existence of the label. With 615,000 copies sold, “Give Up” by The Postal Service is the second most successful album in label history, and the number of downloads for the song “Such Great Heights” in 2005 approached the 9 million mark. "Wincing the Night Away" by The Shins reached number 2 on the Billboard 200, the highest chart position since Sub Pop was founded. The best-selling sub-pop album to date is Nirvana's debut "Bleach" with 1.6 million copies sold.

Corporate identity

Branding has been at the heart of Pavitt and Poneman's activities from the start. In doing so, they orientated themselves on successful American indie labels such as Stax, Motown or Dischord, which included local references and creative recognition value .

logo

The Sub Pop logo became a trademark of the label early on. T-shirts with the print sold more often than the records in the early stages of the label. Poneman and Pavitt recognized early on that the fashionable quality of the logo was also very effective in advertising.

Artistic design

Especially at the beginning, Sub Pop pursued a concept in the artistic design of their publications: The photos were shot by Charles Peterson , the musical design was taken over by Jack Endino as producer , otherwise the records were often kept very simple, some of them weren't even the names of the musicians noted.

T-shirts

The sale of T-shirts with the logo, but also with ironic comments such as “Loser” or “Going out of business since 1988”, made up a large part of Sub Pop's sales right from the start.

Friendly connection

Not only in the early stages, Sub Pop made it important to have close personal ties with the musicians. They also repeatedly won musicians for direct label work. Kim Warning from the Fastbacks works as a manager, Mark Arm from Mudhoney is warehouse manager and Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse worked as A&R boss between 2003 and 2005 .

Grungespeak

The sub-pop representative Megan Jasper also became known, who in an interview spread the hoax of her own grunge language.

Artist at Sub Pop

The following artists were under contract with Sub Pop or have released records on Sub Pop:

The Afghan Whigs Band of Horses Baptist Generals Beach House Beat happening Big Chief Billy Childish Bleak Blood Circus Bright eyes Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) clipping. Dead moon Dum dum girls The Dwarves Earth Eric's trip Fastbacks Fleet Foxes Friends of Dean Martinez Green River The Gutter Twins Handsome furs Hazel

Hellacopters Hot hot heat Husky Iron & Wine Kinski L7 Mark Lanegan Les Thugs Love as Laughter Low Modest Mouse The Monkeywrench Mudhoney Murder City Devils Nirvana No Age Obits Pissed jeans Pond The Postal Service Red Red Meat Purely sanction The Reverend Horton Heat Rogue wave

The Ruby Suns Screaming trees Seaweed Sebadoh The Shins Sleater Kinney Smashing Pumpkins Sonic Youth Soundgarden Still Corners Sunny Day Real Estate Supersuckers Tad The Thermals Ugly Casanova Chad VanGaalen The Vaselines Vue Walkabouts White stripes Wipers Wolf parade The yo-yos

Important compilations

• 1986 - Sub Pop 100
• 1988 - Sub Pop 200
• 1990 - Fuck Me I'm Rich (with Waterfront Australia)
• 1991 - The Grunge Years
• 1994 - John Peel Sub Pop Sessions
• 1996 - hype! Soundtrack

Web links

• Official website of the label
• Every Good Boy Deserves Grunge: Blender's Brief Oral History Of Sub Pop on stereogum.com (English)

References, footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Tomasso Schultze: The revolution begins here !, in Musikexpress 12/2008, pp. 30–41
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Frank Sawatzki: 11 facts about Sub Pop , Musikexpress , October 2008, p. 16
3. ↑ The Sub Pop Singles Club ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on subpop.com (English) 
4. ↑ Sub Pop Singles Club: A Retrospective (English)
5. ↑ ^{a b} Memorandum on subpop.com (English)
6. ↑ Rembert Stieve: Rise and Fall of: Sub Pop on gibschub.de
7. ↑ ^{a b} Sub Pop Singles Club  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on fm4.orf.at  
8. ↑ Q & A-Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at launch.yahoo.com (English) 
9. ↑ Sub Pop: A Visual History of the Early Years ( Memento of the original from June 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on blender.com (English) 
10. ↑ Tom Frank, "The Great Grunge Hoax," and The Baffler at cornell.edu (English)