Friday, October 15, 2004


Various Artists
Sub Pop 100 LP
Sub Pop, 1986

So what's the opposite of tan, rested and ready (as in "Why not Tricky Dick, he's tan, rested and ready") -- izzit pale, tired and haggard? That's where I am - one of those weeks where your off-line activities meet your work life and end up in 6AM to 12 midnight days where you gotta be on.

So, howdja like my last posting? Isn't it kinda like when people bring out pictures from their vacations? Isn't it the ultimate vanity trip to post your own songs on what has to be the ultimate vanity blog, going through your LP and cassette stack - and will this take the rest of my life or what? Your deafening silence is well deafening. Thanks for not saying anything bad, at least.

So, Sub-Pop. Short for Subterranean Popular Music, I guess. First a xerox fanzine and then the founders decided to get serious about life and build a multi-media empire in the Great Northwest and just happened to come into existence when the whole Seattle sound becomes hot and have like half of those hot bands signed within the year. This album kicked it all off. 5000 supposedly printed -- I've seen folks selling mint copies of this for 100 bucks. Also heard rumors that a CD came out -- who knows if it was authorized. Rumor was that early in Sub Pop history, they had problems paying the record pressing companies who retaliated by releasing special versions of their more popular records.

While Sub Pop 100, the album, doesn't showcase many of the ultimate blankscowls known collectively as the Grunge scene (and, I'm tripping perhaps but is Pearl Jam really, really grunge? Are the Screaming Trees? Are the U-Men, even), it does put together a bunch of dangerous and noteworthy types to kick off the label: Sonic Youth's great Kill Christgau song, the supposedly first known recording from Naked Raygun (personally, I think that's a goof, since the song is just so blatantly awful), Skinny Puppy's somewhat retarded industro-tape "Church in Hell", Lupe Diaz (who?), the whacky samplings of Steve Fisk, the afore-mentioned U-Men and Austin's own grunge entry Scratch Acid with a song off one of their disks. Um, well, who else? Only the greatest band in the Northwest -- the Wipers doing a live version of "Nothing to Prove" and Thalia Zadek's first (?) band Dangerous Birds. Oh, and the slightly under-rated Savage Republic and the slightly over-rated (at the time) Shonen Knife, doing two songs that probably shouldn't be on the same record, the primitivecore "Real Men" and the cymbal-hooked "One Day Of the Factory," respectively. So what to share, what to share? Well, I do have some other Wipers material which I'll get to someday. I have some Shonen Knife elsewhere as well as Skinny Puppy, Scratch Acid, Naked Raygun, S. Youth. But, oh screw it, the best song on this album has to be the chin rocking Ramones meets the 'Mats Wipers song. Oh and here's Lupe Diaz because for some reason I think Loki and SVC might like and I've been digging their pages lately.

"Itsbeena" - Lupe Diaz
"Nothing to Prove (live)" - The Wipers

Notes: I'll add some notes and fix my typos later. Off to the Trachtenberg show.... also, I've been meaning to ask, how do my recordings sound these days. I'm using variable bit format and I think I'm doing a better job at reducing surface noise.

The Wipers official website - I love the history of the Wipers...
Damned if I can find any information about Lupe Diaz. The liner notes say they are from Mexico City.
Sub Pop memorabilia - visit their main site for a plethora of music, bands, videos and MP3s.

Update: The Trachtenberg Slide Show canc-ex, as they say in the military (cancelled exercise, get it?)! Their van broke down south of Phillie. Would that be Delaware?!? When I was 9 or 10 years old, we used to love to drive through Delaware because it sounded like underwear and for some reason only known to kids, it's cool to say underwear over and over and over again. Is the drummer from the Trachtenbergs too sophisticated for that I wonder? Isn't there a Trachtenberg song in here?


5 comments:

Spoilt Victorian Child said...

Your damn right i like that Lupe Diaz track....
Way way too short though.
I've got Sub-Pop 100 on vinyl too... haven't listened to it for years though, didn't know it was released on CD.
Got quite a lot of early Sub-Pop stuff and i guess quite a lot of it is reeally collectable now..
still not selling though.
Think my most valuable bit of Sub-Pop is a red and white splattered vinyly copy of Bleach packaged with the blue vinyl Sliver 7" by some little beat combo called Nirvana...
All with a limited to 500 copies sticker on...
mines number 173..
wonder how much it's worth?
Dont' think i'll be retiring too soon though!

As ABBA once said "Thank You For The Music"

Simon
x

Jim H said...

Simon write:
>Your damn right i like that Lupe Diaz track....

If anyone knows anything about this group, I'd appreciate learning...

> Think my most valuable bit of Sub-Pop is a red
> and white splattered vinyly copy of Bleach
> packaged with the blue vinyl Sliver 7" by some
> little beat combo called Nirvana...

Was this one of the pirate recordings put out by Sub Pop's record pressing plant to pay off their debts?

> As ABBA once said "Thank You For The Music"

Who can live without it, I ask in all honesty
What would life be?

Spoilt Victorian Child said...

Not sure of the origins...
pretty sure i got it mail order from sub pop though in 89...
Looks kosha, but if it was done at the pressing plant then they would have access to all the right labels etc i guess.
Also got the Nevermind floating baby and dollar bills cd pack... dried up now so baby doesn't float... :(

Without a song or a dance what are we?

Simon
x

Eric XXL said...

I have never been able to track this one down ( though I haven't been searching all that earnestly as of late ). Love that Wipers track, one of my favorites of theirs. Good stuff!

Unknown said...

Emilo to Popcorn, Lupe Diaz Lives. He lives next door. It's been a....While Lupe. Ed Ned & Ted told me.